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...
Which interesting EA-related bluesky accounts do you know of?
I'm not using Twitter anymore since it's being used to promote hateful views, but Bluesky is quite a cool online space in my opinion.
I'm making a list of Bluesky accounts of EA-related organisations and key people. If you're active on Bluesky or some of your favourite EA orgs or key people are, please leave a comment with a link to their profile!
I've also made an EA (GHD+AW+CC) Starter Pack in case you're interested. Let me know who I should add! Effective Environmentalism also has a pack with effectiveness-oriented climate change accounts.
Some accounts in no particular order:
Oh this is great, thanks for putting it together!