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Probably repaying the people they defrauded should happen before this /s bf

@Pykess the paying taxes question will resolve to the percent it was before you put in a giant limit wall just FYI. This is your chance to take it down.

I ate the sell wall then sent the profit I made from doing so back to Pykess, for the record.

A more complete account, in case anyone cares.

When I logged on to resolve, I saw the large limit order wall put up just a few hours prior by Pykess. On reviewing the trades on that market I saw that this was likely to result in a large profit at the expense of another user, J who had been trickling in No orders over several days. As you can see from the top traders, J didn't actually symmetrically expect to gain a large profit off Pykess from this (he only made 154 mana, wheras Pykess was set to make something like 1000 mana from this). I didn't think this was fair and pinged Pykess, giving him the opportunity to retract this limit order (albeit without that much lead time to do so). If Pykess had just put in his regular order without the large limit order to try to prevent anyone from pushing back that would have been fine. By buying out Pykess' limit order I wound up with a profit of 536 mana, which I promptly returned to Pykess, avoiding any large losses or gains as a result (Pykess wound up losing something like 60 mana overall on this trade.)

This gives some sense of how I resolved "minus any last minute whale manipulation." If in the future there is disagreement about how to resolve these sorts of things I am happy to put up polls to gather others' opinions.

I'm surprised this got voted down so low. The fact that many rich people shift their money into holding companies in tax havens seems like a problem which ends up with non-multi-millionaires shouldering more of the tax burden than they otherwise would, and from a utilitarian perspective, progressive taxation is good because money has decreasing marginal value.

Ah, I see, it was mostly one person buying no. Makes more sense than a bunch of people thinking "it would be bad if the rich paid taxes".

@equinoxhq lol it's just like the real world, if you have enough money you can just make things be whatever you want them to be

@equinoxhq Paying taxes is a relatively ineffective way to spend your money. Probably good for them to not break the law, but otherwise I don't really care.

@equinoxhq People on the far left often voice concerns regarding income tax paid (or not) by billionairies and their companies. But think also about:

• payroll taxes

• sales tax / VAT

• state taxes

• employee income taxes

and taxes paid by their suppliers and customers due to new economic activity generated by the company…

In addition, there are things that goverments just can’t do (or do well) so it’s good to have a pool of resources in private hands. Otherwise lots and lots is wasted doing things inefficiently.

@MilfordHammerschmidt paying taxes is ineffective relative to what, exactly? You just got done telling me it was probably a reasonable assumption that the way billionaires spend their money is mostly as useless as wasting it on yachts and cocaine 😆

@lukres

People on the far left often voice concerns regarding income tax paid (or not) by billionairies and their companies

I'm sure that's true. Also, Colombian drug lords often drink coffee, and Hitler had a mustache. But there are many people who drink coffee who are not Colombian drug lords, many people with mustaches who are not Hitler, and many people voicing concerns regarding the tax paid (or not) by billionaires who are not on the far left. I for example lean more right than left in terms of my economic policy views. The opposite when it comes to many other policy areas, which makes me someone with no easy political home among the parties available in my country, but that's a discussion for another day. Back on topic!

But think also about:

• payroll taxes

• sales tax / VAT

• state taxes

• employee income taxes

and taxes paid by their suppliers and customers due to new economic activity generated by the company…

I am not unfamiliar with these arguments, but to be fair, you would also have to consider the counterfactual, not just the positives of the status quo. Suppose the marginal tax rate on billionaires was higher and the marginal tax rate on those of more moderate means was lower, while keeping the total taxes paid the same (so arguments about how efficient the government is relative to the private sector don't apply). As a simple toy example, let's suppose the effect was to transfer $100 million from someone who has 5.1 billion dollars, and make it such that a hundred people had an extra million dollars. If you want, call it tax breaks for small business creation. What would be the effect on payroll and other taxes then, relative to the first scenario? Seems less clear cut than "look at all the benefits billions of dollars have, better not increase taxes on billionaires." But, in terms of economic efficiency, I think it would likely win out. Because likely those hundred people would notice the extra million dollars they had and think about how to use it well, whereas the decrease from 5.1 billion dollars to 5 billion dollars will hardly be noticeable to the billionaire. This is a generalization of one argument often made for why governments are often less efficient than markets - decentralized decision making by those who will feel the effects of their decisions leads to better allocation of resources. As least according to many whose economic policy views lean rightward.

@equinoxhq

make it such that a hundred people had an extra million dollars. If you want, call it tax breaks for small business creation.

I believe this is exactly what is happening via private investments - billionaires tend to have their money in various investments and one can only spend so much on luxury goods. From bonds, stock market investments through VCs down to well compensated FAANG employees angel investing in private individuals. I see as highly undesirable to have government as the intermediary in that process. Going that route pretty much ends up with the EU: small private investment market, large government, poor tech sector (and, I predict, calamity follows; we shall see).

I also question how realistic is the notion that increased taxes on billionaires would go (in any significant amount) towards "tax breaks" for small business creation and not wealth transfer to people unable to contribute. Few benefit benefit from the former, so sounds like a poor initiative for a politician reliant on popular vote. Perhaps a broader reduction in taxation funded by reduced expenditure is a better idea? Much more money to be found there than in billionaires' pockets.

@equinoxhq I don't think anyone's tax burden would be reduced if billionaires paid more taxes. Governments usually try to extract as much money as possible from most of the population. Billionaires and other very rich people may be an exception for whom the government could hypothetically raise taxes and see increased revenue, but government spending would just increase if revenues increased, and government spending is often very harmful.

Even if I'm wrong and governments would respond by reducing taxes, giving money to governments would still be a very ineffective way to try to do good. Indirectly giving the money to millions of people who would barely notice instead of spending it on preventing malaria, malnutrition, poverty, etc. makes no sense to me.

@J89502

and government spending is often very harmful

I am interested to know what examples you had in mind when you said this. Did you mean it literally, as in "the world would be a better place if this spending never occurred, such that it would be an improvement over the current situation if governments collected the same amount of taxes as they currently do, but then, instead of spending the money in the way I'm thinking of as very harmful, they put it in a pile and burned it" or "even in the case where this activity could be completed at no cost, it shouldn't be done"?

There might be some edge cases of that, but I don't think most government spending would fall in this category.

Indirectly giving the money to millions of people who would barely notice instead of spending it on preventing malaria, malnutrition, poverty, etc. makes no sense to me.

If the choice is "pay taxes to do things governments typically do" or "pay to reduce malaria, malnutrition and poverty as cheaply as possible" I would agree the latter is better. But in my country, a large chunk of government revenue goes out to things like schools, health care provision, and payments to people who are living in poverty. I think many of the people who receive direct payments from the government out of tax revenue definitely notice, because that's what allows them to pay rent and have food. It's not as efficient as the best EA spending, but the people who get it would be much worse off for its absence.

@lukres To be clear, my example was a toy incredibly simplified example to illustrate a point, not an attempt to make a realistic guess at what would actually happen in the case of a particular government policy. What would actually happen in the case of a taxation policy change is complicated and uncertain, with many unintended side-effects.

Personally I think step 1 in deciding what billionaires should be doing more or less of with their money, is to understand what they are currently doing with their money, which I do not. I hear people say that billionaires waste their money and so should be doing various other things, and others say that billionaires invest their money better than governments do so it's good that they have very low tax rates. But these seem to me to be claims based on the conclusion one wants to reach, rather than claims based in evidence which has led one to a particular conclusion. I don't think I've ever seen someone say "Billionaires spend X% of their wealth on Y thing, here is where I got that information". Was hoping (and am still hoping) that someone who has an opinion on what billionaires should be doing more or less of, might have more facts about what billionaires are currently doing in what proportion than I do, and be willing to share their sources.

Even in the relatively fact-free situation I'm in, I voted yes on paying more taxes because just on a fairness basis, some people being able to pay tax attorneys and accountants to find ways to avoid taxes, while others with less money have to pay a large chunk of their income as taxes, seems wrong. I realize that paying experts to find tax avoidance strategies starts well before one becomes a billionaire, but billionaires are all that was being asked about in this market.

@equinoxhq It's not quite as useless as yachts and cocaine, but not nearly as useful as e.g. the arc institute or alignment research.

@MilfordHammerschmidt "Nearly as useful as alignment research" is a pretty high bar for anything to meet! And I'd say "not quite as useless as yachts and cocaine" is underestimating the good that can be done by government spending by quite a lot. There are lots of things in the world where the market will under-supply them for various reasons. Particularly things that benefit people who don't have a lot of money, but also (just for example) things that have positive externalities which can't easily be captured by a buyer or a seller, or forms of disaster insurance (there's an adverse selection problem with private insurance, whereas "everyone pays in, you can't opt out" systems work better). Then there's fiscal policy efforts to stabilize the business cycle, which I mean, yeah, governments are great a spending during a downturn, not so great at cutting back when times are good, but still, I think I'd prefer a government that had the revenue base to spend during COVID and the 2008 financial crisis, to one that did not, even with the moral hazard.

@equinoxhq tbh alignment research feels like a pretty low bar to clear; at least underwater basket weaving results in some baskets!

@Adam Opinions differ, and I think MilfordHammershmidt's would differ from yours. Alignment research isn't taking much money and is starting to show interesting results (after only a year or two of having GPT-3+ levels of AI model to work with, too!), and could potentially prevent a catastrophe.

Lots of forms of basic or exploratory research don't show results for decades, and then change the world. Some forms of exploration in math have someone go "that's neat, but totally useless" and then several centuries later it turns out the second part was wrong.

@Adam You might also consider that underwater basket weaving isn't attempting to address an issue that reasonable people believe is a credible near-term existential threat. Like, the fact that we haven't got an alignment strategy yet is bad, and we ought to be trying to do something about that - unlike underwater basket weaving (or tasks that fall into the category of "basically useless things"), where if we just give up trying to do it, fine, nothing bad will happen.

Imagine if there was an asteroid headed for earth, the path is uncertain, 10% chance it hits and does to us as was done to the dinosaurs - and we don't currently have the technology to stop or turn it, even though we've been trying to develop it for a few years. Is the correct response "stop this useless waste of effort, you have produced nothing of value, and it probably won't hit anyway"?

@equinoxhq
my biases:
-I do not think "ai alignment research" is likely to produce an alignment strategy
-I do not think ai is likely to result in a runaway transformative change of any kind
-I reject a lot of the math and underlying assumptions of longtermism in general, and xrisk longtermism specifically

@Adam I mean... OK? I now understand better why to you alignment research feels like a worse waste of time than underwater basket weaving. Opinions differ.

@Adam Some further questions, now that we've established that you have significantly different premises than I assumed when I first responded to you.

-I do not think ai is likely to result in a runaway transformative change of any kind

What is your reaction to the fact that smart people seem to be making multi-billion dollar bets that AI will be a really big deal?

-I reject a lot of the math and underlying assumptions of longtermism in general, and xrisk longtermism specifically

It is not necessary to be a longtermist in order to think human extinction would be bad. With that in mind, are you on board with "human extinction would be bad", or no?

I'm just curious, you're starting from a very different point than where I'm at, and that's always interesting.

@equinoxhq
> What is your reaction to the fact that smart people seem to be making multi-billion dollar bets that AI will be a really big deal?
Smart people regularly make multi-billion dollar bets that the stock market will go up, and smart people regularly make multi-billion dollar bets that the stock market will go down. People making bets is evidence that people are making bets. Additionally, AI can be immensely valuable without a "runaway transformative change"; I was intending to capture "recursive self improvement with converging cycle times" (or, I guess, a one-shot superintelligence that's able to ~take over the world without any further self improvement) with that term. But it doesn't take any of that for AI to, say, improve manufacturing efficiency by 20% worldwide generating a lot of value. Computers did that! The Diesel Cycle did that! That would be a transformative changes, but not a runaway one nor the kind of change AI Xrisk people are worried about.

> It is not necessary to be a longtermist in order to think human extinction would be bad. With that in mind, are you on board with "human extinction would be bad", or no?
I think it kind of is necessary to be a longtermist to think human extinction is particularly bad in a timeless sense, right? Why should I care about what the world looks like 1000 or 10,000 years from now? Certainly I care if extinction happens in the next 5 or 10 years. I care much less if extinction happens 50 years from now. I care much less than that if extinction happens 500 years from now. It's certainly true that in 40 years I will care very much about whether extinction will happen 50 years from now.

@Adam

I think it kind of is necessary to be a longtermist to think human extinction is particularly bad in a timeless sense, right? Why should I care about what the world looks like 1000 or 10,000 years from now?

Not necessarily. As I understand the longtermist viewpoint, it's about how many lives could exist over billions or trillions of years, I think the potential lifespan of the universe based on our current understanding of physics could be several hundred trillion years? And longtermists consider how many people could live in the space covered by as far as earth-originating craft could go in that time, including potentially valuing digital minds that live in simulated spaces, thus using much less space and matter per life. 1,000 or 10,000 years are not really "longtermist" timescales, they're normal human historical timescales, even people a few thousand years ago who had no idea how old the earth was thought in timescales that ranged a few thousand years into the past and the future. Also, without adopting the longtermist viewpoint as I understand it, one could think that humanity is special and its extinction would be extra bad because God likes us and has a plan for us, even if that plan could come to fruition any day now, ending the world as we know it. I don't think some people's ideas of an eternal afterlife are particularly longtermist, although those people might gesture towards the idea that a mere [insert the biggest number they know the word for] years is nothing next to eternity.

To me, only caring about the next 50 years or so goes beyond being "not lontermist", towards being pretty short-termist. Not quite to the extent of people I knew who were not thinking about the future at all, just trying to survive the day or the week, but still, there are lots of things you could do that would have effects lasting a thousand years, or 10,000, and the fact that you wouldn't care about that is... different. But, OK, noted. Thanks for your time 😃