You’ve done a lot of good Luke, great run!

What are your thoughts about catch and release fishing on bigger game fish? Have you seen any methods for doing it that seem safe?

Quick research shows: Some people use Velcro to catch the fish’s teeth and use a net to land it. You can keep the fish submerged in the net while you take off the Velcro if it’s caught on there. I don’t know how much suffering this would be but if you’re into fishing this might be a solution.

If there are any EAs who fish, do you have any practices for making the experience as painless as possible for the fish?

Are there any advancements being made to create a fishing experience which is nearly completely pain free?

I would love to hear from someone who has thought this through.

Here’s what I know can reduce the suffering of the fish if you do decide to fish:

1. Remove the barbs on the hook
2. Choose a small hook and use only one hook rather than three-pronged hooks
3. Reduce the amount of time the fish has out of the water and gently hold the fish.

But if I could I would like to remove the hook out of the experience entirely and just move towards something that gently reels in the fish. I would love to hear if there’s some technology that does this.

I’m looking for podcasts, papers, or reviews on fish sentience.

Specifically:

• Long form interview about the moral weight of fish.
• Papers which estimate their moral weight
• Information on the long term damage of fish hooks, being out of water, or the moral harm of fishing.

I would also like to know if there are practical methods to reduce the amount of harm done if you are fishing.

Rethink priorities had their moral weights report which placed salmon at 0.056, I’m not sure I understood completely what that figure meant. I think this means they have 5% of the sentience of a human? I also don’t know how to interpret that number.

I would like to read or listen to academic discussion about the ethics of catch and release fishing.

I think there’s a case to be made for exploring the wide range of mediocre outcomes the world could become.

Recent history would indicate that things are getting better faster though. I think MacAskill’s bias towards a range of positive future outcomes is justified, but I think you agree too.

Maybe you could turn this into a call for more research into the causes of mediocre value lock-in. Like why have we had periods of growth and collapse, why do some regions regress, what tools can society use to protect against sinusoidal growth rates.

This will be like a March madness bracket for chess! Come join us.

Thank you for your help Lorenzo

A question for the community

Is a there a web page which gives rewards for solving problems in philanthropy? I’m imagining something like a Fiverr or website which lists bounties for problems.

If this hasn’t been made yet it should be! Imagine someone had a lot of free time or an organization was looking for a new project to work. They could go to the CharityBounty website and select a problem to work on.

You could have problems which are small such as “build a website for our new charity”or as large as “create a medicine which cures this neglected tropical disease”.

Donors would contribute to project ideas like “XYZ Foundation has attached a $300 million dollar bounty for any team which cures malaria” or “XYZ individual is offering $5000 to whoever can make a spreadsheet which discovers regions likely to be hit by an earthquake”.

Bounty hunters would go on this website and work on projects to solve problems and get money. These bounty hunters could sort problems by difficulty or reward amount.

Metaculus betters could bet on the likelihood that each bounty would be solved or when it would be solved.

The likelihood that a project would be completed would increase as more money was donated towards the award.

The website could list all of the active people working on a project so teams could get formed in real time (and they could work together to get the money).

Everyday people could become grant makers and people who are passionate about a particular cause area could target the cause they find most important.

Forums could list and organize knowledge related to solving the bounty to encourage people who might solve the bounty and lower the barriers for people who might end of solving the problem.

There could be grand challenges. Maybe open philanthropy creates a major problems list. “$100 million dollar questions” like “cure Alzheimer’s” or something very ambitious. And researchers could list minor problems which their field sees as important steps towards solving a major problem (find the mechanism which causes Alzheimer’s)

There could even be a bounty attached to creating the bounty list.

Yea absolutely. It takes planning and discipline but you can go to the gym after a 10 or 12 hour work day. occasionally having dry snacks like nuts or Clif bars helps when working 50-60 hours. I like picking up fruits from the store every third day or so.

I think the wheels come off at 70+, and the type of work that can be done for 70+ hours is probably work that isn’t cognitively demanding.

50-68 hours is my sweet spot where I don’t compromise my diet and I can workout 4 times a week