Arturo Macias

Karma: 4

My name is Arturo Macias. I am a 45 years old economist working at Banco de España, the Spanish Central Bank. I have recently finished my Ph.D (see my ORCID account for my published papers: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1623-0957) and consequently I have recovered a substantial amount of free time.

While I have a great deal of simpathy to the whole Rationalist, Progress and Effective Altruism movements my main interest is related to intitutional desing and economic estabilization. In my view among the main existential risk bottlenecks for this Dangerous Century, a critical one is institutional stagnation. E.O Wilson famously said: “The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology”. Regarding the Paleolithic emotions, I can not advance any solution (this is for geneticists), and regarding the godlike tecnologhy, after Aug 6th 1945 nobody can.

Regarding the medieval institutions I think I can make some modest contributions and thats is why I am here.

Kind Regards,

Arturo

Arturo Macias 18 Jan 2024 18:36 UTC
2 points
on: Electric Vehicles and renewable electricity
Also posted in EA Forum: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jJap6KhzFe3mgh32M/electric-vehicles-and-renewable-electricity

Electric Vehicles and renewable electricity

Arturo Macias18 Jan 2024 18:34 UTC

2 points

1 comment5 min readPF link

Arturo Macias 25 Apr 2023 12:42 UTC
3 points
on: Machines: Global Village Construction Set
I have been following this for years, but the project does not progress very much (there are more machines, but the community has not grown). The village set would be both useful for civilization RE-construction and for civilization (First) construction in poor countries. In my first post in the EA Forum I tried to produce some interest either in this project or some susbtitute, because no other open source project could be more useful.

World and Mind in Artificial Intelligence: arguments against the AI pause

Arturo Macias18 Apr 2023 14:43 UTC

2 points

0 comments1 min readPF link

Arturo Macias 16 Apr 2023 13:37 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Daniel Paleka’s comment on: Artificial Intelligence as exit strategy from the age of acute existential risk
A discussion about this article including comments to your objection can be found here:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6j6qgNa3uGmzJEMoN/artificial-intelligence-as-exit-strategy-from-the-age-of

Artificial Intelligence as exit strategy from the age of acute existential risk

Arturo Macias12 Apr 2023 14:45 UTC

0 points

2 comments7 min readPF link

Arturo Macias 6 Mar 2023 7:24 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Kassi Dick’s comment on: Philosophy in Space
If fussion propulsion is possible, probably fussion would be available for energy production on Earth, and that would imply “energy too cheap to measure”. The kind of economy under that regime would extremely different from ours. Under that conditions, for example, materials would be extremely easy to obtain from Earth (we could profitably mine minerals with far lower ore grades than we can now).
I think that if we ever reach the “energy too cheap to measure” economic regime, for example, extiction risk would be far lower than now. But we all know that Brazil is the country of the future, and allways will be, and that nuclear fussion will allways be 30 years in the future either… I hope I am wrong in both :-)

Arturo Macias 4 Mar 2023 21:12 UTC
2 points
on: Philosophy in Space
In a previous post I commented that before we deal with spaceships, we need a complete circular and almost self replicating human economy:

https://progressforum.org/posts/62XwqubkcAKNG6Wqf/space-colonization-and-the-closed-material-economy

This is the hardest problem

Arturo Macias 28 Feb 2023 6:54 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Christian Kleineidam’s comment on: A 21st Century Progress Myth
It is obviously a critical consideration; beyond that, I would say that the best countries in the world are those with a long history of descentralization and a relatively less hierarchical urban structure: Switzerland, Germany and the United States. It makes life cheaper, allows people to live in bigger houses, the enviorment is better… Urbanization was a necessary evil and a necessary risk. Fortunately, less neccesary now.

Arturo Macias 27 Feb 2023 7:19 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Christian Kleineidam’s comment on: A 21st Century Progress Myth
Because cities are sitting ducks for nuclear weapons. We don’t know if nuclear winter is real, but in case it were not, nuclear war would be survivable if human population and industry were spread.

No Room for Political Philosophy

Arturo Macias21 Feb 2023 16:08 UTC

1 point

0 comments3 min readPF link

Arturo Macias 16 Feb 2023 14:16 UTC
2 points
on: A 21st Century Progress Myth
There are obvious avenues for progress in our society: more income security, less working hours, ideally some degree of population de-concentration. Addionally, relatively poor countries still have a large room for economic improvement, and political and military risks are un un-acceptably large.
On the other hand, your criticism of the “rockets and flying cars” progress ideal looks spot on to me.