Chatting with a philosopher, impact ideas
My conversation with moral philosopher Larry Temkin. I buy an electric bike. I think on impact ideas.
The major item this week is my 3 hour conversation with moral philosopher Larry Temkin. Along with cycling, healthcare tech and impact ideas.
Unconference invites still open, Fri 16 Sep
Healthcare workers vs machines. I’ve mostly been on staycationing adventures this week although I did pop in to hear a medical device CFO speak about how many in the healthcare system are looking for ways to be less reliant on labour (amongst other things like COVID, China, the importance of sustainability to a younger workforce). Labour is expensive, it’s currently not super-reliable and there is not enough of it - and while pay is factor, it’s more complex than that.
The details of this trend are unclear to me, but the direction seems pretty certain.
Expect technology to take over more and more where it can…maybe even where it can’t very well yet…
More cycling coming up? I bought an electric bike (on eBay) in the hope that I will have more exercise and a more sustainable way of travel. I travelled from West Ealing about 8 miles (13km) to west central London. There were just enough bicycle lanes of sorts to make the 50 min cycle ride doable for a moderate cyclist like me. But, this is nothing like Copenhagen or Amsterdam and other Dutch cities. The car is definitely still king. Bikes are sharing with buses much of the time. The signage is mediocre and the closeness of cars (and larger vehicles, more worryingly) on the busier roads makes cycling feel unsafe. On the quiet roads, it feels safer but cars zoom beyond 30mph (I could happily cruise often between 15 - 20 mph on the bike) and I never felt the drivers were super vigilant. At those speeds a crash would not be good. I judge that many of the bike routes are moderately below minimal viable set-up to enable would-be cyclists to feel comfortable travelling. And so it’s still only those more committed who can bike these distances. It’s incrementally improving but I currently cannot see a leap change happening. Maybe there will be continue to be positive developments. There is talk of more cycling infrastructure. The electric bike is pretty good though. That technology gets better every year.
Impact ideas. I’ve written up one idea for Open Philanthropy who have a call out for new “impact ideas” or cause explorations. I say “impact” because this is impact in broadly effective altruism (EA) style. Readers will recently have picked up I have been interested in exploring this movement (both pros and cons).
My interest arises because: many smart young people are committed here, it’s a young philosophical movement broadly aimed at doing good, and there have been notable projects and people stemming from this movement. It’s not problem free, but the movement is very willing to discuss what its problems might be (hence my podcast with Larry Temkin below).
Very broadly the movement has wings interested in: reducing suffering (animal welfare, as well as human), progress studies (innovation), existential risk (climate, biosecurity, pandemics, rogue AI) and longtermism (in particular humans at a 1,000 year, or 10,000 - 100,000 year+ horizon)
The idea I wrote up was on open climate data having been inspired by ClimateArc. I don’t think it quite fits what OP are looking for but it’s close. My write up is here. I describe the problem below: What is the problem? Climate data is not open, missing or inaccurate.
Climate-related data at the level of the company and large asset level (eg manufacturing plant) is missing, incomplete or poorly estimated. Some of the data is public domain, but much of the data is i) privately held or ii) where public, not in machine readable / easily digested form.
Without this foundational data many of the practical solutions for climate will be (1) slower to develop (2) not develop at all, or (3) misallocated to the wrong companies, sectors and projects.
At a second order level (a) investors and allocators of capital will find it (and do currently find it) harder to allocate to the correct areas (b) regulators can not effectively regulate the relevant sectors or companies ( c) litigation or enforcement against failing or bad actors is made harder or impossible (d) impacts of pollution taxes or prices can not be adequately developed
At the third order level, solving for the data problem especially with a form of open or shared data solution would (I) reduce the risks of negative climate-related outcomes (ii) allows faster and better innovations and quicker spillover impacts into poorer nations.
A summary might be:
Climate data —> policy makers —> better policy —> ↓ risk
Data—> Investors —> better capital allocation —> ↑ GDP
Data —> Innovators (profit and non-profit) —> New Applications and ideas —> ↑ GDP
Data —> Regulators —> Better Systems Risk management —> ↓ risk
Data —> Sector NGOs —> better industry standards —> ↓ risk
Data —> Availability Anyone —> New ideas —> ↑ GDP
Data —> Availability Anyone —> Better X-risk management ??
Climate is often not at the very top of many EA people’s thinking (though not all) because while a problem one EA reading is that the “damage” is in the order of “10 - 20% GDP” levels and is not neglected. (That’s the level of the cost of the pandemic. Severe but not human life ending. It’s view that’s useful to understand.) I don’t think I had much interest in the write up but I found it valuable as there are certain parallels with investing, more for VC and angel investing but some for overall investing. EAs tend to think of three tests:
Importance: How many individuals are affected by this problem, and by how much?
Tractability: How can a philanthropic funder help to make progress on this problem? Can you estimate what impact per dollar you would expect for different types of interventions?
Neglectedness: Who else is working on this problem? Why are other funders not pursuing the strategies you think are most promising?
“Impact / importance” is somewhat like “market size”. Neglectedness is somewhat like “having an edge” or do you see something the market has missed. “Tractability” is not quite so comparable but is a little like if the idea is even investable or possible to solve (or at what cost) - this is relevant at seed or pre-seed investing stage, less so in public markets.
If you have an idea you should write it up! (link in tweet above). I’m also maybe going to have a short note on chemical sector transition, and cultured meat advanced market commitments (!)
Temkin is an amazing moral philosopher. I say that based on his work on transitivity and inequality. I think many EAs will feel Temkin has the end of the stick on certain EA matters, and many EAs are not from the Peter Singer utilitarian wing (or so I have found out). But, Temkin knows more than me and I don’t know that much about EA so I will leave it for others to judge on that.
His work on transitivity and inequality is still going round in my head, so I think I will try and address those in posts at some point.
Larry Temkin is a moral philosopher. He has major works on inequality (book: Inequality); transitivity and social choices (when A > B > C, A > C ?; book: Rethinking the Good) and recently on the philosophies of doing good (critiquing some aspects of Effective Altruism, long-termism, international aid, utilitarianism | book: Being Good in a World of Need). As of 2022, he was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University.
The podcast is in two parts. The second part focuses on Effective Altruism (EA) ideas. The first part looks at transitivity and other debates in philosophy through a pluralist lens. I am still reflecting greatly on the conversation where I judge I learned a lot. The whole conversation is 3 hours long, so please feel free to dip in and out of it, and if you are intrigued go and look at Larry’s original works* (and other critiques of Larry). I provide some links at the end, to his books and some commentary from others (Tyler Cowen, reviewers). There is a transcript at the end, which I have put into a shared google doc for ease of reading (approx 30,000 words).
In the podcast, I ask:
How should we value a human life?
What is transitivity? And we discuss the axioms that transitivity underpins for economic, social and moral choices.
I ask how Larry comes up with such unique ideas such as on inequality and transitivity, and the story of how he was rejected by three great philosophers when he first proposed his idea.
Larry explains consequentialist notions of personhood, especially with respect to a question I had on Singer’s view on disability, and even though our general views are more pluralist.
I pose a dilemma I have about the art of a friend who has done awful things, and Larry explains the messiness of morals.
(In part 2…) Larry recounts the dinner with Derek Parfit, and Angus Deaton, along with a billionaire and other brilliant philosophers. This dinner gave Larry bad dreams and lead to Larry thinking up many disanalogies to Peter Singer’s classic pond analogy.
We discuss the pond analogy and how it may or may not be a good analogy for doing good in foreign places especially the disaster that was Goma. Larry discusses how he changed his mind on whether international aid may be doing more harm than good and both philosophical and practical reasons behind it.
Larry also discusses some concern on the the possible over-focus on long-termism.
We barely touch on Larry’s work in inequality, but I will mention that it has been influential in how the World Health Organisation and potentially, ultimately, China has viewed access to healthcare. The work has also highlighted the complexity around equality, and that it may be more individualistic and more complicated than often assumed.
Throughout all of this is the strong sense of a pluralistic view of the world, where we may value many attributes such as fairness, justice, health and that a focus on only one value may lead us astray.
Larry ends with life advice:
“I've taught many students over the years. I'm coming to the end of my career. I'm retiring. I've had countless students in my office over the years who are struggling with the question of, "How should I lead my life?” This is extremely controversial, but being the pluralist that I am, I believe in a balanced life. Now, you can find balance in a number of ways. But just as I'm a pluralist about my moral values, I'm a pluralist about what's involved in being a good person and what's involved in leading a worthwhile human life. I'm signed up in the camp of, "We only have one life to lead."
It would be great if there's reincarnation and we led multiple innumerable lives. It would be great if there was life after death, et cetera. I'm on board for all of that if it's there, but I'm not leading my life assuming any of that is true. I'm leading my life thinking I have one and only one life to lead. How am I going to lead it? I would like to lead a life. I would like it to have been true that I led a life that at the end of the day, I can look myself in the mirror and feel good about the life I live. This involves the life for me of things like personal integrity. How do you treat other human beings? Do you treat people with respect, et cetera? I believe that personal face to face confrontation matters. I believe the things in my life...
I'm wearing a shirt right now. I’m wearing this shirt on purpose today. It says, "I have been: Mr. Professor, and Doctor...” If you turn around to the back, it says, "But my favorite title is grandpa." I now have five grandchildren. I understand that having children is not for everybody, but for someone like me, or for my father, for my parents, the amount of joy and pleasure and pride that I get out of my children and grandchildren, there's nothing in my professional lives that compares to it. For all the accomplishments that I've had-- I've had a few. All the impact on the world that some people have say I've had which is major-- none of that. It all pales in comparison to the relationship I've had with my wife going back to when we met decades ago. .
I put a tremendous amount of weight on the value of human relations. Parent a child, love towards significant others. These are tremendous services of value in human life. I pity my peers who are at the absolute pinnacle of intellectual achievement, but whose lives are lacking in so many other ways. So Derek Parfit who I've mentioned before, he was my mentor. He was my closest friend in philosophy for 40 years. I still think about him almost every day. I love Derek, but I would never have wanted to be Derek. And I wouldn't want anybody I care about to be Derek. He accomplished unbelievable things as a world class philosopher. But his life was, to my mind, missing so much of what makes a life valuable. So I wouldn't recommend that life. He didn't regret the life he had. And I have other philosopher friends like Derek; single minded, focus on their philosophy, that comes first, second, and third, and they wouldn't have traded their lives for anything. I get that.
I don't see that as the most valuable human life. One of the ways of thinking about this is, I have a model which I use in my Rethinking the Good… It was called the Gymnastic Model for many years and now I've given it a new name. Often when we think about like, "Who's the greatest gymnast? The best all-around gymnast?"
The greatest all around gymnast is not the gymnast who excels at the parallel bars, but stinks at everything else. I don't care how good you are at the parallel bars or how good you are at the mats. If you are not good in anything else, you're not a great all round gymnast. Similarly, when you think about the virtues, I don't care how much Genghis Kahn might have the virtue of loving his mother-- pretend that's a virtue.
He might love his mother an unbelievable amount, but he's not a virtuous person if he rapes and pillages and kills and steals and does all these other things. It doesn't matter how accomplished he is along that one dimension, if he's abysmal along the other dimensions. If you want to be a virtuous person, a truly virtuous person, you have to score pretty highly along a whole bunch of dimensions. Similarly, I think for the human life, if you really want to have a great human life-- and this is why I try to urge my students, you can't be narrowly focused on any one of the aspects that make a human life valuable. That's my view. I have colleagues who don't share it, but you're interviewing me right now and you're asking my view. When I give my advice to the people I care about...
Nobody can do everything. You can't be everything. We live in an age of specialization. I don't do every academic field. I don't even do every academic field within philosophy. I don't even do every academic field within moral philosophy. I specialize. One of the reasons I'm as good or not as good as I am in moral philosophy is… I spent 15 years working on my first book and, 30 years working on my second book. That means a lot of hedgehogging rather than foxes. So I get the appeal to focusing on something and trying to do it well. But when it comes to living a good human life, it can't just be narrowly focused on one thing. There has to be space for these other things that allow a human being to flourish. That's what I believe and that's certainly how I've tried to live my life.
There's an old expression from the tradition I grew up with that says, "If you are not for you, then who will be? If you're only for you, then what are you?" Basically, that means we do have the right and the permission to look out after our own wellbeing and those of those we love. I believe that. But if we only look out after ourselves and those we love, and we don't take time to sense of the larger world of which we're apart, our lives are not good lives…”
Much more at link below with reviews and comments to his other works.
Transcript/Listen with video here, or below on podcast wherever you get podcasts.
Links:
Lovely getting fans:
I saw a play! I don’t review friends plays, it’s too complicated to be objective, but I learned a bunch, I enjoyed it and they got a standing ovation. Strong Guardian review.
On the nature of enabling others to be cared for.
Milk consumption not directly a gene evolution thing.
Oh no on Alzheimer’s research:
Germany rethinking Nuclear:
On men helping men