Perhaps because I like saying overrated/underrated.
But also because overrated/underrated is a quick way to provide information. "Forecasting is underrated by the population at large" is much easier to think of than "forecasting is probably rated 4/10 by the population at large and should be rated 6/10"
Over/underrated requires about 3 mental queries, "Is it better or worse than my ingroup thinks" "Is it better or worse than my ingroup thinks?" "Am I gonna have to be clear about what I mean?"
Scoring the current and desired status of something requires about 20 queries "Is 4 fair?" "Is 5 fair" "What axis am I rating on?" "Popularity?" "If I score it a 4 will people think I'm crazy?"...
Like in some sense your right that % forecasts are more useful than "More likely/less likely" and sizes are better than "bigger smaller" but when dealing with intangibles like status I think it's pretty costly to calculate some status number, so I do the cheaper thing.
Also would you prefer people used over/underrated less or would you prefer the people who use over/underrated spoke less? Because I would guess that some chunk of those 50ish karma are from people who don't like the vibe rather than some epistemic thing. And if that's the case, I think we should have a different discussion.
I guess I think that might come from a frustration around jargon or rationalists in general. And I'm pretty happy to try and broaden my answer from over/underrated - just as I would if someone asked me how big a star was and I said "bigger than an elephant". But it's worth noting it's a bandwidth thing and often used because giving exact sizes in status is hard. Perhaps we shouldn't have numbers and words for it, but we don't.
I guess to speak briefly as a person who has been in a number of sort of inner circle type things (I have been to some really good EA-adjacent parties, some very exclusive group chats, I have had a long public argument with Amanda Askell), it is in fact pretty fun (well except the argument). It seems silly to pretend otherwise. Cool things are cool.
But I guess it generally moved the needle between 95% and 97% of my cool experiences bar and there are other bars that I want to fill. Do I do good work (kind of)? Do I have a community that likes and respects me (yes, though it has taken a lot of work)? Do I have a romantic relationship that I find satisfying and a family I long for (no)?
I think the above piece is wrong in that it acts as if these things aren't nice or attainable. But I think they are both. But I am not sure they are actually value for effort for most people, especially at this point. Year on year it gets harder to be in the inner circle and staying comes with its own complexity and drama unless one is really fricking great at doing good work (my work is fine, but few think it excellent). And there is always the risk that in trying to be popular one will become a version of oneself that one hates.
So I am not gonna pretend that these things aren't nice (they are) or attainable (they are) but I wonder if they are things you actually want to put most of your effort into attaining. At some point I found something like satisfacton - I wanted to fill other bars rather than ensure I was keeping pace with the cool.
And do we want there to be status hierarchies? I dunno, yes? Surely we want them as long as they are actually aligned with virtue? I hope that Ryan Greenblatt and Nate Soares are going to the great parties. What are the parties for if not to encourage poeple to do great work or write bestselling books. And yes that kind of sucks for those of us less clever than Ryan and less charismatic than Nate, but we are not in some liberal fantasy, we are in the real world.
So yes, you can peraps have this if you choose to, but maybe consider if you actually want it. Is it a good system? I dunno, probably? If you do good work, I shall vote for your elections to the halls of the cool people though hopefully your life will already be rich and fun enough as it is.
Somewhere out there, there are the cool, high-impact effective altruists who are really having a positive effect on the world.
Not having a positive effect with certainty, no.
They are all invited to lots of awesome parties with other cool, high-impact effective altruists.
More yes than no.
They know all kinds of secrets that us normal people don’t know, and they laugh at us for our out-of-touch takes.
I don't think they think about others like that but they do know secrets you'd like to. I know secrets you'd like to, there are a lot of secrets to know. Many of the "cool" people are in fact really fricking fun, though I only know most from a distance. But basically all of the EA big names I have hung out with, have been brilliant, fun people with great chat.
They can get jobs and grants by having a fifteen-minute conversation with a friend or a friend of a friend.
Probably, though they have earned the trust of grant funders. Would you invest in Zuckerberg if he said he was starting a new business? So yeah, there are some people grant funders would love to give more money.
They don’t have to slog through endless and dispiriting job applications, throwing out a hundred apps to get nothing back but “we had a very strong pool this time.”
They don't, no. Though many seem to work a lot of hours.
They never sit at home alone on weekends scrolling TikTok and contemplating doing their laundry.
They also do that, though maybe some don’t. The group seems a mix of functional and very dysfuctional.
They can go to all the coolest co-working spaces AND EA Global.
They can, though sometimes EAGs can be a bit annoying, I hear.
It's not like one needs to have spicy views on the impossibility of racial equality (and conformance with the ultraconservative right in most other views) to be interested in biohacking, markets or altruism ... if anything quite the opposite.
Yeah this feels kind of a solid point. I'll think about it.
I tend to, on balance, be pretty grateful to community health. I am glad to be part of a community that actually takes responsibility for the things that a reasonable observer would expect them to be responsible for.
I tend to think many companies and communities are cowardly here. And sure, recently I think EA has acted like women are made of glass and that there is no joy to be had in any kind of romance at all, but at least the team aren't cowards. Any community that is like "we don't take responsibility for what people do at our events" I want to spit them out of my mouth. I am glad that if someone is having a bad time there is a place to report that too while neither do nothing, nor just throw the accused out.
Sure though I feel like you have generally been weakly pro SBF in the meantime. And doesn't it cause some question of judgement if it took you 3+ years to come to the same conclusion that most people reached in 7 days?
But there are limits to the degree of acceptable antagonism against public opinion, and a willingness to send costly signals against public opinion for relatively moderate organization gain is not to the credit of Manifold.
Isn't this 'just having principles'? Like isn't this what principles are? To take costly stands which are not pragmatic? I don't really take a view on hiring Caroline (except to say that funders should vote with their feet) but I like organisations being run according to taste if they aren't hugely powerful. And Manifund isn't hugely powerful, so Austin is being principled. And I guess I tend to like that, even if I disagree with the principles.
I do know this, but I think if we are going to use talking points we should get to the bottom of them. So I wonder if "repeatedly platforming racists is accurate".
Hanania has disavowed previously racist positions. I would agree in 2023, hence I spent a lot of work pushing against him being a speaker.
Anomaly is voluntary eugenicist. Not clear to me he is racist as that word is typically used. Does he advocate for animus towards people on the basis of race?
Chau plausibly is. I don't particularly enjoy being the racism police, but I dislike Chau enough that I can't be bothered to defend him
Khan, Hsu, I can't find anything racist. Hsu is a voluntary eugenicist, I think.
I am not going to deal with unofficial afterparties.
I don't love how Cremiux talks, but has he published anything racist? Looks like another volunatry eugencist to me. Mother Jones claims he has a racist reddit account, he claims not.
So is "repeatedly platforming racists" accurate? I tend to think no.
To me this looks more "genetic differences between races" and "parents should be able to genetically select their children". I think that's pretty meaningfully different to racism and if you want to make Manifest the racism conference you can try but personally I like there being a line between the two. I prefer for people to be able to discuss genetics, but not advocate for animus or lazy thinking about races, genders, etc. Hence I worked hard (and lost friends) pushing for Hanania not to be a speaker in 2023.
I am a bit sensitive about this, but I think it's such a misplay from people close to EA to act as if any non-orthodox view on eugenics/crime/immigration is identical to racism. Personally, I think it's not helpful for seeing the world as it is and makes it harder to push back actual racial abuse in spaces I care about. I think that this view has largely caused the right to act as if racism isn't (and perhaps never was) real. And I think that's probably bad.
I know we like to launder this point here, but is the underlying point accurate? Hanania did not, to my recollection, speak at Manifest and which racists have later been platformed?
This talking point annoys me because it usually bottoms out at a few anecdotes or that bad guardian article. Is that what "repeatedly platforming racists" implies?
Interesting take. I don't like it.
Perhaps because I like saying overrated/underrated.
But also because overrated/underrated is a quick way to provide information. "Forecasting is underrated by the population at large" is much easier to think of than "forecasting is probably rated 4/10 by the population at large and should be rated 6/10"
Over/underrated requires about 3 mental queries, "Is it better or worse than my ingroup thinks" "Is it better or worse than my ingroup thinks?" "Am I gonna have to be clear about what I mean?"
Scoring the current and desired status of something requires about 20 queries "Is 4 fair?" "Is 5 fair" "What axis am I rating on?" "Popularity?" "If I score it a 4 will people think I'm crazy?"...
Like in some sense your right that % forecasts are more useful than "More likely/less likely" and sizes are better than "bigger smaller" but when dealing with intangibles like status I think it's pretty costly to calculate some status number, so I do the cheaper thing.
Also would you prefer people used over/underrated less or would you prefer the people who use over/underrated spoke less? Because I would guess that some chunk of those 50ish karma are from people who don't like the vibe rather than some epistemic thing. And if that's the case, I think we should have a different discussion.
I guess I think that might come from a frustration around jargon or rationalists in general. And I'm pretty happy to try and broaden my answer from over/underrated - just as I would if someone asked me how big a star was and I said "bigger than an elephant". But it's worth noting it's a bandwidth thing and often used because giving exact sizes in status is hard. Perhaps we shouldn't have numbers and words for it, but we don't.
I guess to speak briefly as a person who has been in a number of sort of inner circle type things (I have been to some really good EA-adjacent parties, some very exclusive group chats, I have had a long public argument with Amanda Askell), it is in fact pretty fun (well except the argument). It seems silly to pretend otherwise. Cool things are cool.
But I guess it generally moved the needle between 95% and 97% of my cool experiences bar and there are other bars that I want to fill. Do I do good work (kind of)? Do I have a community that likes and respects me (yes, though it has taken a lot of work)? Do I have a romantic relationship that I find satisfying and a family I long for (no)?
I think the above piece is wrong in that it acts as if these things aren't nice or attainable. But I think they are both. But I am not sure they are actually value for effort for most people, especially at this point. Year on year it gets harder to be in the inner circle and staying comes with its own complexity and drama unless one is really fricking great at doing good work (my work is fine, but few think it excellent). And there is always the risk that in trying to be popular one will become a version of oneself that one hates.
So I am not gonna pretend that these things aren't nice (they are) or attainable (they are) but I wonder if they are things you actually want to put most of your effort into attaining. At some point I found something like satisfacton - I wanted to fill other bars rather than ensure I was keeping pace with the cool.
And do we want there to be status hierarchies? I dunno, yes? Surely we want them as long as they are actually aligned with virtue? I hope that Ryan Greenblatt and Nate Soares are going to the great parties. What are the parties for if not to encourage poeple to do great work or write bestselling books. And yes that kind of sucks for those of us less clever than Ryan and less charismatic than Nate, but we are not in some liberal fantasy, we are in the real world.
So yes, you can peraps have this if you choose to, but maybe consider if you actually want it. Is it a good system? I dunno, probably? If you do good work, I shall vote for your elections to the halls of the cool people though hopefully your life will already be rich and fun enough as it is.
My take on your opener:
Not having a positive effect with certainty, no.
More yes than no.
I don't think they think about others like that but they do know secrets you'd like to. I know secrets you'd like to, there are a lot of secrets to know. Many of the "cool" people are in fact really fricking fun, though I only know most from a distance. But basically all of the EA big names I have hung out with, have been brilliant, fun people with great chat.
Probably, though they have earned the trust of grant funders. Would you invest in Zuckerberg if he said he was starting a new business? So yeah, there are some people grant funders would love to give more money.
They don't, no. Though many seem to work a lot of hours.
They also do that, though maybe some don’t. The group seems a mix of functional and very dysfuctional.
They can, though sometimes EAGs can be a bit annoying, I hear.
So basically I think this isn't true.
Yeah this feels kind of a solid point. I'll think about it.
I tend to, on balance, be pretty grateful to community health. I am glad to be part of a community that actually takes responsibility for the things that a reasonable observer would expect them to be responsible for.
I tend to think many companies and communities are cowardly here. And sure, recently I think EA has acted like women are made of glass and that there is no joy to be had in any kind of romance at all, but at least the team aren't cowards. Any community that is like "we don't take responsibility for what people do at our events" I want to spit them out of my mouth. I am glad that if someone is having a bad time there is a place to report that too while neither do nothing, nor just throw the accused out.
So thanks folks.
Sure though I feel like you have generally been weakly pro SBF in the meantime. And doesn't it cause some question of judgement if it took you 3+ years to come to the same conclusion that most people reached in 7 days?
Other comments aside, I kind of like long form, easy to follow discussions posted in the appropriate community location, so thanks David!
Isn't this 'just having principles'? Like isn't this what principles are? To take costly stands which are not pragmatic? I don't really take a view on hiring Caroline (except to say that funders should vote with their feet) but I like organisations being run according to taste if they aren't hugely powerful. And Manifund isn't hugely powerful, so Austin is being principled. And I guess I tend to like that, even if I disagree with the principles.
I do know this, but I think if we are going to use talking points we should get to the bottom of them. So I wonder if "repeatedly platforming racists is accurate".
So is "repeatedly platforming racists" accurate? I tend to think no.
To me this looks more "genetic differences between races" and "parents should be able to genetically select their children". I think that's pretty meaningfully different to racism and if you want to make Manifest the racism conference you can try but personally I like there being a line between the two. I prefer for people to be able to discuss genetics, but not advocate for animus or lazy thinking about races, genders, etc. Hence I worked hard (and lost friends) pushing for Hanania not to be a speaker in 2023.
I am a bit sensitive about this, but I think it's such a misplay from people close to EA to act as if any non-orthodox view on eugenics/crime/immigration is identical to racism. Personally, I think it's not helpful for seeing the world as it is and makes it harder to push back actual racial abuse in spaces I care about. I think that this view has largely caused the right to act as if racism isn't (and perhaps never was) real. And I think that's probably bad.
I know we like to launder this point here, but is the underlying point accurate? Hanania did not, to my recollection, speak at Manifest and which racists have later been platformed?
This talking point annoys me because it usually bottoms out at a few anecdotes or that bad guardian article. Is that what "repeatedly platforming racists" implies?