All of jchen1's Comments + Replies

Thanks very much for this write-up, I learned a lot from it!

I’m a bit confused by your position on the counterfactual impact of Pugwash on political leaders’ views.

On the one hand:

• You say in your summary table that there is ‘weak positive evidence’ for Claim 4, the full version of which is that “Soviet Pugwash scientists made a difference to their government’s perspective on anti-ballistic missiles." (as an aside, I think it would be clearer to change the shorthand for Claim 4 from 'Relaying ideas to governments' to something that highlights the necessity

Thanks for the great analysis! 
Your first post said "My current best guess is that, between now and 2100, we face a ~35% chance of a serious, direct conflict between Great Powers." This seems to be the estimate that is used in your guesstimate model for "probability of a major great power war breaking out before 2100". 
But in this post you say  your best guess for the chance of at least one great power war breaking out this century is 45%. Not sure why there is this discrepancy, am I missing something? 

"I have regularly seen proposals in the community to stop and regulate AI development" - Are there any public ones you can signpost to or are these all private proposals?

Re your second point, a counter would be that the implementation of recommendations arising from ERS will often have impacts on the population around at the time of implementation, and the larger those impacts are the less possible specialization seems. E.g. if total utilitarians/longtermists were considering seriously pursuing the implementation of global governance/ubiquitous surveillance, this might risk such a significant loss of value to non-utilitarian non-longtermists that it's not clear total utilitarians/longtermists should be left to dominate the debate.

Thank you for the detailed response, very helpful!

Thanks for the thorough reply, and I've now read the second post which suggested more potential for direct impact than I had initially thought. On (2), I agree value drift wasn't a great term for what I had in mind. Thanks for bringing out the nuance there

Thanks for this write-up! A few questions, some of which you may already be planning to address in future posts:

1. How long do you think it takes to pick up the  vast majority (say >80%) of the transferable skills mentioned? I.e. is it likely that an optimal strategy may be to go into a top consulting firm for 1-2 years and then use the skills, brand and connections to do something more directly impactful? Roughly what proportion of consultants you interviewed/in the EA and Consulting Network are pursuing this strategy vs those who think they can maxi

Thanks for this! I'd love to hear your views on the potential for impact in this career path. For example: (1) What are some positive examples of impact that you/colleagues have been able to have on cause areas that EAs typically care about such as reducing existential risk? How rare is this kind of impact? (2) To what extent are staff in overseas embassies influencing the policy of the UK government vs just communicating it?
(3) How much has the foreign office's chance of making a difference on important global issues been diminished by Brexit? 
No worries if you don't feel comfortable answering all/any of these questions on here.