All of Bridget_Williams's Comments + Replies

Hi Joshua!

Thanks for the kind words and for this question. For confidentiality reasons, the team can’t provide details of the institutions and roles of XPT participants. However, because several of our recruitment channels were EA-adjacent or directly related to existential risks (e.g. we recruited some experts via a post on the EA Forum and reached out to some organizations working on x-risks), our prior is that the XPT biorisk experts are more concerned about catastrophic and existential risks than would, say, a sample of attendees at the Global Health S... (read more)

Thanks so much! I'd also use that deck. 

I wonder if it might be helpful to modify your claim (i) to be more similar to Hilary’s definition by referring to intrinsic value rather than mattering morally. Eg. Something like:

(i) Lives situated in the future have just as much intrinsic value as lives situated in the present

I think that wording could be improved but to me it seems like it does a better job of conveying:

“For any populations of people p, and any permutation with respect to time of that population that keeps the wellbeing levels of all individuals the same, p’, p and p’ are equally good... (read more)

Thanks for writing this! I agree it’s helpful to have terms clearly defined, and appreciate the degree of clarity you’re aiming for here.

I agree with Holly when she says:

“we should have some way of distinguishing the view that time at which something occurs is morally arbitrary from a view that prioritizes acting today to try to affect the long-run future”.

To me this seems to be differentiating between a strictly value claim (like Hilary’s) and one that combines value and empirical claims (like yours). So maybe it’s worth defining something like Hilary’... (read more)

Hi Larks,

Thanks very much for linking that Williams and Ceci article. That was really interesting and quite heartening. I say heartening because I don’t think the bias being shown in that article is unfair. I think the gender of the candidate is a relevant factor in this instance, and in this scenario preferring women when all else is equal will ultimately lead to better outcomes for society.

Those decisions are being made in a context of women being underrepresented in the fields* and I think science is a field where equality in gender representation car... (read more)

Yep, EA Australia currently has no paid employees. But we are hiring for an Accounting and Administration Manager, with that wage funded by private donations from within Australia.That role won't be targeted towards community building, it will primarily be ensuring EA Australia meets its accounting and reporting obligations as a charity.

However, after recent discussions with Australian local EA group organisers, and in line with planned changes to our org structure, EA Australia is considering recruiting a person to serve as a central coordination point f... (read more)