Research
Eli and Ozzie: Is Forecasting a Promising EA Cause Area?
Podcast Link There was recently a lengthy thread on the EA Forum about the value of forecasting as a potential cause area, between Eli Lifland and myself. We thought it would be interesting to expand on this in a podcast episode. Some Summary Points * Open Phil's expanded forecasting
Distinctions when Discussing Utility Functions
Epistemic Status: Early. The categories mentioned come mostly from experience and reflection, as opposed to existing literature. On its surface, a utility function is an incredibly simple and generic concept. An agent has a set of choices with some numeric preferences over them. This can be Von Neumann–Morgenstern (VNM)
Updates: Manifest Presentation, Squiggle Workshop this Thursday
First, my presentation from Manifest 2023 is now on YouTube. Enjoy! Second, I’m holding a intimate Squiggle Introduction Workshop in Berkeley this Thursday, at FAR Labs. Come and practice estimating things you care about. Sorry for the lack of other updates recently. Slava and I have been focused on
Open Technical Challenges around Probabilistic Programs and Javascript
While working on Squiggle, we’ve encountered many technical challenges in writing probabilistic functionality with Javascript. Some of these challenges are solved in Python and must be ported over, and some apply to all languages. We think the following tasks could be good fits for others to tackle. These are
Using Points to Rate Different Kinds of Evidence
There’s a lot of discussion on the EA Forum and LessWrong about epistemics, evidence, and updating. I don’t know of many attempts at formalizing our thinking here into concrete tables or equations. Here is one (very rough and simplistic) attempt. I’d be excited to see much better
Downsides of Small Organizations in EA
Recently I partipated in the EA Strategy Fortnight, with this post on the EA Forum. There are some good comment threads there I suggest checking out. Note: Our main work recently has been on making a “Squiggle Hub” that we intend to announce in the next few weeks, so there’
Relative values for animal suffering and ACE Top Charities
tl;dr: I present relative estimates for animal suffering and 2022 top Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) charities. I am doing this to showcase a new tool from the Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute (QURI) and to present an alternative to ACE’s current rubric-based approach. Introduction and goals At QURI, we’
Relative Value Functions: A Flexible New Format for Value Estimation
We just published a blog post outlining the details of relative value functions. This was touched on in the presentation I sent out yesterday. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EFEwBvuDrTLDndqCt/relative-value-functions-a-flexible-new-format-for-value The post has several code sections and tables, so I won’t attempt to copy that over here. Instead,
Presentation: Estimating Everything Everywhere Always
An overview of our plan at QURI
Conveniences in Thought and Communication
Communication often makes winners and losers. I propose we use the term "convenience" to help clarify what's going on.
Accuracy Agreements: A Flexible Alternative to Prediction Markets
A simple proposal to convert money into complex forecasts
Some estimation work in the horizon
Too much work for any one group