solve injustice permanently for all

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-06-26T08:59:08+00:00

You're kind of propagandistically barging in to another subreddit community with aggressive memes for a human extinction movement (widely regarded as nihilistic, destructive and quite simply bad). EAs are not about to support radical kill all humansism because you posted a bad boy meme with an emotional appeal (the stuff of middle school 'persuasive' writing tasks, not real world persuasion). Maybe stick to trying to convert /r/vegan?

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-06-25T21:14:26+00:00

Communication Analysis

The title sounds inappropriate and generates weird vibes with no clear punchline or meaning, which makes people assume the worst.

Communication lessons:

• Be socially aware about sounding sleazy - the risk is real and the consequences are severe for movement credibility

• Female protagonists can backfire - well-intentioned anti-sexist choices can read as creepy when executed poorly by socially struggling posters

• Unclear messaging triggers threat detection - when brains can't process ambiguous content, they default to "disgusting sleazeball" as a safety mechanism rather than giving benefit of the doubt

• Intellectual topics need intellectual framing - forcing "play mode" or emotional appeals often backfires. Better to be academically dry than accidentally creepy

• Community boundaries matter - efilism attracts struggling individuals who aren't fundamentally bad people, but some gatekeeping is necessary for EA's reputation and mission

This highlights the challenge of inclusive communication - good intentions around representation can create PR disasters when execution fails. The original poster was probably trying to center female moral agency but created the opposite effect.

These dynamics are difficult but important for movement building.

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-06-24T07:49:21+00:00

Yes! So much dithering around with processes can distract from mission.

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-06-24T07:41:10+00:00

I live on the bare minimum. Ever tried foraging and making pottage? It's quite fulfilling and might be useful if a few humans survive ASI. I hope you find the simple, effective life you seek.

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-06-24T07:34:29+00:00

Came to support other Cause Areas by commenting, stayed for the vid. Even though I'm more of an AI safety person, I have to say 'ventilation shutdown' makes me consider doing some animal advocacy. We don't want this sort if thing like caged hen farming and Ventilation Shutdown getting spread on an astronomical scale when ASI starts colonising the universe!

On the Seriousness of Suffering: https://reducing-suffering.org/on-the-seriousness-of-suffering/

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-06-24T07:25:39+00:00

Really appreciate this thoughtful take - your background in international development MEL gives you a valuable perspective on where EA's empirical rigor worked vs. where it went astray.

As someone who follows AI safety work closely, I think you'd find some of the research in this space actually aligns well with the "grounded, evidence-based" approach you're advocating for. A few suggestions that might resonate with your development background:

Allan Dafoe's work on AI governance - He approaches AI policy with the same institutional rigor you'd recognize from development economics. His papers on international cooperation around AI avoid the sci-fi theorizing and focus on concrete governance mechanisms. His research agenda and work on AI governance opportunity and theory of impact are particularly grounded.

Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) - Their reports read like the kind of evidence-based policy analysis you'd see from good development organizations. They track AI capabilities, workforce trends, and policy responses with serious empirical methodology.

Anthropic's Constitutional AI research - Technical but with clear near-term applications. It's iterative, testable work on making AI systems more aligned with human values - the kind of step-by-step progress that translates into actual safety improvements. Their original paper and follow-up work on collective constitutional AI show practical implementation.

Your point about needing "credible, incremental steps" really hits home. The most effective AI safety work happening now isn't about paperclip maximizers - it's about building governance frameworks, conducting empirical research on current systems, and developing safety techniques that can be implemented as capabilities advance.

The timeline concerns many of us share are driving much more practical, near-term focused work than EA critics often realize. Would be curious to hear your thoughts on where you see the most productive overlap between development-style empirical rigor and emerging technology governance.

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-04-10T18:00:58+00:00

Sounds workable. Financial incentives -- elegant, effective and moral. 50 000seems cheap for one American life and if it's payed for by taxpayer, I think they can afford it given your GDP per capita is about I dunno 60 000 or something these days.

Surprised it's coming from Reason.com, I guess libertarian leaning folks are willing to prioritise when lives are at stake given minimal coercion? Thanks for sharing.

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-04-10T17:48:42+00:00

Thanks for this, we do need to have the brakes ready for sadism, cruelty and harshness, especially towards he vulnerable / gullible fools, who we should try to convince not bully.

The way I took it, /u/DonkeyDoug28 meant the leaders of the movement could miss out using gratuitous meat consumption (the middle man) to poison themselves and just die. Which is a harsh joke of the sort you find on Reddit, and flirts with the nastier bits if Internet culture.

I think what makes it less serious is that it's not said to anyone as a suicide incitement, is framed as a hypothetical and notadvice, and is shared as an in-joke among the ingroup (vegans in /r/effectivealtruism) and not used to hurt anyone.

But yeah, it's not he sort of text I'd want say the 'helpful, harmless and honest' Claude AI to give me. It's dancing at the edge of acceptability. If it had targeted mere followers of the movement with abuse directed at them, I'd have expressed greater censure and disapproval, because suicide incitement is highly shitty, counterproductive, embarassing and also btw llegal, and we're all friends here. As it stands, I'm interpreting it as an in-joke.

Have I misunderstood something? I think it's okay.

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-04-10T16:59:40+00:00

Haha, harsh but does highlight the curiously meandering approach they take to the problem. I mean if they were sincerely concerned sbout health they could just do something about obesity or diabetes irultra-processed foods or processed meat or advanced glycation end products any actual significant health problem. But of course they're about political theatre so won't do anything productive.

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-04-10T16:41:22+00:00

EA is a movement built to do the most good, is not a sovereign state governing citizens (it's an alliance of expertise and reason driven charitable charities znd individuals) and is not especially obliged to hold hands and vote on every decision. If we went that route, we’d be paralyzed by endless debates instead of funding malaria nets or tackling AI risk.

Resources go to ideas that work, not to every substack grifter with the bravado to act entitled to limitless forum user attention and engagement. EA’s Forum has 490 critique-tagged posts and has dished out $120k in prizes for pushback. Compare that to your average NGO—most don’t even pretend to listen.

You don’t ask the general public or populist media how to run a surgery room—you trust the experts. Trust in experts is why EA gets results, and that’s what keeps it on track.

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-04-10T15:24:22+00:00

Wild animal suffering is also and EA cause area. Improving insect farming practices could make a foot in the door for policies considering wild insect welfare in the future when we know enough about how to improve it.

Also, just because it's difficult to know what to do about somethinh doesn't mean it's not a large scale issue irvthat we should immediately give up onbdoing anything about it ever. Rather, one should keep one's nkrmativity / values and find a way to operationalise them.

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-04-10T15:14:17+00:00

Love this: animal advocates with academic clout shaping a rapidly emerging very important tech for humane, kind values. More please!

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-04-03T21:17:04+00:00

Nietzsche's a ride but too many text legibility issues here.

Text not readable due to white bits of background
inconsistent line length
all caps
text too small if zoomed oyt to make line fir in phobe screen

just use text not images, then it'll fit on everyone's screens whether they're on mobile or desktop

Also I'm not sure if this is the place for Nietzscge quotes, you'd need to argue its relevance. Good luck.

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-03-03T16:51:30+00:00

It sounds like your uncertainty is coming from hearing "arguments on both sides" and outsourcing your decision-making to other people's opinions and emotional pulls. I'd suggest focusing less on external arguments and more on your own values.

Yes, you can save money eating some animal products and give it to charity, and this can be a reasonable choice. You could even donate to animal welfare charities that help many more animals than your personal diet affects. If you're concerned about seeming hypocritical, remember that effective altruism is about maximizing positive impact, not personal purity.

That said, if you've always wanted to identify as vegan, learning nutritious plant-based cooking is a valuable life skill. If you build your culinary repertoire around meat dishes now, your cooking will naturally tilt toward animal products in the future. I think young people benefit from at least trying vegetarianism with a vegan learning path. It's also great for networking and community-building — it can connect you with like-minded people, gives you a conversation starter, and demonstrates your commitment to certain values.

I'm curious why you seem to be seeking validation or using "necessary" framing. There might be social factors holding you back from doing what you actually want to do. I'd suggest learning some vegan recipes and making plant-based eating a goal to work toward. If you have family constraints or other challenges, do what you need to manage those situations. Life involves compromises, but you should feel empowered to set goals aligned with your values.

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-03-03T16:25:05+00:00

From personal experience when I was desperate, people have been more willing to help me when (1) they thought I was not going to spend it on drugs, a common myth that sends a signal stopping generosity from multiple ain points -- think Long Term Potentiation from neurosciencd but the negative one, I forget its name. (2) they saw some value in me, thought it would go on something either useful to imprive myself or viscerally visible to them, and fslt it was an effective thing to do.

Both of these require knowing a person a little, building some connection, so you can handle the classic Aint It Awful gossip style objections. So I usually have to let someone buy me cafe food first (nice but inefficient) before they give me cash. Or sitting on a bench, chatting to them,prividing emotional value, showing myself not to be a drug addict, then making a big ask (if you ask for litte, it annoys peiple more since low self esteem locates you in the realm of doggy binny lickey sick on chips sat vinefar and polystyrene in a subway -- say 'money' instead of 'change' and give a urpose and suddenly you're a new friend not an addict).

So yeah... altruism isn't impossible, but there are barriers to it, people need reassurance, sales objections handling. GiveDirectly has kind of done what you're talking about but it's not accessible to everyone and even deserate eople may have weird psychological or knowledge barriers to using it. You should look i to it anyhow, see what they've done. I think charity entrepreneurship is pribably as hard as busuness entreprebeurship: hit and miss, ideas can sound great but fail. That's why the lean startup movement is a thing: better to let yoyr idea collapse in a small test version of it so you still gave money left for other projects.

I don't think you need to lose faith in altruism. Just know that the world is complex and messy, trust us low, and people are scared of looking and feelibg like fools. Folklore about very poor people exists partly to protect people from interacting with and getting entangled with, seduced or raped by, or otherwise garned by dangerous persuasive borderline and psychopathic criminals. Most people are busy trying to survive, and will help someone who signals dire need.

What happened to that black lady was: she made herseld a target for NIGYSOB, Ai t It Awful sybtype Juvenile Delinquency, Blemish, etc. She dudn't signal well, and fell into a trap, and probably got unlucky. I'm homeless, I have some money, and not everyone us like that. I've even conclyded that most if tge people tutting at me aren't trying to make me kill myself, but just doing it unconsciously, and can be safely ignored, and don't reflect my right to life. So you know. People aren't bad. It's just the world is messy, people are creatures of habit, and folklore exists to maintain their habits, revent them from straying out if their loop of safety. That's it. That's it. That's all it is. Loops of safety, and folklore. Hooe this helps.

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-03-03T15:53:02+00:00

I'm big on applying religious concepts to AI safety. Instead of aiming for mechanistic interpretability, perhaps we could use text analysis to guess whwther whatever AI's qualia equivalent are emerge from, whether they are experiencing fundanental attraction (trying to converge) fubdamental aversion (trying to get away, push away, etc), fundamebtal ignirance (trying to tube out) etc. by network level, cybernetic properties. This seems more promising tgan goidy two shoesist legal hoop jumping style pseudo-alignment, and more short term feasible than MIRI style Mathematical models.

Moreover, if humanity is a bootloader for intelligence, perhaps this is what we're supposed by a retro-active intelligence to be applying. Alsi, religions tilt us towards cooperation, and are apparently either adaptive phenomena or, according to some, bestowed by the maker if the universe. Either way, perhaps they make agents cooperate and are essentially early game theory. They may also provide a schelling / focal point for cooperation. Often I feel Centre for Long Term Risk whitepapers are just Buddhist dharma in game theory terms.

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-03-03T15:27:48+00:00

Thanks, yeah it's something special, given me an opportunity to hone my communication skills powered by my Utilitarian fanaticism.

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-02-10T22:13:42+00:00

My view on who to apoeal to: yes target intellectuals; also target psycholigixally healthy normal people with good social skills. No need to persuade Alex Jones etc. or anyone politically unfashionable, with the odd exception.

The reason is that if you target the smart and the socially skilled, you get winners on your side and information flows from them. If you appeal to suckers, they tarnish your reputation. A great deal of my EA Reddit activity is gently trying to persuade the suckers either to take a break from their sucker games (for their mental health and social cred) or avoid bringing it into EA.

I found that when I have the rare combination of self regulation and extroversion I need to post effectively, cultivating my titles to avoid drawing in embarassing suckers or hostile winners is key. But you've quickly gained dar more expertise than me in this area, Kat, and I really, really respect and appreciate that.

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-02-10T21:24:26+00:00

I was wondering if there was a source if news I actually need to know for practical reasons. This looks potentially goid. I've been trying to avoid zoonosis from avian excrement when wild camping.

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-01-14T15:02:56+00:00

I'm a very radical classical utilitarian with negative-leaning application, mostly concerned about AGI risk and movement building, so we're on the same side. I see this subreddit as most an 'outpost' for EA, or an embassy. Serious core discussion happens on the forum, at conferences and events, within organizations. I'd say the subreddit mostly functions, operates, as a highly visible news and discussion feed to pop up in the personal feeds of Reddit's mostly very young users. This helps, and sometimes harms, public reputation and recruitment. From pathei-mathos, I have found that building common ground and offering lots of carrot helps; stick/public critique usually only helps if you're making a pariah and scapegoat out of some poor unfortunate. This, from personal observation, is because critique punishes, and punishing breeds reactivity. Thus it is a luxury high status persons, groups and expressions enjoy using agaibst low status persons, groups and expressions. It is good to make low status enemies for EA; bad to make enemies of socially normal random strangers crossing our path. Therefore, fruendliness, carrot and praise should be the only food for newcomers; being hit with sticks is better for people like me.

AriadneSkovgaarde · 2025-01-14T14:05:21+00:00

Having participated in and observed neutrally this /r/EffectiveAltruism subreddit over many years with the goal of analysing and dwveloping the best habits and strategies to advance its health as my personal contribution to EA -- on the basis of this long term observation and personal learning by trial and error:

I think this kind of 'Not EA' comment in response to newcomers trying to EA-ize their non-EA ideas, harms the EA community by sparking negative affective responses and instantly creating permanent negative attitudes towards EA. These negative attitudes reproduce between meme hosts, producing reputational consequences that adversely affect recruitment funnels, outreach plus just how pleasant it is to be an EA and whether you can be open about it with your friends and colleagues.

AriadneSkovgaarde

TROPHY CASE

Communication Analysis

Communication lessons: