All of lifelonglearner's Comments + Replies

FYI one of the links seems broken for the website?

Appears to prefix effectivealtruism

I see it discussed sometimes in AI safety groups.

There are, for example, safety oriented teams at both Google Research and DeepMind.

But I agree it could be discussed more.

You're right that I expect there is a large group of both people and money who I expect to be interested in this because it's on the blockchain which forms part of my reasoning. It also allows for better interoperability with existing Ethereum assets, which helps if you thinking making ICs liquid is important (which I do).

What I instead meant by the second point, however, is that moving funding to existing IC holders seems like it would be harder to do with traditional finance methods and easier with blockchain tech.

I haven't worked enough ... (read more)

I agree that they probably have a good system in place for electronic tabulation, but museums generally don't trade art at high speeds across many, many actors.

And it seems desirable to have ICs trade at volume and speed, which I think museums probably don't have the specialized infra for, but blockchain does.

Having electronic tabulation means that you can allow transfers to happen quickly, and you can also disburse funds more quickly to holders of the ICs.

I would imagine that keeping a consistent record of who holds a physical item would take longer to verify and maintain.

1
kokotajlod
4y
These problems seem like they've been solved satisfactorily by museums and the associated industries, though.

I've been chatting with someone else who's been looking for an MVP of ICs to match some private funders and project creators.

We've also been in talks to collaborate with Gitcoin, a popular quadratic funding platform on Ethereum.

The short list of reasons is:

  • We both have fairly extensive blockchain dev experience
  • There's a lot of new capital and value creation in the blockchain space, and people are looking to fund public good projects. The community there is quite receptive to new market paradigms.
  • Transfers on Ethereum are fast and fungible with many other assets.

I think having a symbolic object could also be cool as well (and definitely welcome other projects looking to do them!), but the problem we're more focused on is:

  • Letting project creators issue them at scale and l
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5
Taymon
4y
The second point there seems like the one that's actually relevant. It strikes me as unlikely that doing this with blockchain is less work than with conventional payment systems even if the developers have done blockchain things before, and conventional payment systems are even faster and more fungible with other assets than Ethereum. I'm reading the second point there as suggesting something like, you're hoping that funding for this will come in substantial part from people who are blockchain enthusiasts rather than EAs, and who therefore wouldn't be interested if it used conventional payment infrastructure? (I agree that the "relics" idea is, at best, solving a different problem.)
1
kokotajlod
4y
Thanks! I get the divisibility thing, but why is it harder to retroactively fund IC holders with physical objects? Can't you just buy the object and add it to your collection? Isn't this basically how art works already -- Museums pay millions for a painting from long-dead artists, so smaller collectors pay hundreds of thousands, and individual rich people pay tens of thousands.

Oh, awesome, thanks for sharing this useful bit of context!

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this! Very informative and helpful!

Thanks for linking my Murphyjitsu write-up!

Slight correction to TAP's: They're typically referred to as "Trigger Action Plans" (and not 'potentials').

0
konrad
7y
Thanks for making the effort of writing it up, very much appreciated. Corrected TAPs, interesting mix-up, thanks for pointing it out!

Just want to respond that I'd be interested in doing this sort of thing for a short period of time (a few months) to test to waters.

Thank you for writing this up. I haven't spent cycles thinking this through, but my first glance says that this hits a lot of obvious avenues, which seems good.

I think I had a disjoint model of most of the things above, but it was all scattered and not consolidated. Putting them together (so that learning more, coordination, donating, gruntwork are all here) was a good way for me to update my own thoughts.

I'm sure what their respective funding constraints are.

Should there be a "not" in the middle here, or are you just saying that you have good info on their funding situation?

2
Raemon
7y
Heh, correct. Will update soon when I have a non phone to do it.

Awesome, thanks for taking the time to give more background on your thinking process!

It was helpful to see your overall thoughts on ways CFAR can make a case for EA's to attend, given their understanding of measuring impact.

Hi Evan!

You bring up some good points about quantifying CFAR's relative impact, which I would like to see them address in the near-future, especially given their connection to EA.

It sounds like your own CFAR experience wasn't exactly helpful in the way you expected it to be. Could you talk a little more about that? I'd be interested in hearing how your actual results stacked up with your expectations.

Lastly, as just a little note, university here in the US is more expensive than Canada, in case you were wondering.

A year at a public university for an in-s... (read more)

1
Evan_Gaensbauer
8y
Yeah, I went to CFAR for unconventional reasons and with unconventional expectations. E.g., I went for personal reasons without an expectation it would make my altruism itself more effective. I think CFAR is worth it for a lot of people, and I respect people's preferences enough that if: * they're not into EA * they wouldn't have donated the money anyway * they're a working college graduate A CFAR workshop is probably worth it and more valuable than the next closest thing, like a professional development workshop or something. I mean, nobody is saying people should spend $4k on a CFAR workshop instead of rent, food, and bills, but if they're in the position where their savings and lifestyle needs are covered, and they're shopping around to spend on, a CFAR workshop is a decent bet. However, I think EAs in particular demand a higher bar to make the case for CFAR workshops, and why EAs in particular should go, and I think we as CFAR alumni should rise to that challenge. I'm part of both the CFAR alumni community and EA, and the overlap between the two isn't 100%, so I respect the boundaries and norms of both, and switch which hat I'm wearing depending on the context. I think the CFAR staff themselves have done a better job of making the case to attend their workshop than any written review by a CFAR workshop alumnus/alumna. However, a more rigorous review from someone not working for them is what the more skeptical/risk-averse aspects of the EA community demands before more of them attend CFAR workshops themselves. The above comment was a note to myself as much as it was to anyone else, in that I might very well be the person best suited to writing that review, if nobody else does it. There are actual several members of the EA community I think would benefit from a CFAR workshop, and would find what they learn and the skills they gain worth the expense, but I don't think as many will go until their is a more rigorous evaluation. Also, I'm aware university is mo