Epistemic status: Speculation from two decently informed advocates armed with anecdata.
Note on process: After having some version of this conversation several times and saying, “we should probably write about this publicly,” we took the less heroic route: we recorded one of our conversations, fed the transcript into an LLM, and then substantially revised the structure, substance, and framing ourselves. We will not be sharing the transcript, as it is in...
TLDR: Take the population ethics quiz here: https://mdickens.me/pop-ethics/
Population ethics is an oft-overlooked subfield within ethics. Many people hold views that they don't realize contradict each other, or that have strange implications that they wouldn't endorse if they thought about it more.
Not just that—population ethics is a BIG DEAL. A lot of ethical decisions hinge on how you think about changes in future populations....
Headline finding: I audited 17 AI Safety Talent programmes. Zero of 17 have published any comparison group, rejected-applicant follow-up, matched control or randomisation. Not one. Every programme that mentions a counterfactual does it by asking participants to self-report.
Background
At least $70 million...
I might be biased (same school, tried something similar in physics), but great work! I recommend promoting the Olympiads nationally once they're stable, so more students can benefit. I believe (not super confident about this, though) that the private tutoring market in Egypt can absorb a lot of demand from students wanting to participate in Science Olympiads, so you shouldn't (at least in my opinion) try to train students en masse; just create the incentive. No idea how you can do that, though-- I assume social media is the cheapest method?
Also, not trying to bring you down, but Egypt's bureaucracy is hell (you probably know this already). If you manage to launch just one Olympiad and keep it stable for 1-2 years, that's fantastic. If you ever feel like you're hitting too many walls, it's totally fine to rethink the whole project and invest your time in other (more impactful) ones
Good luck!