R

Ramiro

Civil service @ BCB
1728 karmaJoined Working (6-15 years)Lisboa, Portugal
www.admonymous.co/ramiroap

Bio

Brazilian legal philosopher, postdoc in intergenerational justice, financial supervisor, GWWC Pledger Bachelor of Laws, Master and Doctor of Philosophy from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), having published articles and translations in the areas of Political Philosophy, Applied Ethics and Philosophy of Economics – with a recent focus on climate risks, Environmental and Social Responsibility, and intergenerational justice. Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, integrating the Ethics and Political Philosophy Laboratory (EPLAB) and the project Present Democracy for Future Generations. Also a member of the Graduate Committee and Special Studies Analyst in the area of supervision of non-banking institutions at the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB). Member of the Inclusive and Sustainable Solutions association (SIS) and of the Effective Altruism community in Brazil (AE Brasil). https://philpeople.org/profiles/ramiro-avila-peres

How I can help others

All my public forum posts must be considered as under CC-BY license

Suggestions of new cause areas: let's pay people so that every podcast episode is shorter than 40min, every pdf book is compressed to a file as light as possible, and every EA thinks twice before spending their day on EA-Meta and EA criticism.

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Topic contributions
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Sorry if I am being unfair, but itseems to me a bit naïve to base all of your Structural Democratic Reforms project solely on election theory, and ignore other institutions that are extremely impactful, but more neglected by and less accountable to the wide public, such as Supreme Courts, Central Banks and regulatory authorities (and even Audit Institutions).

Before the Hamas's attack, Israel was in political turmoil because a sort of constitutional crisis between its Supreme Court and the government regarding the 2023 Israeli judicial reform. Current US Supreme Court not only struck Roe v. Wade this year, but it also decided that, while the Head of the Executive is immune against prosecution for any official act (Trump v. U.S.), regulatory authorities (that ultimately respond to the President) have no power to issue binding interpretations of statutory law (Loper Bright Enterprises et al.), thus ending four decades of the Chevron deference doctrine. Now consider that Supreme Courts allegedly have a longevity problem - they used to serve for an average 17 years, and are now predicted to serve for 35 years. Other jurisdictions face similar issues (e.g.: Brazilian judiciary has had a tremendous political impact in the last 10 years, and now legislators want to restrict Supreme Court judges powers).
An obvious fix would be adopting term limits, but, though I am a passionate defender of judicial review, I think that centralizing so much power on such a small body is a mechanism design nightmare.

And Central Banks face political scrutiny everywhere; yet, while Open Philanthropy did fund research on macroeconomics and there's a consensus that monetary authorities must be insulated from the Executive, I am unaware of anyone in EA-space currently doing research on Central Bank politics (though, here, I would say it's probably not a neglected topic - it's just that the public tends to ignore it, and maybe crypto-friendly EAs just despise central bankers).

And public choice theory, too - the kind of "neoliberal cynic legalistic" branch of mechanism design. No point in having a great voting system if your authorities can benefit themselves scot-free.
It's funny how EAs have been arguing about "improving institutional decision-making" for almost a decade (and even before that in LW) w/o reading the basic literature... personal story: I remeber I was fascinated with EY's Inadequate Equilibria (a wonderful book I recommend even more than HPMOR) and found it super original... but actually it wasn't nothing new once I discovered the literature in mechanism desing and, more recently, cyberneticists like S. Beer and H. Simon

I'd like to see an updated version of this - and, if possible, one that didn't end up being categorized as "personal blog post"

Let me share SBTi's requests for feeddback:

 

Financial Institutions Net-Zero (FINZ) Standard

 

Experts from the finance sector, academia, and civil society worldwide are invited to review and provide feedback on the Draft Financial Institutions Net-Zero (FINZ) Standard. The public consultation survey will be open until September 30.

 

The primary aims of this consultation survey are to gather input from external stakeholders on the FINZ Standard - Consultation Draft v0.1, with particular focus on:

  • The clarity
  • Specific approaches to:    
    • Evidencing entity-level commitments and leadership
    • Determining and identifying exposure and portfolio emissions
    • Portfolio climate alignment target
    • Emissions-intensive sector targets
    • Reporting
  • The SBTi’s direction of travel regarding financial institutions
  • Areas of support and improvement

 

Complete the survey now and contribute to the development of this essential standard.

 
RESPOND TO THE CONSULTATION
 
 

The SBTi will also host three in-person workshops at Climate Week NYC and in London to gather expert insight on two important topics: neutralization and net-zero finance.

 

The workshops will be held on the following dates:

  • The role of carbon dioxide-removal in corporate net-zero transitions: New York City, September 23 | 3:00-6:30pm ET
  • Financial Institutions Net-Zero Standard Consultation: New York City, September 25 | 3:30-5:30pm ET
  • The role of carbon dioxide-removal in corporate net-zero transitions: London, October 8 | 2:30-6:00pm BST

 

Experts in each field are invited to participate by registering their interest. The precise locations will be shared with selected attendees. Register your interest here.

 

Scope 3 Discussion Paper feedback form

 

The SBTi is in the process of revising its Corporate Net-Zero Standard and one of the channels through which stakeholders are encouraged to engage is via the Scope 3 Discussion Paper feedback form. The Scope 3 Discussion Paper outlines the SBTi’s initial thinking on potential changes being considered for scope 3 target setting, including key principles and concepts.

Thanks for the post. I suppose you'd agree that there's a good chance that, once Uncle Sam gets unstable, many other countries will follow suit.

I'm not sure the problem is "EA neglects this" instead of something more like "SBF funded political campaigns and considered bribing Trump to avoid his re-election and this resulted in terrible optics..." Maybe EAs and politics don't mix well?

From the report:

The experts we spoke to favored unilateral advocacy (targeting individual countries) over advocacy in multilateral organizations such as the UN. This was on the basis that domestic policy and priorities usually take precedence over international agreements, especially in a catastrophe.

I tend to agree, because there are many low-hanging fruits in in-country advocacy. However,  I wonder if some food security policies could face obstacles from WTO's Agreement on Agriculture, so that amending it could be highly effective.

I call dibs on writing an April Fool's post to propose calling this pledge "effective tithe"

Before you comment in response to this post, I would urge you to assume that lawyers for the FTX Group will see your comments.

In that case, I suggest they consider taking a look at the Earning to Give part of 80000 hours website

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