I see it primarily as a social phenomenon because I think the evidence we have today that AGI will arrive by 2030 is less compelling than the evidence we had in 2015 that AGI would arrive by 2030.

The evidence we have today that there will be AGI by 2030 is clearly dramatically stronger than the evidence we had in 2015 that there would be AGI by 2020, and that is surely the relevant comparison. This is not EA specific - we have been ahead of the curve in thinking AI would be a big deal, but the whole world has updated in this direction, and it would be strange if we hadn't as well.

I agree that what you describe could have been a decent new post. However, I disagree it characterizes what was actually shared here. Consider for the first example (I have editted the formatting):

The reception was… rough. According to her:

It has been the most emotionally draining paper we have ever written. We lost sleep, time, friends, collaborators, and mentors because we disagreed on: whether this work should be published, whether potential EA funders would decide against funding us and the institutions we're affiliated with, and whether the authors whose work we critique would be upset.

While many in the community responded constructively, others reportedly sought to suppress the paper — not on academic grounds, but out of fear that it might alienate funders. The clear implication here is that critique is encouraged, as long as it doesn’t threaten the financial or ideological foundations of the movement.

Somehow the omitted is the idea that... maybe the feedback was negative because the paper wasn't very good. Which would explain everything else... bad work typically shouldn't be published, bad work is evidence that future work will also be low quality which is an argument against funding in the future, and it is reasonable for people subject to low-quality criticism to be annoyed. Yet Bob's post here doesn't even mention this explanation, despite the 161 upvotes, and simply presents hostility and anti-democraticness as the only explanation.

and there are a significant number of new people each year

Eternal September is meant to be descriptive, not a normative ideal!

I don't think it's reasonable to repeatedly post the same content, even after it got hundreds of comments, many of which engaged with various ideas at quite some length. There are reasons why rejected ideas were rejected - you should proactively address them, or otherwise introduce new content if you want to achieve something.

I think 'biodiversity' generally implies a commitment to maintaining a very large number of species, over and above the identifiable value each one provides. It's not about protecting specifically identified valuable species.

I think it would be good if you could highlight what is new here, vs re-hashing one half of standard arguments (and not covering why people disagree).

I don't see how you can 'multiply by 1000+ other species' given these two examples were likely selected for being unusually large. 

Thanks for sharing, some very interesting ideas.

I'm skeptical about the biodiversity point, at least at that level of generality. It makes sense there are some species that are important for human welfare, maybe in ways that are not initially appreciated, but it seems like a big jump to go from this to biodiversity in general being important.

The improvements to flooring and noise pollution make a lot of sense to me. One interesting intervention I've heard of for the latter is improving the regulations about backup warning alarms on trucks and other vehicles.

"Coup" includes:

• ...
• Bush v. Gore would resolve YES

I realize 'Manifold questions with poor resolution criteria' is something of a repeated subject from me, but I think it's worth noting how perverse this criteria is. If traders are behaving rationally, for this contract to be trading at 30% implies 70% confidence that... the 2028 election will be more democratically legitimate than the 2000 election? As far as I can see, this market pricing is perfectly compatible with:

• 70% of being more democratically legitimate as a perfectly fine presidential election
• 30% of being equally legitimate to a perfectly fine presidential election

To the extent that you use the word 'coup' in a very expansive way that is not shared by most people, you should probably explicitly signpost this. The rest of your comment doesn't really follow as a result... why should SCOTUS deciding than you can't do cherry-picked county recounts create an incentive to rush to a strategic decisive advantage? The Absence of AGI was not an issue to the ruling back in 2000.

I'm not sure why you chose to frame your comment in such an unnecessarily aggressive way so I'm just going to ignore that and focus on the substance.

Yes, the Studio Ghibli example is representative of AI decentralizing power:

• Previously, only a small group of people had an ability (to make good art, or diagnose illnesses, or translate a document, or do contract review, or sell a car, or be a taxi driver, etc.)
• Now, due to a large tech company (e.g. Google, Uber, AirBnB, OpenAI) everyone who used to be able to still can, and also ordinary people can as well. This is a decentralization of power.
• The fact that this was not due to an ideological choice made by AI companies is irrelevant. Centralization and decentralization often occurs for non ideological reasons.
• The fact that things might change in the future is also not relevant. Yes, maybe one day Uber will raise prices to twice the level taxis used to charge, with four times the wait time and ten times the odor. But for now, they have helped decentralize power.
• The group of producers who are now subject to increased competition are unsurprisingly upset. For fairly nakedly self-interested reasons they demand regulation.
• Ideological leftists provide rhetorical ammunition to the rent-seekers, in classic baptists and bootleggers style.
• These demands for regulation affect four different levels of the power hierarchy:
  • The government (most powerful): increases power
  • Tech platform: reduces power
  • Incumbent producers: increases power
  • Ordinary people (least powerful): reduces power
• Because leftists focus on the second and third bullet points, characterizing it as a battle between small artisans and big business, they falsely claim to be pushing for power to be decentralized.
• But actually they are pushing for power to be more centralized: from tech companies towards the leviathan, and from ordinary people towards incumbent producers.

AI art seems like a case of power becoming decentralized: before this week, few people could make Studio Ghibli art. Now everyone can.