All of Juan Gil's Comments + Replies

I think "fast takeoff" and "intelligence explosion" mean approximately the same thing as FOOM (notably "catastrophic AI" refers to a broader category of scenarios), and these terms are often used especially in more formal contexts.

I'm not concerned about this being a big problem, but do think this post is a good nudge for people who don't typically think about the effect their language has on getting buy-in for their ideas.

I agree, most of my uncertainty / hedging was on parts of the post that were removed within a few hours of posting. Thanks for checking.

[this comment references the first version of this post, which has since been edited substantially such that this qualification no longer feels necessary]

Just want to note that my main contribution to this post was listing out questions I wanted answered to inform what EAs or the EA community should do. I have a lot of uncertainty about the structure of what assets belong to whom (compared to previous expectations) and what this implies about the EA funding landscape.

I don't have high confidence in empirical claims that might be made in this post, and I th... (read more)

2
Nathan Young
1y
Happy to remove your name Juan if you are uncomfortable though also I think most of the empirical claims are doing pretty well.
2
Sabs
1y
Re funding, does anyone know if the FTX Foundation is an actual legal entity? If so ,I imagine its funds should be relatively safe at least in the short-term (i.e Binance/bankruptcy court will have no claim on them). Although perhaps when FTX depositors sue, they might have some claim if it can be shown (as it probably can) that the Foundation's assets were gained through some kind of illegal activity? If not, and "FTX Foundation" is just a name for SBF giving money out of the (formerly big) pot of Alameda/FTX funds, then it probably all dries up overnight.

For 2), you might be interested in the EA Coworking Discord: https://discord.gg/zpCVDBGE (link valid for 7 days)

1
Patrick Liu
1y
Thanks, just got on it.  Will check it out!

I've heard and used "aligned EA" to refer to someone in category 2 (that is, someone deeply committed to overarching EA principles).

I don't think arrangement 1 (investor buys house and rents out just to EAs) is better than arrangement 2 (investor invests in whatever has highest returns, and EAs rent most convenient house) since the coordination required and inflexibility might be too much of a downside.

If the goal is to reduce costs of living together for EAs, the investor could subsidize the rent for the group of EAs while investing in something completely different with higher returns.

Some possible benefits of arrangement 1 are if the cohabitating EAs could actively make the house a ... (read more)

1
sberg
2y
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! We had not considered an investor subsidising rent for a group of EAs as another alternative. The problem that might come up with this is that it's nearly impossible to find available housing for a group of EAs independently on a student budget, just in terms of available rooms in one house at the same time. 

Some thoughts I have:

  • I agree that making connections and learning more about the World Federalism movement seems valuable, especially for people working in global governance from a longtermist perspective.
  • I agree that achieving a federalist world government would potentially solve lots of coordination problems that contribute to x-risk while being less susceptible to especially bad world government lock-in problems (than other world government types)
  • That said, I think I'm a bit pessimistic about the tractability of the end goal of achieving a federalist wo
... (read more)

Quantum randomness seems aleatory, so anything that depends on that to a large extent (everything depends on that to some extent) would probably also fit the term.

Winter solstice / summer solstice? Popular secular holiday in EA circles (though not strictly EA per se)

In case someone has capacity to do this right now, I'm under the impression that Open Phil does want their own page (based on conversation I had with someone researching there).