L

Linch

@ Rethink Priorities
19148 karmaJoined Dec 2015Working (6-15 years)

Bio

"To see the world as it is, rather than as I wish it to be."

I'm a Senior Researcher on the General Longtermism team at Rethink Priorities. Right now, my team and I are re-orienting towards what are the best things to do, see here.

I also volunteer as a funds manager for EA Funds' Long-term Future Fund.

Comments
2239

Linch
1h20

Thanks for the correction! I also appreciate the polite engagement.

As a quick clarification, I'm not a stickler for exact quotes (though e.g. the APA is), but I do think it's important for paraphrases to be accurate.

I'll also endeavor to be make my own comments harder to misinterpret going forwards, to minimize future misunderstandings.

To be clear, I also appreciate the content of this post, but more because it either brought new information to my attention, or summarized information I was aware of in the same place. (rather than because it offered particularly novel insights). 

Linch
1d88

I also consider Conjecture's official reply to be rather defensive, but I guess it could just be cultural differences.

Linch
2d157

Possibly overly meta, but my pet theory here is that Conjecture, or at least the culture as presented by Conjecture's public writings, is more culturally rationalist than approximately every other AI Safety org, so perhaps there's some degree of culture clash or mood affiliation going on here.

Linch
2d1319

I wouldn't take the negative feedback too seriously, people can get tribal about topics like this and by my lights the quality of arguments they presented seemed low.

Linch
4d2414

You can see this already in the comments where people without context say this is a good piece and thanking you for "all the insights".

FWIW I Control-F'd for "all the insights" and did not see any other hit on this page other than your comment. 

EDIT 2023/06/14: Hmm, so I've since read all the comments on this post on both the EAF and LW[1], and I don't think your sentence was an accurate paraphrase for any of the comments on this post?

For context, the most positive comment on this post is probably mine, and astute readers might note that my comment was process-oriented rather than talking about quantity of insights.

  1. ^

    (yes, I have extremely poor time management. Why do you ask?)

Linch
4d252

Interestingly, the reception at LessWrong is more critical (13 net karma at 66 votes), compared to here (113 net karma at 80 votes). 

Linch
5d2712

Great post, thank you for writing it in such detail, with great care and clarity, and also I appreciate the blunt and very concrete takeaways!

Quick note: Footnotes do not work for me (Chrome on MacOS). Not sure if you guys made a mistake somewhere or if it's a EAF bug, just thought I should mention this in case this is true for other people as well and the relevant people can fix it.

Linch
6d33

I agree that identity and identity strength are important variables for collective guilt assignment.

That said, I think the case for JM is substantially stronger than the case for Schimdt, which we were previously talking about upthread. 

Linch
8d80

Yeah I don't have non-deference based arguments of really basic and important things like:

  • whether stars exist
  • how the money system works
  • gravity

And it was only in the last few years that I considered inside view arguments for why the Earth isn't flat. 

Linch
9d20

The more important metric to me will be if it is possible to do highly (preferably positively) impactful work while collaborating with universities, which I've seen positive evidence from individual professors/labs but not for larger groups. 

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