This seems like a straw man. Where does the OP claim EA is not impactful? Given his strong engagement with the movement, I assume he believes that it is.
I think there might be a misunderstanding here? My entire point is that OP's conclusions are valid (they're saying a lot of true things like "Small communities can get a lot of impressive stuff done" and "Your little bubble will not solve the all the secrets of the universe") but the argument for those conclusions is invalid.
The argument goes[1]: if you are a small community and you don't following my advice then your impact is strongly limited.
My counter is a demonstration by counterexample, I argue that the argument can't be valid, since there exist small communities that don't follow OPs advice and that made a lot more than, in OPs words, "a small dent in the vast mine of unknown knowledge".
Cherry picking a couple of small groups [...] doesn't seem like a good counterargument to the claim that being a small group should encourage humility.
I hope the previous paragraph makes it clear why 'cherry picking' is appropriate here? To disprove an implication it's sufficient to produce an instance where the implication doesn't hold.
that achieved moderate success - one of whom entirely abandoned their research project after several decades after sustained and well-argued attack from people outside the circle
I guess here we have more of an object-level disagreement? Just because a philosophy eventually became canonised doesn't mean it was moderately successful. The fact that most of analytic philosophy was developed either in support or in opposition of logical positivism is pretty much the highest achievement possible in philosophy? And, according to the logic outlined above, it's not actually sufficient to explain away one of my counter-examples, to defend the original argument you actually have to explain away all of my counter-examples.
Just because a community is small and most smart people are outside of it doesn't mean that the community cannot have a disproportionately large impact. The Vienna Circle is one example (analytic philosophy and everything downstream of it would look very different without them) and they were somewhat insular. Gertrud Stein's Salons and the Chelsea Hotel might have had a similar impact on art and literature in the 20th century.
Importantly, I'm not saying EA is the same (arguably it's already too large to be included in that list), but the argument that statistically most smart people are outside of a small community is not a good argument for whether that community will be impactful or for whether that community should engage more with the rest of the world.
Conclusion is probably valid, argument probably invalid? The argument proves too much — “Most smart and skilled people are outside of the Vienna Circle”
That's true, I didn't realize that... But I don't actually think it's incompatible with the rest of the argument.
even if it's not the worst for everyone, it could still be one of the worst experiences for a lot of people (the 35% describing it as a so-so time in the Gallup poll). (related)
even if only 1 in 25 had a very bad time in high school, that would mean that their life satisfaction has to be a lot lower than baseline for the average to come out at -0.2. In particular, 0×0.96+x×0.04=−0.2, then x=−5 and we are in an extremely severe territory in terms of EQ5D.
your argument about nostalgia also appears very strong to me
During the research, I was also thinking about the Amish and in particular about this old SSC article on "ARE THE AMISH UNHAPPY? SUPER HAPPY? JUST MEH?". The conclusion there is "We just don’t know", so I did not go further into this.
In general, I anticipate that the self-selection effects on alternative schools and homeschooling will be pretty large, but would still be super interesting to see.
Great points, I agree! I guess I fell prey to the Streetlight effect there. I found this article by Robin Hanson interesting, Mason Hartman has interesting thoughts on Twitter (her most recent stuff is pretty extreme though), and there is a lot on YouTube on how the School System is broken in many ways. But despite a lot of educational reform, there are some issues that prove very hard to tackle. But perhaps there is something smart & unorthodox that can be done...
Thanks for the comment, gives me the fuzzies to know that this is useful to someone ☺
On explore/exploit there is this great post by Applied Divinity Studies (https://applieddivinitystudies.com/career-timing/) where they raise the possibility that EAs in particular spend too much time exploring and not exploiting. (But they also point out that interpreting toy models is tricky).
I've also written something (https://universalprior.substack.com/p/soldiers-scouts-and-albatrosses) where I argue that the optimal solution for explore-exploit trade offs that evolution has come up with (Levy flights) might also generalize to career decision and thinking more general (extended periods of deep focus on one topic, interrupted by bouts of substantial change/exploration of new terrain).
I think there might be a misunderstanding here? My entire point is that OP's conclusions are valid (they're saying a lot of true things like "Small communities can get a lot of impressive stuff done" and "Your little bubble will not solve the all the secrets of the universe") but the argument for those conclusions is invalid.
The argument goes[1]: if you are a small community and you don't following my advice then your impact is strongly limited.
My counter is a demonstration by counterexample, I argue that the argument can't be valid, since there exist small communities that don't follow OPs advice and that made a lot more than, in OPs words, "a small dent in the vast mine of unknown knowledge".
I hope the previous paragraph makes it clear why 'cherry picking' is appropriate here? To disprove an implication it's sufficient to produce an instance where the implication doesn't hold.
I guess here we have more of an object-level disagreement? Just because a philosophy eventually became canonised doesn't mean it was moderately successful. The fact that most of analytic philosophy was developed either in support or in opposition of logical positivism is pretty much the highest achievement possible in philosophy? And, according to the logic outlined above, it's not actually sufficient to explain away one of my counter-examples, to defend the original argument you actually have to explain away all of my counter-examples.
my paraphrase, would be curious if you disagree
Just because a community is small and most smart people are outside of it doesn't mean that the community cannot have a disproportionately large impact. The Vienna Circle is one example (analytic philosophy and everything downstream of it would look very different without them) and they were somewhat insular. Gertrud Stein's Salons and the Chelsea Hotel might have had a similar impact on art and literature in the 20th century.
Importantly, I'm not saying EA is the same (arguably it's already too large to be included in that list), but the argument that statistically most smart people are outside of a small community is not a good argument for whether that community will be impactful or for whether that community should engage more with the rest of the world.
Conclusion is probably valid, argument probably invalid? The argument proves too much — “Most smart and skilled people are outside of the Vienna Circle”
Thank you so much for your kind words <3 I'm happy you enjoyed the post!
That's true, I didn't realize that... But I don't actually think it's incompatible with the rest of the argument.
Thanks for the comment, glad you liked it (:
During the research, I was also thinking about the Amish and in particular about this old SSC article on "ARE THE AMISH UNHAPPY? SUPER HAPPY? JUST MEH?". The conclusion there is "We just don’t know", so I did not go further into this.
In general, I anticipate that the self-selection effects on alternative schools and homeschooling will be pretty large, but would still be super interesting to see.
I looked at this a little bit in my research and it seems that reports of bullying are actually most abundant in elementary school and then decrease steadily (in Japan, the U.S. in 2010, and possibly in China but the source is unavailable). This does not say anything about the severity of bullying though and I could imagine that's a strong factor ("it's wrong to think of little children as innocent, because not knowing isn't the same as not choosing. That children do little harms to each other with schoolyard fights, because they don't have the power to do great harm."). And I could also imagine that there is a kind of accumulative effect that comes from sustained bullying. Or perhaps stress from school and puberty are mediating factors?
But yeah, prima facie the high amount of bullying in elementary school doesn't fit the picture very well.
Great points, I agree! I guess I fell prey to the Streetlight effect there. I found this article by Robin Hanson interesting, Mason Hartman has interesting thoughts on Twitter (her most recent stuff is pretty extreme though), and there is a lot on YouTube on how the School System is broken in many ways. But despite a lot of educational reform, there are some issues that prove very hard to tackle. But perhaps there is something smart & unorthodox that can be done...
True, thanks for spotting! Should be fixed now.
Thanks for the comment, gives me the fuzzies to know that this is useful to someone ☺
On explore/exploit there is this great post by Applied Divinity Studies (https://applieddivinitystudies.com/career-timing/) where they raise the possibility that EAs in particular spend too much time exploring and not exploiting. (But they also point out that interpreting toy models is tricky).
I've also written something (https://universalprior.substack.com/p/soldiers-scouts-and-albatrosses) where I argue that the optimal solution for explore-exploit trade offs that evolution has come up with (Levy flights) might also generalize to career decision and thinking more general (extended periods of deep focus on one topic, interrupted by bouts of substantial change/exploration of new terrain).
Have a nice day!