I really like the vote and discussion thread. In part because I think that aggregating votes will improve our coordination and impact.
Without trying to unpack my whole model of movement building; I think that the community needs to understand itself (as a collective and as individuals) to have the most impact, and this approach may really help.
EA basically operates on a "wisdom of wise crowds" principle, where individuals base decisions on researchers' and thinkers' qualitative data (e.g., forum posts and other outputs)
However, at our current scale, quantitative data is much easier to aggregate and update on.
For instance, in this case, we are now seeing strong evidence that most people in EA think that AW is undervalued (as seems will be the case) relative to global development. Also who thinks what in relation to that claim and why. This is extremely useful for community and individual decision-making. It would never be captured in the prior system of coordinating via posts and comments.
Many people may/will act on or reference this information when they seek funding, write response posts, or choose a new career option. In a world without the vote, and just forum posts, these actions might otherwise not occur.
In short, very keen on this and to see more of this.
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 really like the vote and discussion thread. In part because I think that aggregating votes will improve our coordination and impact.
Without trying to unpack my whole model of movement building; I think that the community needs to understand itself (as a collective and as individuals) to have the most impact, and this approach may really help.
EA basically operates on a "wisdom of wise crowds" principle, where individuals base decisions on researchers' and thinkers' qualitative data (e.g., forum posts and other outputs)
However, at our current scale, quantitative data is much easier to aggregate and update on.
For instance, in this case, we are now seeing strong evidence that most people in EA think that AW is undervalued (as seems will be the case) relative to global development. Also who thinks what in relation to that claim and why. This is extremely useful for community and individual decision-making. It would never be captured in the prior system of coordinating via posts and comments.
Many people may/will act on or reference this information when they seek funding, write response posts, or choose a new career option. In a world without the vote, and just forum posts, these actions might otherwise not occur.
In short, very keen on this and to see more of this.
I am curious to better understand why people disagree here.