All of Jakob_J's Comments + Replies

Thank you for writing this well-argued post - I think its important to keep discussing exactly how big P(doom) is. However, and I say this as someone who believes that P(doom) is on the lower end, it would also be good to be clear about what the implications would be for EAs if P(doom) was low. It seems likely that many of the same recommendations - reduce spending on risky AI technologies and increase spending on AI safety - would still hold, at least until we get a clearer idea of the exact nature of AI risks.

How dependent is current AGI safety work on deep RL? Recently there has been a lot of emphasis on advances in deep RL (and ML more generally), so it would be interesting to know what the implications would be if it turns out that this particular paradigm cannot lead to AGI.

In general, I don't spend much time worrying about "neglectedness" in the ITN framework. I think that is because while many important problems are not neglected in an absolute sense (e.g. climate change), it is still the case that some solutions will be much more effective than others within each problem area. Therefore, one may have a large impact on less neglected problems by simply focusing on more effective solutions. 

Don't try to wake up and save the world. Don't be bycatch. Take 15 years and become a domain expert. Take a career and become a macrostrategy expert. Mentor. Run small and non-EA projects. Circle back to EA periodically with your newfound skills and see what a difference you can make then. There is absolutely no way we can have a longtermist movement if we can't be longtermist about our own lives and careers. But if we can, then we can.

Many social movements I have been a part of (political, sports, religious etc.) have a sort of "more is more" aspect to th... (read more)

PhDs get a lot of negative hype these days, so much that I wonder if it is potentially underrated it as a viable career step. I am just coming out of a PhD programme in the UK, and while I didn't always enjoy my topic nor want to continue research in my field, I still think it is overall a positive experience. It is important to realize that most people starting PhDs are well aware of the low chances of becoming a professor, but luckily there are still many good career options outside academia (however I do think all the negative hype around academic caree... (read more)

Thanks for sharing your perspective! It seems like having a family in major metropolitan areas are especially challenging due to the much higher housing cost. I am wondering if you have any examples of the types of jobs you think would be difficult to afford raising a family in London (alternatively, what salary)? For example, it seems that a civil servant could earn £40,000 per year after a few years of experience, and I suspect other sectors where EAs would want to work might pay a similar amount (academia, NGOs etc).

Regarding having lots of time, it is ... (read more)

How much money is required to raise a family?

A big part of many peoples motivation for earning a high income seems to be the perception that it is a necessity in order to raise a family. Many EA-aligned jobs are in the public or NGO sector and are less paid than what people could earn in the private sector, and since close to 80% people have children, this could be big factor for people to give up on an EA-aligned career. 

I am wondering whether this reasoning is valid, and where the extra cost for children comes from. In most western countries, there ... (read more)

• Most human effort is being wasted on endeavors with no abiding value.
• Nothing we do matters for any of several reasons (moral non-realism, infinite ethics, living in a simulation, being a Boltzmann brain, ..?)

Things certainly feel very doom & gloom right now, but I still think there is scope for optimism in the current moment. If I had been asked in February last year what the best and worst outcomes would have been of the pandemic a year later, I would probably have guessed a whole lot worse than what turned out to be the case. I also don't think... (read more)

This terrible news. I also did not know Tommy, but my heart really goes out to his friends and family. Reading the statement I was touched by his strength of character - he appears to have been extremely gifted, loving and humble and with a genuine interest in helping others and the world. We can all surely find great inspiration in the exemplary  life Tommy led.

This is also a stark reminder that no matter how outwardly successful or happy we might appear, we all carry our share of troubles and negative feelings; doubting ourselves and our worthiness,... (read more)

Yes, I agree that when we are trying to maximise the amount of good we do with limited resources, these local charities are not likely to be a good target for donations. However, as you mention, EA is different from utilitarianism because we don't believe everyone should use all or most of their resources to do as much good as possible. 

So when we spend money on ourselves or others for reasons other than trying to maximise the good this might also include donations to local causes. It seems inconsistent to say that we can spend money on whatever we wa... (read more)

"Most supporters of EA don't tell people not to go out to nice restaurants and get gourmet food for themselves, or not to go the the opera, or not to support local organizations they are involved with or wish to support, including the arts."

Thanks, I agree with this statement! However, in Halsteads comment it said

"I just think it is true that EAs shouldn't donate to their local opera house, pet sanctuary, homeless shelter or to their private school, and that is what makes EA distinctive."

I think it would be good to be clearer in our communication and say t... (read more)

"I just think it is true that EAs shouldn't donate to their local opera house, pet sanctuary, homeless shelter or to their private school"

This is a very minor point, but I don't quite understand what EA has against cultural establishments like opera houses and museums. Of course, counting the number of lives saved one shouldn't donate to museums, but that kind of misses the point that these institutions might be offering free or discounted tickets in exchange for charitable donations. If they switched over to everyone paying a full price they would probably still get a similar revenue, but it would be an objectively worse situation since fewer people would get the chance to visit.

I think lots of people can relate to this sentiment! 

I could recommend having a look at Escape the City which provides a list of career opportunities for mid-career professionals wanting more social impact in their work: https://www.escapethecity.org/

If you are interested in short or long term volunteering with your tech skills, I can recommend a number of organisations that provide ample opportunities for this in the UK:

https://techforuk.com/
"Tech For UK aims to enable people to transform British democracy through technology and digital media that im... (read more)

I would also highlight the contribution towards creating an educational platform that extends beyond the immediate participants in the course. I believe most of the talks are available on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR4WNZP7Uxfe4F1XNugu5_g

A great resource!

I actually think the principles of deference to expertise and avoiding accidental harm are in principle good and we should continue using them. However, in EA the barrier to being seen as an expert is very low - often its enough to have written a blog or forum post on something, having invested less than 100 hours in total. For me an expert is someone who has spent the better part of his or her career working in a field, for example climate policy. While I think the former is still useful to give an introduction to a field, the latter form of expertise has been somewhat undervalued in EA.

Hi Michael, thanks for your reply!

I agree with everything you are saying, and I did not mean to imply that people should not consider working at explicit EA organisations. Indeed, I would also be interested at working at one of them at some point!

The point I wanted to make is that the goal of "getting a job at an EA organisation" in itself is a near-term career goal, since it does not answer many of the questions choosing a career entails, many of which have been highlighted in the post above as well as by 80,000 hours. I am thinking of questions like:

How ... (read more)

Thanks for writing and sharing your insights! I think the whole EA community would be a lot healthier if people had a much more limited view of EA, striving to take jobs that have positive impact in the long  run, rather than focussing so much on the much shorter-term goal of taking jobs in high-profile EA organisations, at great personal expense.

I agree with most of the benefits, but think that the "employees may freely choose to leave" part may be somewhat contentious. People need money to survive, and one argument that is often brought forward is that Amazon has driven a lot of smaller businesses out of the market, so that employees may not have that many choices of where to work any more.

Great post! I've also experienced similar things during my time with EA. I think there are several ways to approach the issue of self-worth:

1. Its important to realize that EA is not the same as utilitarianism and therefore does not suffer from the problem of demandingness (this is also discussed in the latest 80K podcast with Benjamin Todd). EA does not prescribe how much of resources we should share, only that the ones we do share should be distributed in an effective way.
2. Unfortunately there is a tendency in EA to undervalue "small" contributions (i.e. t

Are emergencies different from non-emergencies? A new paper ( https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-020-01566-0 ) argues that the obligation of saving a drowning child is different from the obligation of donating to effective charities in order to save a life. They claim that in emergencies where we can directly intervene to save a life, we are obliged as participants in an informal insurance scheme in society to intervene even at great cost to ourselves. Through this model they aim to explain the "common sense" moral intuition that it... (read more)

I would say that depends slightly on the circumstances. If for example you are a single parent and need $100 to spend on medicines for your children (even if it is for a non life-threatening condition), I would say that you need to fulfill that obligation before you should consider donating to AMF.

Thanks! I have only recently started thinking about it in terms of scale so I am mainly basing it on my own intuitions (I am also not a philosopher, so not sure if I would be able to formalize the arguments). However, if I were to try to make a prescriptive version I would probably start by saying that we have obligations to each other (i.e. like parents have obligations to their children), and at each "scale" or population size, some of these obligations cancel out (a state doesn't have obligations to a particular child but to its children in general). At the largest scale, the only obligation left is to preserve life itself, which is why utilitarianism works so well here.

Nice post. Your friend wrote that

"Lately, I've been having an alarming amount of conversations arise about the burdens of loneliness, alienation, rootlessness, and a lack of belonging that many of my peers feel, especially in the Bay Area",

which made me wonder if there are geographical areas or cities in the western world that have a particularly high level of connection and community? Maybe those cities could be studied and promising cultural characteristics be spread to other cities and communities?

Thanks for posting! I have an analytic background and have therefore found it particularly useful to shore up on "soft skills" from books like:

Working with emotional intelligence, Daniel Goleman

Daring greatly, Brené Brown

The wilderness, Brené Brown

I also read articles and listen to podcasts from Harvard Business Review on emotional intelligence, leadership, and management.

Thanks for your comments Aaron and Lukas. From my own experience, I have definitely encountered more people with an always-working mentality within EA than outside it. Anectodally, almost all the people (~ 10) I have met who seriously consider meal replacements as adequate alternatives to home cooked food have been EAs. This might be an inverse causal effect (ambitious people might like the EA concept more than others), but it is still problematic if people feel the need to constantly optimize themselves and work harder due to the social pressure within EA.

Thanks for your comment, and I think you are correct on the mechanism of action. I have noticed that my own productivity has gone up since I started giving myself more unproductive time every day, as I am more able to focus and feel less distracted by thoughts. But it only works when I allow the unproductive time to be truly for myself, and not spent thinking about how this will make me more productive.

I think productivity is highly emphasized both within EA and within the wider society, especially in the context of work and studies. There is not nearly the same amount of emphasis placed on unproductive downtime and its value for our mental and physical well-being. I think that if most of our productive "output" comes over a long-term career, we need to value our own time more.

Another way of thinking about it is that being highly productive is not in itself a virtue, a bit like driving 150 km/h on the highway in a random direction doesn't ... (read more)

Thanks for sharing, and thanks to everyone for adding their own perspectives to this discussion. I would like to offer my view, which is informed by having gone through difficult periods myself.

I think its a mistake to get too involved with the view that getting a job in an EA org is the only way to make a difference in the world, or indeed to ourselves. In order to stay healthy I think we need to realize that there are other things that matter in the world than EA, such as our relations and our wellbeing. If we get too emotionally attached to the idea of ... (read more)