RNG's recent activity

  1. Comment on Rodent for dinner? US residents encouraged to eat invasive nutria. in ~enviro

    RNG
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    The article includes three explicit examples of governments trying to incentivize killing pests, and one of them does in fact concern rodents.

    The article includes three explicit examples of governments trying to incentivize killing pests, and one of them does in fact concern rodents.

    7 votes

  2. Comment on Rodent for dinner? US residents encouraged to eat invasive nutria. in ~enviro

    RNG
    Link Parent
    Any industry who's goal is to fix some problem will have a vested interest in making sure the problem never goes away. A ton of excellent examples in this Wikipedia entry.

    making an industry of reducing their population

    Any industry who's goal is to fix some problem will have a vested interest in making sure the problem never goes away. A ton of excellent examples in this Wikipedia entry.

    23 votes

  3. Comment on Show Tildes: we built the world's first legal AI API in ~tech

  4. Comment on Syria merges Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces into state institutions in ~society

    RNG
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    I hope this means that Turkey will be deterred from excessively bombing Kurdish people on the other side of the border.

    I hope this means that Turkey will be deterred from excessively bombing Kurdish people on the other side of the border.

    11 votes

  6. Comment on The best charity isn't what you think in ~humanities

    RNG
    Link Parent
    I've been thinking about how to articulate my thinking here. There seems to be something that happens in discussions of any form of moral or environmental responsibility where a counter argument...

    I've been thinking about how to articulate my thinking here. There seems to be something that happens in discussions of any form of moral or environmental responsibility where a counter argument goes like this:

    Why care about X when Y is more important?

    • "Why care about US vehicle emissions when developing countries contribute far more CO2 per capita?"
    • "Why care about Ukraine when we have so many more costly issues at home?"
    • "Why fund the arts when that money can go to something more economically productive?"

    It strikes me as not actually being interested in diverting resources from "X" to "Y" to promote the greater good, rather to make a throwaway point against doing something about X.

    My response to all of these objections seems to take on the same form: first, to point out that the objector likely hasn't done (and doesn't actually care to do) anything about Y. And second, to point out that you can care about more than one issue at the same time. Nothing about wanting to recycle precludes me from supporting alternatives to singe-use plastics, as an example.

    Finally, I just want to say I'm not making any claims about what you, personally, have done about mosquitos; it's not like I can fact-check you if you tell me that you spend your summers traveling to Africa to personally hand out nets lol. I'm just making an observation about this category of objection.

    1 vote

  7. Comment on The best charity isn't what you think in ~humanities

    RNG
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    I'm quite skeptical that $10 can save 5 human lives. Most estimates put the cost of saving a human life via charity in the thousands.

    but it can also buy 5 mosquito nets, saving 5 or more humans from malaria.

    I'm quite skeptical that $10 can save 5 human lives. Most estimates put the cost of saving a human life via charity in the thousands.

  8. Comment on The best charity isn't what you think in ~humanities

    RNG
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    I think the idea is that, for the cost, it plausibly is one of the cheaper ways to reduce vast amounts of suffering.

    I think the idea is that, for the cost, it plausibly is one of the cheaper ways to reduce vast amounts of suffering.

  9. Comment on The best charity isn't what you think in ~humanities

    RNG
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    No one is claiming we ought to prioritize the life of shrimp over humans. The idea is that if we can cheaply reduce the suffering shrimp experience then it would be good to do so.

    I'd watch a million shrimps die a painful death if it meant saving a single human life.

    No one is claiming we ought to prioritize the life of shrimp over humans. The idea is that if we can cheaply reduce the suffering shrimp experience then it would be good to do so.

  10. Comment on The best charity isn't what you think in ~humanities

    RNG
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    Humans aren't getting any value out of the agonizing deaths being discussed, their agony doesn't "improve human welfare."

    I personally think it's acceptable if other animals die horrible deaths to improve human welfare

    Humans aren't getting any value out of the agonizing deaths being discussed, their agony doesn't "improve human welfare."

    1 vote

  11. Comment on The best charity isn't what you think in ~humanities

    RNG
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    A lot of this discussion is trying to work out how much credence we should have in the idea that shrimp have "inner lives" or for there to be "something it is like to be a shrimp". If there is...

    A lot of this discussion is trying to work out how much credence we should have in the idea that shrimp have "inner lives" or for there to be "something it is like to be a shrimp".

    If there is something it is like to be a shrimp, that they have this kind of phenomenal consciousness or sentience, it seems trivially obvious that preventing 20 minutes of agony is worthwhile. If I only have 50% confidence that this is the case, then it still seems worthwhile preventing what might be a terrible death. If I'm only 3% confident this is the case, and a dollar can spare 1,500 sentient beings 20 minutes of agony, that seems worthwhile to me even if I think it's relatively epistemically unlikely that shrimp have inner lives.

    2 votes

  12. Comment on The best charity isn't what you think in ~humanities

    RNG
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    I think this might be a misunderstanding. The goal is to proportion our credences to the available evidence while acknowledging that uncertainty is inherent to the methodology. It's not about...

    Its downright silly to me that someone would argue with a straight face that science has objectively determined the conversion rate of shrimp to human suffering. Shrimp suffering is 3.1% as valid as human suffering?

    I think this might be a misunderstanding. The goal is to proportion our credences to the available evidence while acknowledging that uncertainty is inherent to the methodology. It's not about making proclamations about what "science has objectively determined" about shrimp suffering.

    But its very easy to logic yourself into stupid positions by putting objectivity and strict heirarchical rankings on a pedestal.

    I don't think there is anything "strict" about the rankings or figures, and I don't think anyone would say that a particular figure is the "objectively correct" one. This isn't about putting a particular analysis of suffering on pedestal; it's about making a best-effort in understand the suffering of non-human animals.

    I recommend reading this to learn more about the methodology. Again, it's a best effort. There's nothing we can say with a precise or even high credence about the inner lives of other sentient beings.

    1 vote

  13. Comment on The upcoming US PEPFAR cut will kill millions, many of them children in ~society

    RNG
    Link Parent
    So this is the key point from the post: It's likely Trump's transition team wasn't even familiar with the program when cutting foreign aid, and it doesn't seem unreasonable that they can carve an...

    So this is the key point from the post:

    Neither has any special reason to be opposed to PEPFAR—the program is traditionally bipartisan! The only reason they’re cutting it is likely that they haven’t heard about it.

    It's likely Trump's transition team wasn't even familiar with the program when cutting foreign aid, and it doesn't seem unreasonable that they can carve an exception for PEPFAR if there's a lot of attention on the benefits of the program.

    9 votes

  14. Comment on The best charity isn't what you think in ~humanities

    RNG
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    I don't think you have to have certainty or near certainty in the figure, just increased credence in the view. If they felt 0.31%, it'd still be doing tremendous good (from the article, 3.1% is...

    Say in the future the study is repeated and they come to a different number. Now you were wrong; how do you feel about that? Or what if you misunderstood the data, or misapplied it to what you were doing?

    I don't think you have to have certainty or near certainty in the figure, just increased credence in the view. If they felt 0.31%, it'd still be doing tremendous good (from the article, 3.1% is conservative, other estimates are as high as 19%.

    it seems strange to me that they find it more noble to end their last moments of pain where in the meanwhile they are largely disregarding the rest of their lifespan

    Well, the focus is here because these moments are presumably immensely painful, and we are in a position to relatively easily and cheaply do something about them.

    What I am trying to get at is that if we were to instead focus on getting people to stop eating shrimp altogether, we would see massive drops in overall suffering because a lot of those shrimp would not be born into a life of suffering. If you could just convince one person to stop eating shrimp, you’ve potentially prevented tens of thousands of shrimp from being cast into a destiny of suffering.

    There's no reason why promoting veganism precludes us from supporting SWP. Of course it'd be better to stop eating shrimp! But in a world where shrimp harvesting happens, it seems better to eliminate suffering where we can. Spending $10 to save 15,000 shrimp from a painful death is more likely to result in good outcomes compared to attempting any one person to give up eating shrimp, and nothing about the former prevents me from trying the latter.

    For one thing, it’s nearly impossible to measure the suffering of animals in captivity in any meaningful way. It’s just too abstract and there’s too much variety in terms of how farming operations work, for one - though if I were to be uncharitable I could say that there are some people who will not be stopped by these limitation regardless of the wisdom of doing so.

    Really all we need to do is make the best inferences we can with the information we have. It seems obvious that there is a fact of the matter about how much animals suffer, and we should try to proportion our beliefs to the evidence while acknowledging that whatever estimates we come up with won't be known with a high degree of certainty.

    I don’t know enough about the author to say if they are vegan or vegetarian, but if they were I would assume they would have made more effort to add that to their data matrix when coming to this conclusion.

    They are. It's just easier to convince people to spend $10 to stop suffering than make radical lifestyle changes, even if the latter would result in better outcomes. And again, there's no reason you can't do both.

    2 votes

  15. Comment on The upcoming US PEPFAR cut will kill millions, many of them children in ~society

    RNG
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    I only noticed this after posting about a shrimp charity of all things, which feels a bit meaningless in comparison (but I suppose I'll leave that post up.)

    I only noticed this after posting about a shrimp charity of all things, which feels a bit meaningless in comparison (but I suppose I'll leave that post up.)

    Every single day that it is operative, PEPFAR supports:

    • More than 222,000 people on treatment in the program collecting ARVs to stay healthy;
    • More than 224,000 HIV tests, newly diagnosing 4,374 people with HIV – 10% of whom are pregnant women attending antenatal clinic visits;
    • Services for 17,695 orphans and vulnerable children impacted by HIV;
    • 7,163 cervical cancer screenings, newly diagnosing 363 women with cervical cancer or pre-cancerous lesions, and treating 324 women with positive cervical cancer results;
    • Care and support for 3,618 women experiencing gender-based violence, including 779 women who experienced sexual violence.

    PEPFAR provides treatment and prevention of HIV and AIDS—it has saved about 25 million people since its implementation in 2001, despite only taking less than 0.1% of the federal budget.

    Fortunately, the end of PEPFAR is not inevitable. Rubio kept up famine relief and military aid to Morocco and Israel. With the stroke of a pen, Trump or Rubio could do the same for PEPFAR. If either Trump or Rubio wanted to, they could make sure PEPFAR relief continues. Neither has any special reason to be opposed to PEPFAR—the program is traditionally bipartisan! The only reason they’re cutting it is likely that they haven’t heard about it.

    So let’s get the word out! The PEPFAR cut is unpopular; it can only thrive in the darkness. Help make it a national issue so that people know what PEPFAR does.

    13 votes

  17. Comment on The best charity isn't what you think in ~humanities

    RNG
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    One of the best charities you can give to is called the shrimp welfare project (if you want to donate monthly, you can do so here). For every dollar it gets, it saves about 1,500 shrimp from a painful death every year.

    The way it works is simple and common sense: it gives stunners to companies that kill shrimp so long as they agree to use them to stun at least 120 million shrimp. They also secure welfare commitments from corporations to stop crushing the eyes of live shrimp in order to increase their fertility and to use humane slaughter

    In total, they’ve helped around 2.6 billion shrimp per year, despite operating on a shoestring budget.

    This makes them around 30 times better at reducing suffering and promoting well-being than the highly effective animal charities focused on chicken welfare which themselves are hundreds or thousands of times more effective than the best charities helping humans. It costs thousands of dollars to save a human, but the best animal charities help hundreds of animals per dollar.

    4 votes

  18. Comment on US CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid’s origins in ~health

    RNG
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    I mean, it is some evidence, but not nearly enough on its own to conclude the lab leak theory is true.

    “There is a lab nearby” is a relevant fact, but it is not evidence.

    I mean, it is some evidence, but not nearly enough on its own to conclude the lab leak theory is true.

    6 votes

  20. Comment on What's a charity/organization that you donate to regularly? in ~talk

    RNG
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    Exclusively the EFF.

    Exclusively the EFF.

    3 votes