All of atlasunshrugged's Comments + Replies

I actually think there was a major lawsuit about agreements between organizations not to poach one another's employees. https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-google-others-settle-anti-poaching-lawsuit-for-415-million/

At this point I'd think higher interest rates have knocked many overinflated stonks down to a reasonable level (at least based on the bloodbath that is the tech stock market over the last few months), that's not to say of course that other risks haven't been adequately priced in... like the most valuable company in the world for instance being hugely dependent on the manufacturing of a geopolitical competitor to the U.S.

My understanding is that persistent higher inflation may actually be very good for the U.S. government as it'll essentially erode the debt as inflation eats away at the value of the loans, so that should be taken into account. Of course, it's bad for stability, especially if you runaway inflation, but with high employment mitigating some of the downside this seems like a major positive factor for the U.S. gov given the amount of debt it holds. 

Edit to add: Thanks for taking the time to write this up, found it enjoyable and was a fun thought expe... (read more)

I think if you talk to a reporter, unless you explicitly note before beginning that the conversation is off the record and they agree to it, you have to assume that anything you say can be shared.

I'm not sure I understand why this is the best donation target, even for people who want to donate specifically to a political race. For one, it seems all prediction markets and forecasters like FiveThirtyEight give R's a ~75%+ chance of taking back the house, so this single race seems unlikely to be particularly impactful. What's more, the Salinas Erickson race seems relatively safe for D's and I've seen no mention of it anywhere being a tossup. This feels like something I'd get in a campaign email down to the closing line pulling on heartstrings and then... (read more)

I mostly agree but a few counterpoints (I've been in DC for about 1yr total now). 

1. The summers are absolutely miserable if you dislike humidity. 
2.  In general compared to SF and even Berlin I've found people (outside of the EA community) to be much more reactive and zero sum in their thinking than people who dream big and have visions of the future they want to build towards.
3. Echoing the company town comment- I feel like every conversation is about politics/policy/international affairs, which bugged me in SF about tech (there's so much more to l

There are substantial kickbacks (called “site commissions”), where a large percentage of the per-minute rates are paid to the facilities for the right to the contract. A typical rate is 50%, and these can run as high as 96%. Given they get a percentage of every dollar spent, the facilities also have an incentive to keep costs high to increase their revenue, not to give the end consumer the lowest cost of connection.

Does any of this money also get sent back to the county/state too? Just wondering what other stakeholders are benefitting from the status quo.

&... (read more)

An offshoot of lead emission in the atmosphere might be the work being done at LEEP (Lead Exposure Elimination Project) https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ktN29JneoQCYktqih/seven-more-learnings-from-leep

Thanks! Sorry for the ignorance but for #4 then, how would you go about figuring out 1) what job you would be good at if you joined (and in which branch to try to join) and then 2) how to make sure that you actually were assigned to that job when you do join?

An unrelated q- is there any additional upside joining a new branch like Space Force?

This was a fantastic read, thank you for putting it together! Have you seen many situations where it makes sense for someone later in their career to join the military? Almost every person I've met who served started relatively early in their career rather than joining later. Do you think there are negative potential career impacts for people who work in specific fields (e.g. tech)? While I'm in DC doing policy work now and military service is venerated by almost everyone, I think it was quite rare to meet someone when I worked in tech in SF that had serve... (read more)

Also thought it was really interesting, there's an ongoing thread on Hacker News which is also a good place to look to see an outside view of how people perceive EA in a (usually) thoughtful way

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32386984

This was really interesting, thank you for writing @iamasockpuppet.  I don't agree with all assumptions but think many of them are logical and express similar concerns to some I had during the Carrick campaign. One point I was hoping you could expand on was the below:

"The *concrete outcome* of Effective Altruism exercising direct political power would be for EA to become a faction of the Democratic party." In which you say that R EA's would then not be interested in joining EA (or at least engaging in EA politics) but to me that seems off because as y... (read more)

That's really interesting, as an American who has been active in EA in the US and Europe I usually felt that England had an outsized weighting on EA stuff, not the U.S.

As someone working in a Republican office in Congress doing tech policy this really resonates with me. I think for folks who are libertarian or just apolitical/ambivalent generally about culture war issues then this is a solid way to go, especially on the tech policy front which skews heavily D and means it'll be easier to stand out. As a warning though, these labels stick, so just think hard about whether you're ready to commit to a pathway (not that you can never cross the aisle, it just becomes significantly more difficult to do so after a few years in one party).

Posting a comment because I expect people who read this to also be somewhat entrepreneurially aligned. If anyone is interested in the below areas and wants to kick ideas around, potentially cofounder match, etc. I'd love to chat as I'm considering doing something in one of these spaces after I finish my fellowship in Congress:

• Charter Cities (e.g. SEZ near the U.S.); especially those that could also serve as a stopgap while other orgs advocate for domestic immigration reform for critical areas (e.g. AI researchers from India or China who would have a hard t

I think the lead exposure project is quite interesting but isn't this already done by LEEP which spun out of Charity Entrepreneurship a while back? What's the rationale for another organization here? Or is RoryFenton already involved in that project.

Are there any other products that could be leveraged by current cryonics facilities that could also help decrease those costs in the interim before moving to plastination? I know sperm storage is becoming increasingly popular; maybe there are other products that someone already interested in cryonics would also be interested in that could leverage the facility?

Not sure if you considered it as a potential benefit but my understanding is that right now the government and health care systems/insurers spend an inordinate amount of money mainly to extend life for the last 5-10 years of an elderly person now. This imposes broad costs on state run health systems and private insurers which need to charge people more from younger ages to cover these expected costs. It's possible that more elderly people are inclined to engage in cryopreservation just before they enter this "sickly period" (for lack of a better term) if t... (read more)

Echoing Ian's comment, I'd appreciate if you could share more information about your background. I understand that you want to remain anonymous but maybe you could share how you're connected to folks on the transition team, potentially how influential you expect your recommendations to be, if there are any departments you have more or less influence in, etc. so folks can judge whether they want to expose all of this info to you.

Agreed, from the foreign policy folks I follow who focus on the region that one seems especially dangerous, especially if you care about stopping the usage of nuclear weapons which would be somewhat more likely in an India v. Pakistan conflict given it's likely Pakistan would lose a war waged with purely conventional weaponry

Because of the likelihood of it occurring or because the potential for human/economic damage or both? It also is concerning to me given that India would probably be somewhat more inclined to use nuclear weapons in a China v. India conflict than America would be (although who knows with the current admin), especially if Pakistan started making moves at the same time as India was focused on China. But I'm not sure why China would really push a conflict, that means they have to move huge amounts of men and materials to the west and potentially leave an o... (read more)

No worries, I was just curious - I've tried to find data on things like projections of lives lost in combat between the US and China and can't find anything good (best I found was a Rand study from a few years ago but it didn't really give projections of actual deaths) so was curious if you had gotten your hands on that data to make your projections. Sorry for the misunderstanding, I had assumed China/US conflict but makes sense - probably anyone with nuclear capabilities who gets into a serious foreign entanglement will create an extremely dangerous situation for the world.

For the author, please correct me if I'm wrong, but the reference to Great Power Conflict is most likely the U.S. vs. China - is that right (just inferring based on the Graham Allison recommendation)? I'm curious if you a more in depth rationale or data available for this? Mostly, I'm curious about some other outcomes and how harmful they are - for instance, what happens if we avoid great power conflict but in doing so allow China to become the dominant world power and spread their authoritarian governance model even further than they do tod... (read more)

In the first paragraph you say "Effective Altruists are often not leftist, because leftist politics may be incorrect." Can you expand on what leftist politics are incorrect and how you judge what is correct or not?

Ditto on this - I went through the program and am working on tobacco policy, happy to chat with folks who want to ask about what it's like

There's an EA and Policy FB group https://www.facebook.com/groups/450247668487258/

I second this - really interesting post and I would love to hear much more about this!

Just wanted to write that I've seen your comment, I'm on the road and don't have time to respond well now but will try in the next week or so.

Hi, when you say I don't seem to take that into account, do you mean something on the blog post I shared? That's not my research, just some of what I'm using as the basis for considering an intervention into taxation but happy to comment on what I can or at least link to other studies I've read that have been useful too if you're interested.

It depends on your perspective I suppose, and if you think that regulating/taxing anything is paternalistic and believe that everyone is rational, not addicted, truly knows the health effects, e... (read more)

Just wanted to mention that I also think that improving political institutions and wisdom (and general capacity building) is quite interesting. I think policy in general is a semi-neglected EA area that could be highly valuable. Everything from advocating for known high impact policies to be put in place where they aren't (ex. tobacco taxation) to examining new policies that could be implemented (ex. novel ways of stopping illicit financial outflows from developing countries). I think GiveWell has also been looking into this field so I'm sure the... (read more)

The HN thread was definitely interesting, since the pivot of Open AI to a limited for profit company occurred, I am certainly concerned about whether they're going to be allocating as many resources for safety as they were and will be much more focused on commercial application development (which I think is a fair, and probably correct, thing to do when you have shareholders who have invested in you for a potential return rather than as a donor to a specific mission)

A note - you can easily find Greg Brockman (the Cofounder and CTO of Open AI) in the t... (read more)

I'm biased as I was part of the Estonian delegation that attended the latest EAGxNordics event but I have to say that all of this was very useful for me. It was the second EA conference I've attended but I've attended many other conferences and I think that all of these points also hold true for them too.

I especially second the idea of creating goals before the event, finding people who you want to speak with from the attendee list, and contacting them and setting up a time to chat even before the event starts in order to make sure you are getting value even if you don't attend a single talk.

I really like the second proposal in particular, the work charity entrepreneurship does is phenomenal and I think there is room for companies (not just nonprofits) to be launched that have a focus on generating returns that can be funneled into EA causes or just that have sustainable business models that can be run as for profit entities that do good while making money, employing other EAs, etc.

Hey Kit,

Thanks for the thoughtful response! Yes, I wholeheartedly agree the success of a fund like this is dependent on having someone experienced (and with a lot of connections) running it. I've worked for a YC/Andreessen startup from seed to Series B, Rocket Internet, and at a VC firm so I have a base level of understanding and network but I'd definitely either want to have someone more experienced managing it or have a killer group of advisors/partners around supporting.

As for your second question, how valuable is it to actually do this, that&... (read more)