Maintaining that healthy level of debate, disagreement, and skepticism is critical, but harder to do when an idea becomes more popular. I believe most of the early "converts" to AI Safety have carefully weighed the arguments and made a decision based on analysis of the evidence. But as AI Safety becomes a larger portion of EA, the idea will begin to spread for other, more "religious" reasons (e.g., social conformity, $'s, institutionalized recruiting/evangelization, leadership authority).
As an example, I'd put the belief in prediction markets as an E...
Are there any amateur EA historians who can help explain how longtermism grew in importance/status? I’d say 80k for instance is much more likely now to encourage folks to start a longtermist org than a global health org. There is lots of funding still moving towards the traditional neartermist causes like malaria and deworming, but not too much funding encouraging people to innovate there (or start another AMF).
Ultimately, I’m curious which person or orgs got convinced about longtermism first! It feels much more driven by top-down propagation than a natural evolution of an EA idea.
This post wanted data, and I’m looking forward to that … but here is another anecdotal perspective.
I was introduced to EA several years ago via a Life You Can Save. I learned a lot about effective, evidence-based giving, and “GiveWell approved” global health orgs. I felt that EA had shared the same values as the traditional “do good” community, just even more obsessed with evidence-based, rigorous measurement. I changed my donation strategy accordingly and didn’t pay much more attention to EA community for a few years.
But in 2020, I checked back in t...
Yes, i’m always unsure of what “bad faith” really means. I often see it cited as a main reason to engage or not engage with an argument. But I don’t know why it should matter to me what a writer or journalist intends deep down. I would hope that “good faith” doesn’t just mean aligned on overall goals already.
To be more specific, i keep seeing reference hidden context behind Phil Torres’s pieces. To someone who doesn’t have the time to read through many cryptic old threads, it just makes me skeptical that the bad faith criticism is useful in discounting or not discounting an argument.