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All of Chris Lonsberry's Comments + Replies

Paul Christiano: Current work in AI alignment
Chris Lonsberry8mo2
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Does anyone have a link to the slides? I could use more zoom 😅

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The Track Record of Futurists Seems ... Fine
Chris Lonsberry2y6
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This was posted to lesswrong 4 days ago; consider checking out the comments to the lesswrong version. There are 18 comments at the time I'm writing this.

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Eli Rose's Quick takes
Chris Lonsberry2y1
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"but why hasn't EA done this already?"

still seems like a fair question. I think the underlying problem you're pointing to might be that people will then give up on their projects or ideas without having come up with a good answer. An "EMH-style" mindset seems to point to an analytical shortcut: if it hasn't already been done, it probably isn't worth doing. Which, I agree is wrong. 

I still think EMH has no relevance in this context and that should be the main argument against applying it to EA projects. 

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Eli Rose's Quick takes
Chris Lonsberry2y1
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I had to use Wikipedia to get a concise definition of EMH, rather than rely on my memory:

The efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) is a hypothesis in financial economics that states that asset prices reflect all available information. A direct implication is that it is impossible to "beat the market" consistently on a risk-adjusted basis since market prices should only react to new information. [1]

This appears to me to apply exclusively to financial (securities) markets and I think we would be taking (too) far out of its original context in trying to use ... (read more)

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Eli Rose
2y
What I'm talking about tends to be more of an informal thing which I'm using "EMH" as a handle for. I'm talking about a mindset where, when you think of something that could be an impactful project, your next thought is "but why hasn't EA done this already?" I think this is pretty common and it's reasonably well-adapted to the larger world, but not very well-adapted to EA.
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Lizka
2y
Hi Chris, thanks for suggesting this! I'll add it. 
Eli Rose's Quick takes
Chris Lonsberry2y1
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I don't see the connection between EMH and EA projects. Can you elaborate on how those two intersect?

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Eli Rose
2y
EMH says that we shouldn't expect great opportunities to make money to just be "lying around" ready for anyone to take. EMH says that, if you have an amazing startup idea, you have to answer "why didn't anyone do this before?" (ofc. this is a simplification, EMH isn't really one coherent view) One might also think that there aren't great EA projects just "lying around" ready for anyone to do. This would be an "EMH for EA." But I think it's not true.
The Effective Altruism Handbook
Chris Lonsberry3y2
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What is the relationship between this handbook and the one hosted at https://www.effectivealtruism.org/handbook/ ?

The handbook at the above link is available in epub, mobi, and pdf formats, which seems to answer the requests in the comments here. Is it an older version? The cover indicates that it is the second edition, but sadly does not include a revision date.

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Aaron Gertler
3y
Thanks for asking!  Your link goes to the previous version, which was pitched at a slightly more advanced audience than was probably ideal (and covers a lot less ground overall). We've added a redirect that sends people from that page to this page.