All of Vilfredo's Ghost's Comments + Replies

I'm against most adjectives and also against most uses of "nonviolent communication", so let me offer a more fundamental reason to reduce your use of adjectives: It's just clearer writing/speaking to omit them. And the attempt to write more clearly probably forces you to think more clearly. Precisely-chosen adjectives are fine, but "bad" conveys more noise than signal. The fact that it may hurt someone's feelings is beside the point. You could just as easily offer a commentary on "AI 2027's excellent timeline models" and "excellent" would be similarly unin... (read more)

I want to note that the political staffer talent gap previously observed in posts such as "Go Republican, Young EA" has swung in the opposite direction now. 

America PAC ran a get out the vote campaign that Dems are still struggling to understand and most staffers in the party still don't grasp that it did this because "hurr hurr Elon dumb bad man". To the smartest among us it was obvious at the time that he was running circles around the Harris campaign, but the Harris campaign's leadership seemed to sincerely believe they had the stronger field... (read more)

I'm an anti-Bay Area EA because from the stuff I've read about sexual harassment in EA it's like 90% Bay Area EAs doing it, and seems to be enabled by specific subcultural factors there that I don't see anywhere else in the movement. 

If you're not a CA resident, I would probably discourage writing a letter. Exceptions if you have special expertise or are a donor to Newsom. But in general letters from non-constituents are not persuasive to politicians and often are used against the desired policy, to show their constituents how much pressure from outsiders they're "standing up against". 

How much should 80k's US policy career advice change in light of the Supreme Court striking down Chevron deference? My quick take: In principle this is more power for the judiciary, but they still lack the power to initiate policy changes. So my quick take is it probably means someone who was undecided or weakly in favor of executive branch should try to get a job in Congress now. Should be a premium on experts who can write detailed legislation well now that that responsibility can't be delegated to the agencies. Interested in hearing others' thoughts.

If RAF cadets work like USAF cadets it means they went  to college at some kind of military academy and were essentially full time plus in military training alongside school. 

Strong downvote on the OP because the counting is done in a HIGHLY misleading way. If I were the moderators I would take the post down or demand SUBSTANTIAL corrections. 

For Claim 1. (25% of signatories have been accused of financial misconduct, and 10% convicted^[1]), the info provided in the footnote renders this claim outright false. Beyond the fact that many civil violations of the law are not even crimes, civil judgments are not convictions, require a substantially lower standard of proof, and from a legal strategy standpoint, there is often no re... (read more)

Would objective licensing standards help? Training itself can be BS'd but maybe a test run by the state is harder to rig. 

They got outplayed in the context of the internal politics of OpenAI, where there were A LOT of people with profit (Microsoft) or career (the employees) incentives to race ahead. But there seems to be an emerging public consensus in favor of more regulation, so I would expect that e.g. smart, ambitious politicians have quite different incentives. 

In the event of a successful lawsuit, we should consider NL fully vindicated and not engage in this sort of reputational retribution for daring to defend their rights. Actions that successfully punish wrongdoers are generally not negative sum because they discourage future misconduct. This is true even where it's negligent and not malicious; knowing one may face consequences encourages greater care in the future. 

Edit: I can see reasons it might be unfair to pursue a defamation suit against an unsophisticated/under-resourced party where it's a r... (read more)

Unlikely, but to the extent it's true it mostly favors the defendant. Burden of proof is on the plaintiff.

My statement stands even on a negligence standard. It's even harder to sue as a pubic figure, but truth is an absolute defense regardless. 

US defamation law is not strict at all. It bends over backwards to respect the First Amendment. Truth is a complete defense. UK defamation law, and the law of many other un-free countries, is pretty ridiculous and I do think it's unethical to take advantage of that. But in the US it's so hard to bring a defamation suit that even bringing one and not being shot down by the anti-SLAPP law is strong evidence that the plaintiff is in the right.

 I haven't reviewed it closely enough to know if there's enough for a viable defamation suit, but if there ... (read more)

I think norms should strongly push against taking seriously any public accusation made anonymously in most circumstances. I feel like we have taken a norm that was appropriate to a very limited set of circumstances and tried to make a grand moral principle out of it, and it doesn't work. Giving some anonymity to victims of sexual assault/harassment, in some circumstances, makes sense because it's a uniquely embarrassing thing to be a victim of due to our cultural taboos around sex.  Anonymity might be appropriate for people revealing problems at their... (read more)

Current or former Congressional staffers, help me out in the DMs:

I see members of Congress fairly often for short periods of time, and I feel like most of my time with them is wasted in chitchat or just like...whatever's in the news. I wanna start using the time more effectively to promote the best available policy interventions at a given time. Assuming I will spend 5 minutes with a Congressperson per week (could be my Rep, could be others), and probably only have like 10 min available to spend on figuring out what to talk to them about, how do I ef... (read more)

Is there a specific bill or amendment (or set of them) we should be asking ppl to support or oppose? Gonna see my Congressperson this weekend so good time to ask, but from a quick search it's not obvious what specifically I should be asking for. I'd like to be as detailed as possible. 

Second, what exactly needs to be reauthorized? The program itself, or an appropriation of funds? Or both? And if needs an appropriation, how much? Fun fact about the US system: Congress can effectively kill programs that are still technically on the  books, by just not giving them $, so you gotta be very clear in what you're demanding. 

It would be helpful to know who the key members of Congress to persuade are. The value of contacting your rep/senators likely varies a lot depending on where you live. 

Strongly endorse this post. I  came to the EA movement relatively late in life. And I notice that A LOT of younger EAs are really invested in getting an EA org job, to an extent that makes me uncomfortable. I think this is actually unhealthy for the movement, not just the individuals. But there's an incentives problem, where the orgs all say "no, people should apply even though it's super-competitive; let us make the decision about who's the best fit", and that really is optimal from the narrow perspective of that org. But especially given the time co... (read more)

4 and 7 are not really questions that one can meaningfully develop expertise on. Even politicians, whose jobs depend on understanding public opinion, are worse at this than just running a poll, and depend heavily on polling to assess public opinion when they have the money to run adequate polls. They do bring a useful amount of additional judgment to that process and can give you a sense of when a poll result is likely to not hold up in an adversarial environment, but I don't think you can develop an equivalent skill without actually spending a lot of time... (read more)

Why run a quixotic Presidential campaign when you could actually elect a bunch of Congresspeople? I don't think you need to rebuild SBF's infrastructure to do that; the average winner of an open House seat only spent $2.2 million in 2020. You wanna talk Senate/serious Presidential races you probably need better infrastructure; House races you could probably fund just from Carrick Flynn's non-SBF donor list plus the connections anyone in position to be a viable candidate already has.

I think this is something that mostly needs to be left up to individual organizations, and the media's framing of "EA has a sexual harassment problem" is really misleading. It should be "Organizations X and Y have a sexual harassment problem"; if people didn't want to name specific orgs then it never should've been published, and if people are going to try to tar others who were uninvolved that should be treated as the dishonest garbage it is. The media coverage and the community debate on this have been like if someone said "Democrats have a sexual harass... (read more)

I think you're just playing in to a broader cultural problem here. Too many younger EAs are too invested in getting a job at an EA organization, and/or in having the movement as a part of their identity (as distinct from the underlying ideal). If you think the movement has serious flaws that make it not a good means for doing the most good, then you should not be trying to work for an EA org in the first place, and the access to those opportunities is irrelevant.  

People should not be using the movement for career advancement independent of the ... (read more)

I asked for clarification the first time around, in addition to providing copious information about my involvement. There is no further information to provide. At this point they should admit or reject, not ask for further edits. Yes, I am sure it's burdensome for the reviewing team if they are creating extra work for themselves by not just making a decision, but that's a burden created by their poor work process, not by the task itself. 

awkward is pretty mild as far as ways to be emotionally stupid go. If that's all you're running into then EAs probably have higher than average emotional intelligence, but perhaps not as high in relative terms as their more classically defined intelligence

Seems unlikely for these examples. It's not the scientific discovery that really matters; it's the public health program implementing it, which is a lot more sensitive to pre-existing conditions than discovering a fact about the world is. 

why not? smallpox might or might not have died out, but hookworm would still be around

I think this response is fully accounted for by adjusting editing time based on the importance of the work, as stated in the post. 

If it's only ~as important as your normal daily work, and you have to do 5 drafts to make it better than existing work on the topic, it's probably not something you should write at all. Do something that will make a unique contribution on the first draft. 

oh yeah lots of opportunities in nj right now. Won my first two bets but I'm limited by the fact that I didn't plan in advance, and didn't have paypal connected to my bank. My bank's not allowing me to put enough money in and paypal will take several days to get connected. So fyi for anyone trying this, make sure your paypal account is funded in advance. 

I came to the basic idea of EA, long before I found the movement, from a Christian perspective. So I think there's certainly the basis for it in a lot of religions. But I think at that point I was more devout than most Christians, even most of those who go to church every Sunday. This is probably a key factor.

 I'm not sure how seriously most people take any of their goals, even the selfish ones. Lack of commitment is a hell of a thing, and even more so when mental effort and uncertainty are required.  It kind of astounds me how often people say t... (read more)

"the EA (Effective Altruism) movement has a pretty strong deference culture."

 Is this some kind of demographic thing? I haven't noticed it except in terms of college students/recent grads being a bit too attached to the idea of working for EA orgs. I defer when I don't feel like I have the appropriate knowledge and can't acquire it in reasonable time, and don't otherwise. 

As someone who was a solo-EA, without knowing there was a whole EA movement, for well over a decade, it's really nice to be able to rely on other people's judgment sometimes ins... (read more)

yeah; it seems obvious to me that "the good I accomplish" includes my contribution to allowing others to do good. I'm open to seeing evidence but I suspect the reason field-building, movement-building etc. isn't done as much as OP would like has nothing to do with this kind of confusion. In fact I think it's questionable how much you can do at the meta level if your direct work doesn't measure up. People show up when they see cool stuff being done, not so much when they hear you talk about the cool stuff that someone else should do. Sputnik did a great deal more for science and engineering education than running a bunch of commercials about the importance of science would have. 

I was going to make essentially the same point. I may have too much political experience for my emotional reaction to be worth anything in judging how a normal voter would feel, but to me, half or more of the money coming from one person feels like a big deal. Less than half feels like something that would receive criticism but that I would  generally write it off as sour grapes.

The fact that it's crypto money specifically probably matters a lot. The partisan valence of crypto among average people is pretty right-wing because of bitcoiners' libertaria... (read more)

The only EA who's ever been an asshole to me was an asshole because I supported  Flynn, so I don't think there was some hidden anti-donations-to-Flynn movement that self-censored. EAs who opposed the idea were quite loud about it. 

Also, no such thing as generic "too BOTEC-y to be useful." If you have a more rigorous calculation offer it. Otherwise BOTEC is the best available estimate and you should show it more respect until you do have an alternative. 

Joe Biden raised 1.69 bn, Trump 1.96 b https://www.npr.org/2020/05/20/858347477/money-tracker-how-much-trump-and-biden-have-raised-in-the-2020-election. Little more than I thought but not a whole OOM. Closer to 1b than 10b. Call it 2bn to win if u prefer. 

"Doesn't have much effect" is too vague a statement to be meaningful. 1/1b increase in chance of winning is simultaneously "not much" and also enough to spend money on where the consequences are large enough. 

This is why I suggest the marginal dollar is only 1/10 as effective as the avg dollar. I don't have any particular reason to think my est is off by an order of magnitude or more. If you do I'd like to hear it, and I suspect so would every campaign in the world. 

My back of the envelope. Back back back, like maybe even outhouse of the envelope. It's very hard to calculate marginal cost per vote, in part bc there's sort of an efficient markets thing going on w donations in some cases and not others. A senate race in Wyoming costs roughly the same as one in California, because the seat is just as valuable, despite vastly different numbers of votes. But activists getting worked up about a race can change the numbers, and in solid blue states it seems you can win a House seat more cheaply than in swing states, where yo... (read more)

I would love to see this!

Time's arrow goes only one way, my friend. Once it's gone you can't get it back, same as if you lit it on fire. 

It's a narrow class because the talent is rare, not because situational opportunities are. If you have the talent you can just go get the opportunities. 

What advantages do you propose that having Stanford prof parents provides, beyond those already implied by going to MIT? 

Sure, but the situational opportunity involved here is mostly being an American alive in the 21st century.  If you are the type of person who is capable of starting the next FTX and making $10bn, and you are an American,  you can get access to whatever help you need easily enough. 

Then let's see it. I'm not pattern-matching to anything. You said a thing that is simply untrue about advantages you believe a person coming from a lower upper class background would have. I am directly challenging your purported method of action based on my own experience of how easy it is to acquire those same advantages. Maybe they have some other advantages you haven't identified. But if so, let's see it. 

As someone who did not come from elite networks, I think most people vastly overrate the usefulness of being from that background, to their own detriment, and I think it's really really important that others from non-elite backgrounds understand it doesn't matter. You maybe have to take a little more initiative instead of just having it handed to you, but I'm not talking about backbreaking amounts. I'm talking like send a handful of cold emails, show up at a few professional events, that kind of thing. If you have the talent, people will help you use it.&n... (read more)

I think it's less impressive than him going to MIT, at minimum. Parents being smart suggests kid is smart, but kid can still fail to live up to their potential in lots of ways, and Stanford law prof is not that impressive beyond what it says about intelligence. 

Note: I make this last proposal as someone who could currently be pushing candidates at a few agencies but don't have any to push. So I know there's demand for it. 

I would absolutely not do this. This is going to insult powerful people for the sake of...what exactly? People gotta operate in the environment that actually exists, and we need to be supplying them with shovel-ready opportunities to do that, not asking them to go off on some philosophical exercise.