All of Milan_Griffes's Comments + Replies

ACE isn't fucking around. 

Zvi's take on this is good: https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2023/10/24/book-review-going-infinite 

There's a new paper on jhana (in Cerebral Cortex) out of Matthew Sacchet's Harvard Center: Fu Zun Yang et al. 2023 

Got it, thanks. I'm interested in the cattle analysis because cows yield ~4x more meat than pigs per slaughter, and could perform even better than that when factoring in cognition. 

This is beautiful, thank you for creating it. 

Did you look at cows as part of the analysis? 

Apart from pivoting to “x-risk”, what else could we do?

Cultivate approaches to heal psychological wounds and get people above baseline on ability to coordinate and see clearly. 

CFAR was in the right direction goalwise (though its approach was obviously lacking). EA needs more efforts in that direction. 

When is the independent investigation expected to complete? 

I wrote a thread with some reactions to this. 

(Overall I agree with Tyler's outlook and many aspects of his story resonate with my own.) 

(b) intriguing IMO and I want to hear more -- #10, #11, #16, #19

10. nuclear safety being as important as AI alignment and plausibly contributing to AI risk via overhang 

See discussion in this thread 

11. EA correctly identifies improving institutional decision-making as important but hasn't yet grappled with the radical political implications of doing that 

This one feels like it requires substantial unpacking; I'll probably expand on it further at some point. 

Essentially the existing power structure is composed of organizations (mostly l... (read more)

Ah, the silent majority and the vocal minority. 

But I have a feeling that the community takes revenge on him for all the tension the recent events left. This is cruel. I’m honestly worried if the guy is ok. Hope he is. 

The scapegoat mechanism comes to mind: 

The key to Girard's anthropological theory is what he calls the scapegoat mechanism. Just as desires tend to converge on the same object, violence tends to converge on the same victim. The violence of all against all gives way to the violence of all against one. When the crowd vents its violence on a common scapegoat, unity is restored. Sacrificial rites the world over are rooted in this mechanism.

I wrote in this direction a few years ago, and I'm very glad to see you clearly stating these points here. 

From What's the best structure for optimal allocation of EA capital? – 

So EA is currently in a regime wherein the large majority of capital flows from a single source, and capital allocation is set by a small number of decision-makers.

Rough estimate: if ~60% of Open Phil grantmaking decisioning is attributable to Holden, then 47.2% of all EA capital allocation, or $157.4M, was decided by one individual in 2017. 2018 & 2019 will probably

... there is a lot we can actually do. We are currently working on it quite directly at Conjecture. 

I was hoping this post would explain how Conjecture sees its work as contributing to the overall AI alignment project, and was surprised to see that that topic isn't addressed at all. Could you speak to it?

Isn't the point of being placed on leave in a case like this to (temporarily) remove the trustee from their duties and responsibilities while the situation is investigated, as their ability to successfully execute on their duties and responsibilities has been called into question? 

(I'm not trying to antagonize here – I'm genuinely trying to understand the decision-making of EA leadership better as I think it's very important for us to be as transparent as possible in this moment given how it seems the opacity around past decision-making contributed to... (read more)

Thanks, Claire. Can you comment on why Nick Beckstead and Will MacAskill were recused rather than placed on leaves of absence? 

Thanks, Nicole! It's helpful to hear updates like this from EA leadership in the midst of all these scandals. 

Can you comment on why Nick Beckstead was recused rather than placed on a leave of absence?

Thank you for a good description of what this feels like . But I have to ask… do you still “want to join that inner circle” after all this? Because this reads like your defense of using a burner account is that it preserves your chance to enter/remain in an inner ring which you believe to be deeply unethical.

Anonymity is not useful solely for preserving the option to join the critiqued group. It can also help buffer against reprisal from the critiqued group.  

See Ben Hoffman on this (a): 

"Ayn Rand is the only writer I've seen get both these ... (read more)

I don't think snark cuts against quality, and we come from a long lineage of it. 

It seems like we're talking past each other here, in part because as you note we're referring to different EA subpopulations: 

1. Elite EAs who mentored SBF & incubated FTX
2. Random/typical EAs who Cremer would hang out with at parties 
3. EA grant recipients 

I don't really know who knew what when; most of my critical feeling is directed at folks in category (1). Out of everyone we've mentioned here (EA or not), they had the most exposure to and knowledge about (or at least opportunity to learn about) SBF & FTX's operations. 

I think we sho... (read more)

Wow "Asana Philanthropy Fund" makes the comparison so sharp. 

Thanks. I think Cowen's point is a mix of your (a) & (b). 

I think this mixture is concerning and should prompt reflection about some foundational issues.

l question in this space is if EAs have allocated their attention wisely. The answer seems to be "mostly yes." In case of FTX, heavyweights like Temasek, Sequoia Capital, and SoftBank with billions on the line did their due diligence but still missed what was happening. Expecting EAs to be better evaluators of FTX's health than established hedge funds is somewhat odd. 

Two things: 

1. Sequoia et al. isn't a good benchmark – 
   
   (i) those funds were doing diligence in a very hot investing environment where there was a substantial tradeoff between dept

I read Cremer as gesturing in these passages to the point Tyler Cowen made here (a): 

Hardly anyone associated with Future Fund saw the existential risk to…Future Fund, even though they were as close to it as one could possibly be.

I am thus skeptical about their ability to predict existential risk more generally, and for systems that are far more complex and also far more distant.  And, it turns out, many of the real sources of existential risk boil down to hubris and human frailty and imperfections (the humanities remain underrated).  When i

In particular, the shot at Cold Takes being "incomprehensible" didn't sit right with me - Holden's blog is a really clear presentation of those concerned by the risk misaligned AI plays to the long-run future, regardless of whether you agree with it or not.

Agree that her description of Holden's thing is uncharitable, though she might be describing the fact that he self-describes his vision of the future as 'radically unfamiliar... a future galaxy-wide civilization... seem[ing] too "wild" to take seriously... we live in a wild time, and should be ready for ... (read more)

https://twitter.com/QualyThe/status/1617806572281028609 

So, out of your list of 5 organizations, 4 of them were really very much quite bad for the world, by my lights, and if you were to find yourself to be on track to having a similar balance of good and evil done in your life, I really would encourage you to stop and do something less impactful on the world. 

This view is myopic (doesn't consider the nth-order effects of the projects) and ahistorical (compares them to present-day moral standards rather than the counterfactuals of the time). 

Your previous post demonstrated much stronger reasons to not trust you than those you accused of being untrustworthy. 

... strikes me as "not nice" fwiw, though overall it's been cool to see how you've both engaged with this conversation.

Probably Good is a reasonable counterexample to my model here (though it's not really a direct competitor – they're aiming at a different audience and consulted with 80k on how to structure the project).  

It'll be interesting to see how its relationships with 80k and Open Phil develop as we enter a funding contraction. 

I'm curious to read some of the reasoning of those who disagreed with this, as I'm currently high-conviction on these recommendations but feel open to updating substantially (strong beliefs weakly held). 

If you or me or anyone else wanted to start our own organisation under a new brand with similar goals to CEA or GWWC I don't think anyone would try to stop us!

My model is that no one would try to formally stop this effort (i.e. via a lawsuit), though it would receive substantial pushback in the form of: 

• Private communication discouraging the effort 
• Organizers of the effort excluded and/or removed from coordinating fora, such as EA slack groups 
• Public writing suggesting that the effort be rolled into the existing EA movement 
• Attempts (by

I don't follow what you're pointing to with "beholden to the will of every single participant in this community."

My point is that CEA was established as a centralizing  organization to coordinate the actions and branding of the then-nascent EA community. 

Whereas Luke's phrasing suggests that CEA drove the creation of the EA community, i.e. CEA was created and then the community sprung up around it. 

CEA was setup before there was an EA movement (the term "effective altruism" was invented while setting up CEA to support GWWC/80,000 Hours).

The coinage of a name for a movement is different from the establishment of that movement. 

Another conflict-of-interest vector is that EVF board members could influence funding to EVF sub-orgs via other positions they hold, e.g. Open Phil (where Claire Zabel works as a senior program officer) funds CEA (a sub-org of EVF, where Claire is a board member).  

Ah ha: 

https://ev.org/charity  (a) 

Effective Ventures Foundation is governed by a board of five trustees (Will MacAskill, Nick Beckstead, Tasha McCauley, Owen Cotton-Barratt, and Claire Zabel) (the “Board”). The Board is responsible for overall management and oversight of the charity, and where appropriate it delegates some of its functions to sub-committees and directors within the charity.

Who sits on the board of the Effective Ventures Foundation? 

"What actions would you like to see from EA organizations or EA leadership in the next few months?" 

• Pausing new grant investigations 
• Pausing public outreach and other attempts to grow the movement 
• Something approximating a formal truth & reconciliation process 
• More inner work (therapy, meditation, movement practices, self-directed reflection, time in nature, pursuit of Aristotelian leisure especially by working with one's hands) 

I pulled it down for a while, and just reposted it. 

As Shakeel wrote here, the leaders of EA organizations can’t say a lot right now, and we know that’s really frustrating. 

** the leaders of EA organizations are deciding not to say a lot right now... 

Here are some jumping-off points for reflecting on how one might update their moral philosophy given what we know so far. 

From this July 2022 FactCheck article (a): 

Bankman-Fried has provided Protect Our Future PAC with the majority of its donations. The group has raised $28 million for the 2022 election cycle as of June 30, with $23 million from Bankman-Fried. Nishad Singh, who serves as head of engineering at FTX, has donated another $1 million. 

As of July 21, the PAC has spent $21.3 million on independent expenditures — exclusively in Democratic primaries for House seats. 

This level of spending makes Protect Our Future PAC the third highest among outside spe

I mean, my primary guess here is Carrick. I don't think there was anyone besides Carrick who "decided" to make the Carrick campaign happen. 

People other than Carrick decided to fund the campaign, which wouldn't have happened without funding. 

Thanks for this comment. 

I'm more interested in reflecting on the foundational issues in EA-style thinking that contributed to the FTX debacle than in abscribing wrongdoing or immorality (though I agree that the whole episode should be thoroughly investigated). 

Examples of foundational issues: 

• FTX was an explicitly maximalist project, and maximization is perilous 
• Following a utilitarian logic, FTX/Alameda pursued a high-leverage strategy (Caroline on leverage);  the decision to pursue this strategy didn't account for the massive ex

The issue is, we had a lot more on the line than their investors did. 

Big +1 

FTX is like Enron exploding in the center of EA. 

Here are some excerpts from Sequoia Capital's profile on SBF (published September 2022, now pulled). 

On career choice: 

Not long before interning at Jane Street, SBF had a meeting with Will MacAskill, a young Oxford-educated philosopher who was then just completing his PhD. Over lunch at the Au Bon Pain outside Harvard Square, MacAskill laid out the principles of effective altruism (EA). The math, MacAskill argued, means that if one’s goal is to optimize one’s life for doing good, often most good can be done by choosing to make the most money poss

Archived version (that gets around the paywall)

If you say that your business model is to hold depositor funds 1:1 and earn money from fees, but in fact you sometimes earn money via making trades with depositor funds, then you would be misrepresenting your business model. 

I asked some further questions in this direction here. 

Can you give some context on why Lightcone accepted a FTX Future Fund grant (a) given your view of his trustworthiness? 

I think it's good practice to try to understand a project's business model and try to independently verify the implications of that model before joining the project.