tripu @tripu@qoto.org

@loretahur

En estas profesiones había mayoría de hombres en muchos países hace menos de dos décadas, y ahora son mayoritariamente femeninas: veterinarios, farmacéuticos, escritores, periodistas, redactores técnicos, odontólogos, psicólogos, gestores de cuentas…

¿Es porque esas profesiones han perdido prestigio social? La mayoría están bastante bien pagadas.

Por no hablar de médicos, abogados, científicos, o profesores universitarios: en según qué países y especialidades, son mayoría de mujeres hace ya años; y en la mayoría de los otros casos, lo van a ser muy pronto de seguir la tendencia.

Pocas profesiones tienen más prestigio social que científico o profesor en la universidad. Y las dos carreras típicas que las familias siempre han deseado (y siguen deseando) para hijos o hijas prometedores son justo abogacía y medicina (mayoría muy amplia de mujeres).

No digo que no fuese eso lo que pasó en la NASA, pero creo que no funciona como diagnóstico general hoy en día.

This is the right answer for anyone arguing that #Apple is not a #surveillance machine because, since they chose “privacy” as their unique selling proposition, their incentive to maximise revenue is to give users precisely that — #privacy.

@ImperfectIdea

As individuals, we do face _analogous_ trade-offs daily. From time to time, we even face trade-offs involving other people's lives, well-being and property, indirectly — and sometimes, very directly.

Institutions you are part of and fund (and supposedly govern with others through democracy) routinely do. UN, NATO, WTO, EU, your country, your region, your city: they start wars, defend other countries, incarcerate people, pardon criminals, decide on asylum claims, deny treatment for certain illnesses, provide public pensions, cut taxes, expropriate private property, retire the custody of minors, perform abortions, etc _all the time_.

If all that seems too far removed from your sphere of influence: What are you trading, if not convenience, safety and human lives (your own, and others'), every time that you decide whether to drive or not after having had a drink or two at the pub? Whose health are you protecting (or not) by bothering to wear a mask on public transport or to shut yourself away at home while you are contagious (or not), if not other people's health? Whose money are you playing with if you support any taxation at all and defend laws to prosecute tax evaders, if not other people's money?

I think we can claim quantitative differences (#FTX had a much higher responsibility), but not qualitative ones.

https://twitter.com/beeple/status/1592016539318120448

It's easy to see that #SBF was wrong _in hindsight_.

But imagine he had managed to keep the ball rolling a few years/decades, producing billions for good causes in the meantime and promoting #EffectiveAltruism at the higher level. And that #FTX vanished little by little without much attention — yet another #crypto promise failing.

The main “victims” would have been a bunch of wealthy celebrities and investors (and yes, also tens of thousands of small customers; mostly relatively rich human beings living in wealthy countries). I can see how the positive impact could outweigh all those losses.

I'm not saying he did the right thing. (For one, we don't know yet what he did, exactly. Of course, if rumours of funds being siphoned out of #FTX turn out to be true, and SBF and his circle are behind that, the guy is a monster.) I'm just saying we all face analogous (if also much lower-stake) trade-offs routinely, and we make decisions estimating odds and computing expected value (perhaps unconsciously) all the time.

@gnramires

Thank you! I think I mostly agree with you.

Definitely #SBF's behaviour is not condoned by #EffectiveAltruism per se: not all EAs are consequentialists, utilitarians or risk-neutral — and even those who are, probably would have made different decisions, influenced also by common-sense morality and/or by moral uncertainty.

What I find fascinating is that his decision algorithm (or the one I presume he had) seems robust to me, and (perhaps) he failed “only” in weighing the terms of the equation appropriately, or in coming up with good estimates. Or perhaps his math was indeed perfect, and we just happen to live in that one universe where luck played against him!

I'm sure he throw “possible reputational damage to EA” into the equation. Given all we know about him, how could he not?

@admitsWrongIfProven

He was a utilitarian from the cradle, an EA before he was a billionaire, and used to donate a lot of his income. Apparently Alameda Research donated 50% of their profits in the early days, too. After he became so wealthy he donated a lot of money to EA-approved organisations.

That at least seems true. It would be impossible to bribe or deceive so many people and organisations who, by all we know, _did_ receive actual money from him already.

#Fediverse:

**Is there any tool to visualise (and browse) the tree of replies to a given post?** ie, see at a glance what replied to what, in full — instead of flattening everything out and losing context, as it happens by default in eg #Mastodon.

#ActivityPub #UX #dataviz

@admitsWrongIfProven

I think the simplest version of that thought experiment is one where it's a one-off bet (double-or-nothing this universe, once). I guess the math supports saying yes to that, if the odds of winning are > .5, right?

My intuition for the reason to say no to the bet is that there's a qualitative difference between existing and not existing.

If I were offered a .51 chance of transforming this universe into one where The Beatles had recorded 20 more songs, vs one where we had never known 20 songs by them, I would say yes. That works for me regardless of the no. of songs. But when it gets to “twice as many songs” vs “no songs at all” (ie, The Beatles never existed for all practical purposes), something changes, and I would reject the bet.

…I think 🙂

@shadowsonawall

If I want to stop a pickpocket, I could shot them dead. That's hardly justifiable from a consequentialist PoV, because arguably I could as well knock them down, grab them by the arm, shout to get him blocked by other passers-by, call the police, snap a photo of them, etc. Most of us would defend that those other behaviours produce a better state of the world than instantly killing a person who was stealing a handbag.

Also, the issue you mention is not unique to consequentialism.

>_ You can justify any means simply by imagining a sufficiently positive end._

The same happens if you're a deontologist (is your set of rules perfect? can't some of those rules be used to justify monstrous actions?), if your ethics is religion-based (can't the love for God and following His command justify abhorrent decisions?), etc.

There's no way of escaping the fallibility of a moral system, no matter which one you pick.

@shadowsonawall

No apologies needed! 🙂

> _It sounded like you were saying behavior can be justified so long as the ends justify the means._

That's a tautology, isn't it? If you believe the ends justify the means, any behaviour can be justified as long as that's the necessary means for a sufficiently good outcome.

That's what (I think) a consequentialist thinks.

> _The problem with this line of reasoning is that you can justify any means simply by imagining a sufficiently positive end. Offering a veneer of legitimacy to as horrific an act as you want._

Not really. It's not enough to “imagine” a great outcome; that outcome should be feasible, and realistically follow from the behaviour we are trying to justify — and only the least destructive behaviour would be justified.

@victoriano

I see. Seems that guy and I reached exactly the same conclusions about the #FTX #SBF fiasco! 👍

@shadowsonawall

I think believing that “the end justifies the means” is a necessary ingredient in all this, yes.

But as I said, you also need a specific end to pursue (in #SBF's case, allegedly, “maximising aggregate/average utility”), and neutrality towards risk (so that you're OK with extremely unlikely odds of hugely positive impact).

I don't think we'd have the #FTX situation without any of those three components in the equation.

[Exhibit B](https://web.archive.org/web/20220922164619/https:/www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlight/)