Regarding AI lab coordination, it seems like the governance teams of major labs are a lot better placed to help with this, since they will have an easier time getting buy in from their own lab as well as being listened to by other labs. Also, the frontier models forum seems to be aiming at exactly this.
Thanks for writing this! If I don't want to sign-up to the finders course, are there any resources you would recommend for doing the one-hour lovingkindness sessions?
If taking your lawyer's advice, in this case, means being silent for 5-7 years, it seems like some people should speak openly and bear the costs.
I'd be interested to hear what you think is going wrong with Paul's writing style, if you want to share.
Hm, yeah I guess my intuition is the opposite. To me, one of the central parts of effective altruism is that it's impartial, meaning we shouldn't put some people's welfare over other's.
I think in this case it's particularly important to be impartial, because EA is a group of people that benefitted a lot from FTX, so it seems wrong for us to try to transfer the harms it is now causing onto other people.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding bank runs, but as I understand it, they happen because
I think the reason Richard listed #2 as a preference is that there might still be hope that FTX doesn't run out of money in the first place and no one loses their deposi...
Yeah while we’re here, can we focus more on start ups than high paying jobs this time https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JXDi8tL6uoKPhg4uw/earning-to-give-should-have-focused-more-on-entrepreneurship
For Level 3: Machine Learning, this document might be useful. It provides a quick summary/recap of a lot of the math required for ML.
This looks exciting! I plan to apply.
One reaction I have looking at the syllabus is that it's too theoretical for me in the beginning. I feel like it would be better to have an applied component from the start. Maybe the first two weeks could be theory paired with writing a short distillation in the first week, getting feedback, and then refining it. The feedback loop of actually writing is probably by far the best way to improve distillation skills. This is just an impression I have though, so I could be wrong.
Personally, I don't have a problem with the title. It clearly states the central point of the post.
Regarding the example, spending $5k on EA group dinners is really not that much if it has even a 2% chance to cause one additional career change.
How much of the impact generated by the career change are you attributing to CEA spending here? I'm just wondering because counterfactuals run into the issue of double-counting (as discussed here).
Unsure but probably more than 20% if the person wouldn't be found through other means. I think it's reasonable to say there are 3 parties: CEA, the group organizers, and the person, and none is replaceable so they get 33% Shapley each. At 2% chance to get a career change this would be a cost of 750k per career which is still clearly good at top unis. The bigger issue is whether the career change is actually counterfactual because often it's just a speedup.
I agree that there is an analogy to animal suffering here, but there's a difference in degree I think. To longtermists, the importance of future generations is many orders of magnitude higher than the importance of animal suffering is to animal welfare advocates. Therefore, I would claim, longtermists are more likely to ignore other non-longtermist considerations than animal welfare advocates would be.
Thanks for writing this! It seems like you've gone through a lot in publishing this. I am glad you had the courage and grit to go through with it despite the backlash you faced.
Not sure if this fits, but it seems like 80,000 hours started as somewhat of a side project. This 2015 article it says 80k started with Will MacAskill and Ben Todd “forming a discussion group and giving lectures on the topic, then eventually creating 80,000 Hours to spread their ideas.” (They link to this vintage lecture they gave.)
I’m not sure how much of a “side project” this was to Ben and Will. Maybe others know more about that era.
I agree with Aaron! Given the little time you have, I would make the pitch as simple as possible.
Fair enough. I would guess you can usually have a higher impact through your career since you are doing something you've specialized in. But the first two examples you bring up seem valid.
This seems like a good idea.
I submitted the following comment:
I urge the FDA to schedule its review of Paxlovid and to make the timeline 3 weeks or less, as it did with the COVID vaccine.
1000 people are dying of COVID in the US every day. With an efficacy of 89%, Paxlovid could prevent many of these deaths. The earlier Paxlovid is approved, the more lives will be saved.
Thank you for your consideration.
I wasn't sure what topic to put it under so I chose "Drug Industry - C0022."
I like this framing a lot. I particularly like the idea of replacing the phrase "doing good" with "helping others" and "maximization" with "prioritization."
I understand the impulse to mention volunteering before donations and careers because people naturally connect it with doing good. But I think it would be misleading for the following reasons:
I think we should be as accurate as we can w...
Is there evidence/theoretical reason to believe that not experimenting in governance leads a movement to become slow over time?
This approach is compelling and you make a good case for it, but I think what Lynch said about how not supporting a movement can feel like opposing it is significant here. On our university campus, supporting a movement like Black Lives Matter seems obvious, so when you refuse to, it makes it looks like you have an ideological reason not to.
A few people in the EA group organizers slack (6 to be exact) expressed interest in discussing this.
Here are some ideas for topics to cover:
I envision this as an open discussion for people to share their experiences. At the end, we could compile the result of our discussion into a forum post.
In the beginning of the Christiano part it says
There can't be too many things that reduce the expected value of the future by 10%; if there were, there would be no expected value left.
Why is it unlikely that there is little to no expected value left? Wouldn't it be conceivable that there are a lot of risks in the future and that therefore there is little expected value left? What am I missing?
Tyler Cowen again