law prof, amateur geek
Joined November 2011
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Chris Newman retweeted
>be me
>discover effective altruism
>apparently normal charity is inefficient
>why donate to random sad thing when spreadsheet can tell you optimal sad thing
>fair enough
>buy mosquito nets
>save lives
>numbers look good
>feel powerful
>couple years later
>someone asks an innocent question
>why only count people alive today
>huh
>future people matter too
>obviously
>my grandchildren shouldn't matter less just because they haven't spawned yet
>reasonable.jpg
>keep following logic
>what about their grandchildren
>also yes
>what about people in 500 years
>sure
>5000 years
>why not
>500 million years
>starting to get weird but morality is morality
>open calculator
>humanity could survive for an astronomically long time
>could colonize galaxy
>could have trillions upon trillions of descendants
>maybe digital people too
>maybe simulated civilizations
>maybe dyson spheres full of happy uploaded minds
>calculator starts smoking
>realize currently living humans are rounding error
>8 billion people suddenly looking extremely beta
>future contains potentially 10^something people
>can't even fit beneficiaries in google sheets
>new moral priority unlocked
>protect the long-term future
>stop thinking in units of "people helped"
>start thinking in "fraction of cosmic endowment preserved"
>malaria?
>terrible
>but only kills existing humans
>AI extinction could delete the entire light cone
>nuclear war could permanently derail civilization
>bad institutions could lock in terrible values for ten million years
>someone invents wrong constitution in 2140
>quadrillions suffer
>better fund governance workshop now
>friend says maybe we should improve hospitals
>explain opportunity cost
>friend says hospitals are full of actual sick people
>explain scope sensitivity
>friend stops inviting me to dinner
>need to decide what to fund
>easy
>expected value
>suppose project has one in a million chance of preventing extinction
>sounds tiny
>but extinction destroys 10^50 future lives
>multiply
>mother of god
>$10 million project has expected value of several galaxies
>charity evaluation complete
>someone asks where the one-in-a-million number came from
>expert judgement
>which expert
>us
>how calibrated
>extremely thoughtfully
>reduce estimate to one in ten million to be conservative
>still beats curing cancer by 38 orders of magnitude
>epistemic robustness achieved
>someone says maybe project doesn't work
>assign 20% chance
>still astronomical
>maybe project makes problem worse
>assign 5% chance
>still astronomical
>why 5
>because 30 felt pessimistic
>publish 46-page report
>contains seventeen sensitivity analyses
>every sensitivity analysis begins after assuming intervention has positive sign
>critic says you're multiplying enormous hypothetical stakes by extremely uncertain probabilities
>yes
>that's literally why it's important
>critic says the uncertainty might be structural rather than numerical
>make probability smaller
>critic says no, I mean maybe your model is wrong
>make probability smaller again
>critic begins rubbing temples
>discover AI safety
>perfect longtermist cause
>AI might kill everyone
>or create utopia
>or seize galaxy
>or tile universe with paperclips
>or create billions of conscious software minds
>finally a problem with numbers big enough for me
>start AI safety nonprofit
>mission: prevent dangerous AI
>hire smartest people available
>smartest people immediately start building better AI to understand dangerous AI
>interesting
>we must understand capabilities to understand safety
>we must scale models to study alignment
>we must race ahead so less responsible actors don't get there first
>we must deploy systems to learn how deployment can go wrong
>we must build the thing quickly because building the thing quickly is dangerous
>outsider asks why the people most worried about AI apocalypse all work at AI companies
>complicated field
>company releases stronger model
>very concerned
>company begins training even stronger model
>extremely concerned
>company raises $14 billion
>concern reaches unprecedented levels
>need to influence government
>future is at stake
>normal democratic process too slow
>politicians don't understand exponential curves
>public doesn't understand x-risk
>experts must guide them
>who counts as expert
>people who understand x-risk
>who understands x-risk
>our friends
>someone objects that this seems politically convenient
>explain we're representing future generations
>future generations unavailable for comment
>develop concept of value lock-in
>terrifying possibility that one ideology controls civilization forever
>therefore extremely important that civilization adopts correct values before lock-in
>whose values
>let's circle back
>begin with impartial morality
>end with small group of people deciding what quadrillions of hypothetical beings would want
>beautiful arc
>meanwhile actual humans keep doing annoying things
>voting wrong
>having parochial attachments
>loving family more than strangers
>caring about local community
>getting upset when told their suffering is cosmically negligible
>evolutionary biases everywhere
>explain that moral intuition cannot be trusted
>except intuition that future digital people count
>and intuition that extinction is uniquely bad
>and intuition that our probability estimates are sane
>and intuition that our institutional choices improve the future
>those intuitions survived peer review
>someone donates $5k to local homeless shelter
>inefficient
>could have funded 0.0000000000003% of an AI governance researcher
>think of all the simulated people you just killed
>okay maybe don't phrase it that way publicly
>PR team says "future generations deserve a voice"
>much better
>journalist asks what longtermism means
>say "future people matter"
>everyone agrees
>great
>journalist asks what follows from that
>well technically we should redirect enormous resources toward low-probability interventions affecting astronomical futures
>journalist raises eyebrow
>return to "future people matter"
>motte has entered the chat
>critic: of course future people matter
>me: glad we agree
>critic: I don't agree that your institute knows how to help them
>me: why do you hate our grandchildren
>eventually notice uncomfortable implication
>if future value dominates everything
>then helping people today mostly matters through effects on future
>education matters because future institutions
>health matters because future productivity
>democracy matters because future trajectory
>human beings slowly become instrumental variables in their own moral philosophy
>see starving child
>feel compassion
>check spreadsheet
>child's direct welfare contribution negligible
>but perhaps childhood nutrition improves national institutional quality
>compassion restored
>tell myself this is impartial altruism
>one day assistant asks obvious question
>"how do you know your intervention actually improves the far future?"
>silence
>open spreadsheet
>increase column width
>add confidence interval
>assistant asks again
>"no, I mean how do you know the sign is positive?"
>stare into cosmic light cone
>10^50 people staring back
>none of them exist
>none of them can tell me
>none of them can falsify my assumptions
>realize I have invented the perfect constituency
>infinitely important
>completely silent
>and always represented by me
Chris Newman retweeted
5/5 My practical take on MQ: If there's ANY room for a Member of Congress to weasel out of responsibility for the president's disastrous exercise of some purportedly delegated power, then the power wasn't delegated. There's a reason the entire House has to run every two years--accountability. /end
Chris Newman retweeted
Protest is and should be protected, but you don't have a right to disrupt classes or use bullhorns in the library. This is a minority of students deciding for everyone else if they can study or even if they can get to class. They can and should be punished.
Chris Newman retweeted
Justice Barrett is a very good judge. I disagree with her a lot, but she is smart, careful, and fair. She's a true believer in the law and in the rule of law, not a partisan hack or an ideologue.
This, of course, makes her anathema to trumpism.
Chris Newman retweeted
No, it's not.
You have a right to protest, and I’ve defended that right more than practically anyone. You do NOT have a right to shut down other people's classes, their speakers or prevent them from studying in the frickin library. I am tired of people supporting mob censors, but claiming to give a damn about freedom of speech.
And EVERYONE immediately understands this when it's a class they want to attend, a speaker they want to hear, or a time when they want to study. It is only ideology that makes people dense about this stuff.
Coming soon: a dating app for wine moms, Sarahs and Hannahs who want to meet dads, Brads and Chads. #TheTorturedPoetsDepartment
Gotta say, I love it that the best diss on this album is aimed the parts of the fan base who took it upon themselves to decide who was PC enough for her to date. #TheTorturedPoetsDepartment
I’m assuming someone has done the analysis of whether Trump would be issue precluded by the Colorado ruling on insurrection if SCOTUS were to leave it standing?
Definitely sharing this with my Civ Pro class.
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Someone needs to write a think piece about Swiftiedom’s embrace of the Kelce brothers, and how it illustrates that decrying “toxic masculinity” is actually quite compatible with still loving and being attracted to masculinity as such. @taylornation13
And this, ladies and gents, is my own personal #1 reason why I am against expanding the size of the Court.
Chris Newman retweeted
Eliminating the LSAT to address inequity is like destroying a thermometer to address a fever.
Getting rid of the LSAT is incredibly regressive. The main beneficiaries will be academically weaker wealthy students who can afford to pad their resumes, go to private schools with more grade inflation, and pay for admissions coaches. reuters.com/legal/legalindus…
Chris Newman retweeted
Mint and Silver Metal Dice Giveaway!
As always rules are the same.
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Love it that the NYT thinks our Liberty & Law Center is an "area of special concern for the legal right." The last three topics covered by our student/faculty reading group: a deep dive into critical race theory, the argument in favor of open borders, and decrim of sex work.
TFW you set out to listen Lana’s new album, but get derailed because you have to go listen to all the songs she just referenced. #didyouknowtheresatunnelunderOceanBlvd
I appear to have discovered a new physical malady. I call it: Duolingo thumb. #Duolingo
Decided to catch the screening of Brazil at @alamodrafthouse. It is as great a film as I’d remembered, but I’m going to be having nightmares about ductwork for weeks.