Quick takes

I've been thinking a bunch about a fundamental difference between the EA community and the LessWrong community. LessWrong is optimized for the enjoyment of its members. Any LessWrong event I go to in any city the focus is on "what will we find fun to do?" This is great. Notice how the community isn't optimized for "making the world more rational." It is a community that selects for people interested in rationality and then when you get these kinds of people in the same room the community tries to optimize for FUN for these kinds of people. EA as a community is NOT optimized for the enjoyment of its members. It is optimized for making the world a better place. This is a feature, not a bug. And surely it should be net positive since its goal should by definition be net positive. When planning an EAG or EA event you measure it on impact and say professional connections made and how many new high quality AI Alignment researchers you might have created on the margin. You don't measure it on how much people enjoyed themselves (or you do, but for instrumental reasons to get more people to come so that you can continue to have impact). As a community organizer in both spaces, I do notice it is easier that I can leave EA events I organized feeling more burnt out and less fulfilled than compared to similar LW/ACX events. I think the fundamental difference mentioned before explains why. Dunno if I am pointing at anything that resonates with anyone. I don't see this discussed much among community organizers. Seems important to highlight.  Basically in LW/ACX spaces - specifically as an organizer - I more easily feel like a fellow traveller up for a good time. In EA spaces - specifically as an organizer - I more easily feel like an unpaid recruiter.

I'm concerned about the new terms of service for Giving What We Can, which will go into effect after August 31, 2024: This is a significant departure from the Effective Ventures' TOS (GWWC is spinning out of EV), which has users grant EV an unlimited but non-exclusive license to use feedback or suggestions they send, while retaining the right to do anything with it themselves. I've previously talked to GWWC staff about my ideas to help people give effectively, like a donation decision worksheet that I made. If this provision goes into effect, it would deter me from sharing my suggestions with GWWC in the future because I would risk losing the right to disseminate or continue developing those ideas or materials myself.

Some reflections on the Manifest 2024 discourse: 1. I’m annoyed (with “the community”, but mostly with human nature & myself) that this kind of drama gets so much more attention than eg typical reviews of the Manifest experience, or our retrospectives of work on Manifund, which I wish got even 10% of this engagement. It's fun to be self-righteous on the internet, fun to converse with many people who I respect, fun especially when they come to your defense (thanks!), but I feel guilty at the amount of attention this has sucked up for everyone involved. This bit from Paul Graham makes a lot more sense to me now: > When someone contradicts you, they're in a sense attacking you. Sometimes pretty overtly. Your instinct when attacked is to defend yourself. But like a lot of instincts, this one wasn't designed for the world we now live in. Counterintuitive as it feels, it's better most of the time not to defend yourself. Otherwise these people are literally taking your life. Kudos to all y'all who are practicing the virtue of silence and avoiding engaging with this. 2. While it could have been much, much better written, on net I’m glad the Guardian article exists. And not just in a "all PR is good PR" sense, or even a “weak opponents are superweapons” sense; I think there's a legitimate concern there that's worthy of reporting. I like the idea of inviting the journalists to come to Manifest in the future. 3. That said, I am quite annoyed that now many people who didn’t attend Manifest, may think of it as "Edgelordcon". I once again encourage people who weren't there to look at our actual schedule, or to skim over some of the many many post-Manifest reports, to get a more representative sense of what Manifest is like or about. 4. If Edgelordcon is what you really wanted, consider going to something like Hereticon instead of Manifest, thanks. 5. Not sure how many people already know this but I formally left Manifold a couple months ago. I'm t

I'm going to be leaving 80,000 Hours and joining Charity Entrepreneurship's incubator programme this summer! The summer 2023 incubator round is focused on biosecurity and scalable global health charities and I'm really excited to see what's the best fit for me and hopefully launch a new charity. The ideas that the research team have written up look really exciting and I'm trepidatious about the challenge of being a founder but psyched for getting started. Watch this space! <3 I've been at 80,000 Hours for the last 3 years. I'm very proud of the 800+ advising calls I did and feel very privileged I got to talk to so many people and try and help them along their careers! I've learned so much during my time at 80k. And the team at 80k has been wonderful to work with - so thoughtful, committed to working out what is the right thing to do, kind, and fun - I'll for sure be sad to leave them. There are a few main reasons why I'm leaving now: 1. New career challenge - I want to try out something that stretches my skills beyond what I've done before. I think I could be a good fit for being a founder and running something big and complicated and valuable that wouldn't exist without me - I'd like to give it a try sooner rather than later. 2. Post-EA crises stepping away from EA community building a bit - Events over the last few months in EA made me re-evaluate how valuable I think the EA community and EA community building are as well as re-evaluate my personal relationship with EA. I haven't gone to the last few EAGs and switched my work away from doing advising calls for the last few months, while processing all this. I have been somewhat sad that there hasn't been more discussion and changes by now though I have been glad to see more EA leaders share things more recently (e.g. this from Ben Todd). I do still believe there are some really important ideas that EA prioritises but I'm more circumspect about some of the things I think we're not doing as well as we could (

Please people, do not treat Richard Hannania as some sort of worthy figure who is a friend of EA. He was a Nazi, and whilst he claims he moderated his views, he is still very racist as far as I can tell. Hannania called for trying to get rid of all non-white immigrants in the US, and the sterilization of everyone with an IQ under 90 indulged in antisemitic attacks on the allegedly Jewish elite, and even post his reform was writing about the need for the state to harass and imprison Black people specifically ('a revolution in our culture or form of government. We need more policing, incarceration, and surveillance of black people' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hanania).  Yet in the face of this, and after he made an incredibly grudging apology about his most extreme stuff (after journalists dug it up), he's been invited to Manifiold's events and put on Richard Yetter Chappel's blogroll.  DO NOT DO THIS. If you want people to distinguish benign transhumanism (which I agree is a real thing*) from the racist history of eugenics, do not fail to shun actual racists and Nazis. Likewise, if you want to promote "decoupling" factual beliefs from policy recommendations, which can be useful, do not duck and dive around the fact that virtually every major promoter of scientific racism ever, including allegedly mainstream figures like Jensen, worked with or published with actual literal Nazis (https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/arthur-jensen).  I love most of the people I have met through EA, and I know that-despite what some people say on twitter- we are not actually a secret crypto-fascist movement (nor is longtermism specifically, which whether you like it or not, is mostly about what its EA proponents say it is about.) But there is in my view a disturbing degree of tolerance for this stuff in the community, mostly centered around the Bay specifically. And to be clear I am complaining about tolerance for people with far-right and fasc

My overall impression is that the CEA community health team (CHT from now on) are well intentioned but sometimes understaffed and other times downright incompetent. It's hard to me to be impartial here, and I understand that their failures are more salient to me than their successes. Yet I endorse the need for change, at the very least including 1) removing people from the CHT that serve as a advisors to any EA funds or have other conflict of interest positions, 2) hiring HR and mental health specialists with credentials, 3) publicly clarifying their role and mandate.  My impression is that the most valuable function that the CHT provides is as support of community building teams across the world, from advising community builders to preventing problematic community builders from receiving support. If this is the case, I think it would be best to rebrand the CHT as a CEA HR department, and for CEA to properly hire the community builders who are now supported as grantees, which one could argue is an employee misclassification. I would not be comfortable discussing these issues openly out of concern for the people affected, but here are some horror stories: 1. A CHT staff pressured a community builder to put through with and include a community member with whom they weren't comfortable interacting. 2. A CHT staff pressured a community builder to not press charges against a community member who they felt harassed by. 3. After a restraining order was set by the police in place in this last case, the CHT refused to liaison with the EA Global team to deny access to the person restrained, even knowing that the affected community builder would be attending the event. 4. My overall sense is that CHT is not very mindful of the needs of community builders in other contexts. Two very promising professionals I've mentored have dissociated from EA, and rejected a grant, in large part because of how they were treated by the CHT. 5. My impression is that the CHT staff underm

Having a baby and becoming a parent has had an incredible impact on me. Now more than ever, I feel more connected and concerned about the wellbeing of others. I feel as though my heart has literally grown. I wanted to share this as I expect there are many others who are questioning whether to have children -- perhaps due to concerns about it limiting their positive impact, among many others. But I'm just here to say it's been beautiful, and amazing, and I look forward to the day I get to talk with my son about giving back in a meaningful way.  

EDIT: just confirmed that FHI shut down as of April 16, 2024 It sounds like the Future of Humanity Institute may be permanently shut down.  Background: FHI went on a hiring freeze/pause back in 2021 with the majority of staff leaving (many left with the spin-off of the Centre for the Governance of AI) and moved to other EA organizations. Since then there has been no public communication regarding its future return, until now...  The Director, Nick Bostrom, updated the bio section on his website with the following commentary [bolding mine]:  This language suggests that FHI has officially closed. Can anyone at Trajan/Oxford confirm?  Also curious if there is any project in place to conduct a post mortem on the impact FHI has had on the many different fields and movements? I think it's important to ensure that FHI is remembered as a significant nexus point for many influential ideas and people who may impact the long term.  In other news, Bostrom's new book "Deep Utopia" is available for pre-order (coming March 27th).