I think it's worse than this on a micro level. How many AI alignment researchers are not vegan/don't care about animal ethics? Yet they are working on a problem that is directly parallel to how humans treat animals, e.g how a far greater intellgience AGI/ASI will treat us.
Currently we are even encoding AI with our current values, in some way it had make sense to align ourseleves thus aligning AI. Either way the cognitive disonnace and hypocracy is staggering to me and lacks a coherent and consistance moral worldview.
I attended the last EAGxNigeria and thought it was an excellent conference, well organised, with so many talented and exceptional attendees as well. Glad to see it on the docket again and would be glad to see more EAG's (x's) across the globe. I'm hopeful EA can further itself in being a global and inclusive movement!
Would encourage anyone considering it to attend!
This is an excellent example of a powerful advantage EA/Non-profit has over non-EA/for-profit in that we all (in theory) have the same goal - to make the world a better place thus we can play a positive sum game, leveraging collaboration, coordination and reducing duplicating work.
Zero or negative-sum games are also IMO a broader societal problem that we need to put effort and work into fixing, so we should at least be cooperating with EA.
There is also something to be said for growing the pie or that the pie is already big enough to be shared with all, defo in the camp that EA should be a lot bigger and less elitist.
Awesome initiative, excited to read some of the entries. I hope this can be a springboard for higher levels of involvement and activate individuals and writers or writers to be in Africa.
Also, I think what could also go far in getting more African and other less represented individuals (in EA) to participate and engage more in the international EA space would be a funding pool/assistance specifically for getting individuals to conferences, there can often be issues with visas and funding.
Hi Brian,
EA Animal Welfare fund does ask on their application form about counterfactual funding, IE "If we don't fund you will anyone else fund you?/what would happen if we don't fund you" of course as an org it can be hard to know if you'll get funding or not so in some sense you're being speculative when answering this question
I suppose the realistic effect is you may donate let's say an additional 1 month of runway to the org, therefore the org applies for 1 months less funding from EA Animal Welfare next time round, and that money then flows through to the next best opportunity EA Animal Welfare would fund, so the effect may be thought of as additional money going to the worst/borderline EA Animal welfare grantee, at least that would be my speculation in this situation
Great post, this one helped me get over some guilt feelings in EA, it might help others - https://replacingguilt.com/