The difference between the most vs least spooky X-risks is way more than a 100X difference.

I think I would agree with this, if I had to put a number.

What I mean in my comment is, with this model, if you say okay let's pick a bigger n so that we see bigger differences in OOMs, then you are also introducing more points of failure in the estimation, and that effect dominates.

Do you have an a priori reason to discard this? Besides the conclusion being wacky, which is a good reason to discard a model anyways.

the OOM of variation in "ground truth" come from alpha and n, not xmin

alpha, we could talk all day, but the model is not extremely sensitive to it

on the other hand, if you say let's have more OOMs in the possible values of ground truth, following the power law, that means jacking n up

and when you jack n up you have even more opportunities for errors to be crazy big, and this effect dominates (at least that's what I read from the OP) and the curse becomes worse

now if we change alpha and n at the same time, idk

my honest opinion is that numbers are just one way to process information, and using them for this is so out of distribution that it's essentially meaningless (as it is when discussing p(doom) and stuff like that)

Ties in with the more meta-level fact that numbers are used a lot in EA/rationalist spaces, even when there are kinds of uncertainty that don't go along with them.

I'm sure people have written about this many times but don't know who to cite.

Hi, could you share some info for reference:

• Breakdown of expenses
• How much did it cost (in time) to run the stuff
• Schedule

Hi, I don't love talking to GPT but:

1. I agree with you that there is a vibe that if you aren't doing The Most Impactful Thing (TM), you don't count. That's uncomfortable.
2. I disagree with your split between "practitioners" and "NGO workers". NGOs have practitioners, if they are delivering something.
3. I think urbanism (and policy in general) can be a high impact area, but you need to compare it to other aspects and policy. I haven't run any numbers so I can't know.

Not an answer but Rational Reminder (nerdy evidence-based finance podcast by Ben Felix and colleagues) interviewed Elie Hassenfeld (from GiveWell). Super interesting:
https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/372

I find this quite useful to avoid the failure mode that worries me the most, namely, that once one derives a source of income from being a community builder, their incentives start to look like "do whatever gets me renovated" and less like "do whatever I really believe is most impactful".

So separating the operations layer (professional), from the more ideological/opinionable layer (not paid) seems like a very good idea to me.

The analogy with quakers having pastor and administrator roles separated is helpful to me to put words on why I have complicated feelings about EA paid CB roles, because they are in some sense both.

I've been thinking about this for a while since I read your post about it:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Z9gdKj7eGsy3rzurH/you-should-donate-to-ea-fundraisers-or-community-builders

It would feel very weird and conflict-of-interest-y to fund someone in my local group to be a paid organizer, right now we're a bunch of volunteers running it.

You say well stewarded meta-EA is very high impact. I agree in theory, but I'm not sure about how to know if something is well stewarded in practise.

Fantastic post, thank you for airing it.

Something that I can say at a personal level is: I find it very hard to trust a paid community builder, be it a priest, an amateur orchestra conductor or an EA community builder. I see conflicts of interest everywhere.

On the other hand, I think growing the movement makes sense, and having people dedicated to it makes sense, so if someone is doing it you want to measure how they are doing, etc

I find it very hard to reconcile.

By the way, I clicked the link (finally), and:

• I don't find Wiley anywhere
• I don't see a physical address anywhere
• Meritpeer claims big numbers of users, but I didn't find anyone talking about it (trustpilot, reddit, etc)
• They have premium pricing to speed review up to 5 days or even 2 days

I wouldn't even give it a chance, this aren't a couple red flags, we talking November 1917 situation here.

Which makes me sad, because I really like the broader point of engaging with mainstream academia and playing ball, and I've been nerdsniped by a discussion about peer review and feel that I'm derailing the comment section.