All of Jonathan_Michel's Comments + Replies

Thanks for writing this, Alix! 

I just wanted to add some data about two of your empirical claims about the prevalence of native English speakers in leadership positions:

Native English speakers are overrepresented in EA’s thought leadership

One very crude measure of this is to look at the attendees of the 2023 coordination forum. 
AFAICT, based on the LinkedIn profiles of the 31 attendees that are public: 22 are native English speakers, and 7 are not (two I am not sure about). Hence ~22% are non-native English speakers.

The monopoly on funding does n

[I have not read the whole post and might be missing something]

Yeah, I also felt confused/uneasy about this section and it did not feel like a strong piece of evidence to have a numbered list that only contains stuff like:

1. Alice accused [Person] of [abusing/persecuting/oppressing her] 
2. Alice accused [Person] of [abusing/persecuting/oppressing her] 
3. Alice accused [Person] of [abusing/persecuting/oppressing her] 
4. Alice accused [Person] of [abusing/persecuting/oppressing her] 
5. Alice accused [Person] of [abusing/persecuting/oppressing her] 

FWIW, I also "walked into an argument half-way through", and for me, the section "What do EA vegan advocates need to do?" was very useful to get a better sense of what exactly you were arguing for - you could consider putting a Tldr version of it at the beginning of the article.

Hey Elizabeth,
I just wanted to thank you for this post. I think it addresses a very important issue. It's really costly to write long, thorough articles like this one that contribute to our epistemic commons, and I am very grateful that you invested the time and effort! 
 

I can see that this does not feel great from a nepotism angle. However, as Weaver mentions the initial application is only a very rough pre-screening, and for that, a recommendation might tip the scales (and that might be fine).

Reasons why this is not a problem:

First, expanding on Weavers argument:

I think that the short hand of "this person vouches for this other person" is a good enough basis for a lot of pre-screening criteria. Not that it makes the person a shoe in for the job, but it's enough to say that you can go by on a referral. 

If the applica... (read more)

I am confused about what your claims are, exactly (or what you’re trying to say). 

One interpretation, which makes sense to me, is the following

“Starting an AI safety lab is really hard and we should have a lot of appreciation for people who are doing it. We should also cut them some more slack when they make mistakes because it is really hard and some of the things they are trying to do have never been done before.” (This isn’t a direct quote)

I really like and appreciate this point. Speaking for me personally, I too often fall into the trap of critici... (read more)

[Disclaimer, I have very little context on this & might miss something obvious and important]

In discussions of this post (the content of which I can’t predict or control), I’d ask that you just refer to me as Cathleen, to minimize the googleable footprint. And I would also ask that, as I’ve done here, you refrain from naming others whose identities are not already tied up in all this.

As there is some confusion on this point, it is important to be clear. The central complaint in the Twitter thread is that *5 days* after Cathleen’s post, the poster

You can indicate uncertainty in the form, so feel free to fill it out and state your probability :)

Nope :D
Thanks for pointing that out!

I agree that this is an important thing to keep in mind. Especially introductory events (talks, fellowships etc.) should be offered in German (or at least with a German option, i.e. one fellowship group which is in German).

Very strong upvote. Thanks for commenting this Simon.

(Meta: I am afraid that I am strawmaning your position because I do not understand it correctly, so please let me know if that is the case )

Personally, I am a pretty strong believer that the unique thinking style of effective altruism has been essential for its success so far, and that this thinking style is very closely related to certain skills & virtues common in STEM fields.  So I am skeptical that there is much substance behind claims #1 or #2 in general.  

I agree with you that it seems plausible that the unique thinking style of EA... (read more)

Thank you very much for creating this list! 

Related, see the contributions in this thread. Books recommended there which you did not mention:

• Foundation
• The Mote in God's Eye
• Alas, Babylon
• On the Beach
• Canticle for Leibowitz
  
   

RE: "Consider Phlebas, The Player of Games - Iain M. Banks"

I would second your ordering of PoG>CP. To add to the ordering: IMO "The Use of Weapons" is also not a really good book from a longtermist point of view, while "Excession" is a great read (so I guess: Excession>PoG>TUoW>CP).

I would be interested in what other people thought about the rest of the books of the culture series - are there some books that are much better than others?

A few more wonderful quotes from HPMOR:

"And Harry remembered what Professor Quirrell had said beneath the starlight: Sometimes, when this flawed world seems unusually hateful, I wonder whether there might be some other place, far away, where I should have been… But the stars are so very, very far away… And I wonder what I would dream about, if I slept for a long, long time.

Right now this flawed world seemed unusually hateful. And Harry couldn’t understand Professor Quirrell’s words, it might have been an alien that had spoken, or an Artificial Intelligence... (read more)

Another one from this post:

"There may well come a day when humanity would tear apart a thousand suns in order to prevent a single untimely death.

That is the value of a life."

Another quote by MacFarquhar on Parfit:

"As for his various eccentricities, I don’t think they add anything to an understanding of his philosophy, but I find him very moving as a person. When I was interviewing him for the first time, for instance, we were in the middle of a conversation and suddenly he burst into tears. It was completely unexpected, because we were not talking about anything emotional or personal, as I would define those things. I was quite startled, and as he cried I sat there rewinding our conversation in my head, trying to figure out wh... (read more)

I would recommend this short essay on the topic: Human Extinction, Asymmetry, and Option Value
Abstract: "How should we evaluate events that could cause the extinction of the human species? I argue that even if we believe in a moral view according to which human extinction would be a good thing, we still have strong reason to prevent near-term human extinction."
(Just to clarify: this essay was not written by me)
 

For everyone who is also looking up the books right now. Here are the links:

• Foundation
• Remembrance of Earth's Past (The Dark Forest trilogy)
• The Mote in God's Eye
• Alas, Babylon
• On the Beach
• Canticle for Leibowitz

Thanks a lot for writing this. 

One thing I started recently is collecting instances of people acting altruistic and courageous and reading about these when I need motivation (their Wikipedia articles or a text I wrote myself etc.). These examples can go from very small acts to big ones. Reading about actual examples of people standing up to the social norms or laws of their time to do the right thing gives me a lot of motivation to keep pursuing an altruistic path even in the face of difficulty. One example I came across recently is a farther who supp... (read more)