All of Michael Noetel's Comments + Replies

Richard I really love your writing, but as a parent I find it so hard to just sit and read stuff. 95% of the forum's content I get via the podcast feeds. Now, I don't expect everyone to go full Experimental History or Joe Carlsmith and audio narrate each post, but unless you're wanting to keep things on Substack turf, you might consider cross-posting the full thing here (like Bentham's Bulldog did for the critique of the wired article). I don't ask this of everyone, so please consider this a compliment: I love your work and want it in my ears.^[1] 

1. ^{^}

   Tha

Hanania gives some interesting arguments for why here: https://www.richardhanania.com/p/effective-altruism-thinks-youre-hitler

One lens to look at this is less through the ‘we’re all similarly qualified’ like the AMA but more through the ‘we’re working with the same values’ or ‘we’re working on similar problems’ like the Institute of Public Administration Australia. These have no qualification requirements. Still they offer similar things to what ea communities try to do https://qld.ipaa.org.au/for-individuals/

These examples at the end are interesting and worth me mulling over. I do get the sense that Greenpeace or the NAACP would do many of the things you do

That’s a good point. All AMA members have to meet certain criteria. I can see how ‘’8 week reading group” pales in comparison to a medical degree.

Fixed thx

I'm interested in the authors' take on this question: Change my mind: EA national organisations should be 'professional associations' not 'communities'

I'll look into it. The census data part seems okay. Collecting a representative sample would be harder (e.g., literacy rates are lower, so I don't know how to estimate responses for those groups).

Thanks Peter. Fixed!

Thanks Seb. I'm not that surprised—public surveys in the Existential Risk Persuasion tournament were pretty high (5% for AI). I don't think most people are good at calibrating probabilities between 0.001% and 10% (myself included).

I don't have strong hypotheses why people 'mostly support' something they also want treated with such care. My weak ones would be 'people like technology but when asked about what the government should do, want them to keep them safe (remove biggest threats).' For example, Australians support getting nuclear submarines but also s... (read more)

As a social scientist, these lists are very helpful, thank you team. It's useful to be able to point students and colleagues to open questions that are immediately decision-relevant.

Thanks for the support Ben. I love what giving multiplier are doing and we entertained the idea down here but we have more restrictive charity regranting laws down here. My understand is that giving multiplier can basically just forward re-grants to the donor's target, but our read of the Aussie legislation is that we'd need to formally partner with every charity that a donor would want to choose.

Our strategy for marketing to non-EAs is to partner with Giving Green to support a Manager of Climate Giving for Giving Green Australia. Basically, we work closel... (read more)

Just wanted to +1 the appreciation for all your work over the years JJ

Thanks to all who attended this event. Such a great turnout. For more information about EAAE, or to donate, go to http://eaa.org.au/environment

my pledge pin is my most expensive possession I own...

Omg I'd never done those maths 😬

Good video Peter. Agree it’s a good introduction for a wide audience. Thanks for signal boosting.

Thank you!

I popped this script in via email a few weeks ago but didn't get confirmation of receipt. I know it's been a crazy few weeks so no need to review. Still, do you mind confirming whether it's 'in' or whether the contest is closed?

Thank you for sharing this project. It looks great. A few minor comments and ideas. Wordpress is very flexible but requires lots of plugins to interface with each other for many functions to work. Consider chatting to Aqeel or JJ Hepburn from Sangro/AI Safety Support who recently used wordpress for a learning management system to see how they found it. Consider also using an existing platform with more pre-built features (e.g., Thinkific) where cross-compatibility might be less painful (see our uni EA fellowship site). At least at the start, these hel... (read more)

I really like this framing Gideon. It seems aligned with CEA's Core EA principles. I'd love EA to be better at helping people learn skills.  One of our working drafts for an EA MOOC focuses more on the those core principles and skills. Is something like this work-in-progress closer to what you had in mind?

Could Nonlinear Library or Perrin Walker do audio versions of these articles? 🙏

Ahhh! Yes, thanks. Fixed.

So in education 'agency' is often defined as 'agentic engagement'—basically taking ownership over your own learning. I couldn't find any good systematic reviews on interventions that increase agentic engagement. This is pretty weak evidence and might have a healthy dose of motivated reasoning (my end, and theirs), but people who have thought about agency for longer than I have seem to think...

In conclusion, the answer as to how teachers can support students’ agentic engagement is to adopt a significantly more autonomy-supportive classroom motivating style.

Thanks for taking the time to add these really useful observation, Seb.

One downside to this approach is that it might lead to Goodharting and leading the teacher to go in "exploitation" mode.  E.g., I worry that I might become too attached to a specific outcome on behalf of the students and tacitly start to persuade (similar to some concerns expressed by Theo Hawkins) and/or neglect other important opportunities that might emerge during the program. How do you think of that risk?

 It's been a while since I read Theo's post so I might be missing th... (read more)

This is a useful list of interventions, some of which are mentioned in the post (e.g., quizzes; we've summarised the meta-analyses for these here). I think steps 1, 2 and 3 from the summary of the above post are the 'teacher focused' versions of how to promote deliberate practice (have a focus, get feedback, fix problems). Deliberate practice literature often tells learners how they should structure their own practice (e.g., how musicians should train).  Teaching to others is a useful way to frame collaboration in a way that makes it safe to not know ... (read more)

People new to EA might not know they can get the book for free by signing up to the 80,000 hours mailing list, and it's also available on Audible

Done

Classic Aird: great collection of links to useful resources. Thanks mate. Looking forward to meta-Aird: a collection of links to the best of Aird's collection of links.

Argh bugger, this conflicts with EAGx so won't make this but would love to be kept in the loop

What about 'card-carrying EAs'? Doesn't have the same dark connotations as "drank the kool-aid" and does somewhat exemplify the difference you're hinting at.

Maybe GWWC can start printing cards 😅

https://writingexplained.org/idiom-dictionary/a-card-carrying-member

I should clarify: RCTs are obviously generally >> even a very well controlled propensity score matched quasi-experiment, but I just don't think the former is 'bulletproof' anymore. The former should update your priors more but if you look at the variability among studies in meta-analyses, even among low-risk-of-bias RCTs, I'm now much less easily swayed by any single one.

Yeah these are interesting questions Eli. I've worked on a few big RCTs and they're really hard and expensive to do. It's also really hard to adequately power experiments for small effect sizes in noisy environments (e.g., productivity of remote/in-person work). Your suggestions to massively scale up those interventions and to do things online would make things easier. As Ozzie mentioned, the health ones require such long and slow feedback loops that I think they might not be better than well (statistically) controlled alternatives. I used to think RCTs we... (read more)

3 months on, and this has become one of the most valuable EA/Alignment/Rationality dissemination innovations I've seen. Has replaced almost all my more vapid listening. Would get through an extra 10-20 hours of content a week. Thank you Nonlinear/Kat/Emerson

Academic research (see noetel.com.au)

Whatever happens with the discussions about copyright, I really hope this continues to exist. I listened to six forum posts at 5am today while walking a baby around to sleep... very good for parental mental health

I spend a few years as a professional before coming back to do my PhD. I think what you're describing sounds like a good model. The only criteria some professionals struggle to meet is 'equivalent of honours'; that is, to get into a PhD you need to have completed a thesis before.

I understand what you're saying about the tension. As someone trained in psychology, there's a litany of papers that 'solve the problem of not understanding' with little or no 'problem solving' benefit.

Having said that, I think those incentives are changing. In the UK and Australia, universities are now being evaluated and incentivised based on how well they solve problems (e.g. https://www.arc.gov.au/engagement-and-impact-assessment). I think, in general, your motivation and career would not be hurt by doing things that focus on engagement with people who... (read more)

Perfect, thanks!

Great initiative @MichaelA. I'm not sure what a 'sequence' does, but I assume this means there'll be a series of related posts to follow, is that right?

My little dude is only 2 but one of my best mates. Have never had more laughs than as a dad. But, never had more tears either. It's turbulent, but the highs are high.