Arturo Macias
Bio
I am an Economist working at Banco de España (Spanish Central Bank). I am 45 years old and have recently finished my PhD Thesis (See ORCID webpage: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1623-0957 ).
How I can help others
Risk Management, banking regulation, energy and commodities, mechanism design.
Posts 10
Comments105
I was not aware of the enormous weigth of aquaculture on final fish production. I was thinking it was around 10%, but it is close to one half.
https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-aquaculture
Onmizoid is rigth, and I have retracted my comment.
"Every three days, we kill more fish than there are humans, because we totally ignore the interests of such creatures. Humanity is carrying out a crime of unimaginable proportions."
"The fishing industry alone kills 3-8 billion animals every day, most by slow suffocation, crushing, or live disemboweling"
Of course, I am commenting on this, because the enormous number of killed fish are mainly from captures, not from farming. Fish farming looks bad, but farming is marginal regarding fish.
To what extent is human killing of fish worse than its likely natural death?
Regarding fish, why are we worse than the predators that fishing displace? In my view both fishing and hunting are massively less problematic than industrial animal farming, because the long confinement, overcrowding and mutilation that characterizes industrial stockbreeding is absent.
The suffering at death is only a tiny fraction of total suffering in industrial animal farming, and it is the life, not the death of farmed animals what makes the bulk of its negative impact.
On top of that, the majority of fish is very likely non conscious, while of course, conscience is noumenal, so we don't know and cannot know. But their brains are tiny, their behavioural patters in general are very limited, etc (see here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10539-014-9469-4)
Dear Mr. Wildeford,
To what extent your work depends in your own staff vs. the academic EA infraestructure?
There are organizations as "Effective Thesis" that try to re-direct academic resources for EA research. Do you have any relation with those organizations? Is there any way for external collaboration with your organization? Could you elaborate your vision of how "in house" and "external research" shall be optimally combined in Rethink Priorities?
Thank you very much for you excellent work.
Kind regards,
Arturo
Well, in my view the vast majority of moral progress has been triggered by material improvements.
What else could it be? We are not doing moralistic eugenics, are we?
In fact, moral progress is not based on some kind of altruistic impulses, but in the development of reciprocity schemes (often based on punishments) that imply evolutionary (often in geopolitical/economic competition space) advantages.
"But when you include animals, I'm unconvinced that other systems are worse."
The "net impact" of industrial civilization so far, when considering animals looks still net negative. But that is compatible with massive moralization of human behaviour. Simply, our capabilities have allowed us to exploit with incredible efficiency to those out of the moral circle while expanding (at incredible speed) the moral circle.
In the XVII century, empowered and emancipated european civilization were human net negative (but Europe net positive) by creating the transatantic slave trade. In my view by the middle XIX, the progressive western civilization has become "human net positive", and exponentially, but when including animals, still the developed/industrial human civilization (today the West is only a part of it) is likely "net negative".
Nothing of this change the fact that empowerment and moralization have grown together at incredible speed in the last 500 years.
Oh, because all other species and social systems are even worse.
The degree of concern for others never extend beyond kin and at most peer group in the rest of beings. We have gone in 10.000 years from "kin and tribe" to "social class" and "nation" and currently we have so much moral progress that you can own equity 10.000 kms away from home and being able to collect the dividend.
Larger and larger reciprocity clusters have developed in centuries even decades, from NATO to World Trade Organization. Women (women!) can own property and even rule countries.
We are a few nuclear strikes away from losing everything. But so far, it is amazing how a system of beliefs on beliefs can impose itself so much on the natural brutality of life and matter.
Hello,
First of all, this is outstanding. Perhaps the best piece I have read in this forum.
I will use the rigth/left of the boom distinction, to comment:
I think that there is not need of left of the boom specific interventions, because everything that improves human welfare, and helps to move the world towards distributed governance and a satified human population helps to reduce nuclear risk.
Regarding rigth of the boom, the opportunities are huge, because this is the most important and neglected human problem. In my view, fiding "double use" interventions is critical.
Let's take my favorite organization: ALLFED. They need to deploy their tecnologies for other uses. How can ALLFED help with famine in Niger? Can Open Ecology build open source machinery that can be used in Niger? To some extent after nuclear war, we all become Niger, so everything learnt there can be used in a post nuclear scenario worldwide. I commented this in detail in my first post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4viLtxnwzMawqdPum/time-consistency-for-the-ea-community-projects-that-bridge
A final and obvious comment, is how important is to find ways to cooperate with the Defense organizations: NATO and RAND are natural partners.
Kind Regards,
Arturo