All of mlc's Comments + Replies

Excellent overview

  •  Including a "country" column might be valuable, especially for the national orgs (or including the location in [brackets] next to the name)
  • You might be able to embed a sheet view directly on the forum (maybe just a static csv file/table, dynamically showing updates on the original spreadsheet, or fully interactive)
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Sjir Hoeijmakers
1y
Thanks for the suggestions Nicole! * I'll add a country column * Would be happy for the sheet to be embedded on Forum but don't immediately know how to do it and don't think it's a high priority, so if someone wants to do this please lmk :)

Thanks for the great source, Richard! I intentionally didn't include a description of how to best go about contacting people, as this post was more or less directed at more established orgs that have direct access to recruiters. However, after posting this and receiving messages from interested individuals/smaller orgs,  your contribution comes in really handy!

If anyone is interested in more detailed information about contacting and/or being connected, please reach out!

3
Richard Möhn
1y
I'm glad it's helping!

Serene moment in midst of all the chaos. Thank you for sharing.

Hi there! Sorry for the late reply. I was also planning on joining tomorrow. Thank you and see you soon!

I'm helping with creating a central platform connecting funders, talent, ideas, and advisors. Let me know if you'd like to be involved or are interested in more infos on it!

4
Question Mark
2y
Would you mind posting a link to it?
mlc
2y14
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But there doesn’t seem to be a useful slack-like thing for just “I’m going to be living in this place, who can I find housing with?”

Seems to me like EA Houses is doing that. What problem would the slack channel be solving that EAH isn't?

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Zach Stein-Perlman
2y
That's for EAs offering their homes. This slack can also coordinate finding housing with other EAs.
mlc
2y12
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0

Hi Akash, awesome that you're doing this! 👏🏼 I'm working on putting together reading groups & curated lists [removed the link as it's currently being edited]

Thanks, Pablo! I replied to Michael's message underneath with some examples of how personal development could be structured.
empty tag: now I feel inclined to write a post on productivity :p

"Productivity" is indeed included in the description of the personal development tag. However, I do believe/agree that this is a really big and important category that could be broken down.
Spending a couple of seconds thinking about this, I'd come up with the following suggestions: 
-productivity
-mental health
-physical health
-systems
-meditation
-learning
-self-help
-PD services
-PD experiments
-spirituality.

I think there’s an incredible opportunity right now for mid-career people to do really exciting, rewarding, and high-value work with incredible colleagues in a great working environment.

This doesn’t have to mean switching to full-time EA work straight away. Smaller experiments are possible, like learning about an area of interest, or doing consulting or part-time work.

If you’re a mid-career EA lurker, don’t wait for permission! Get in touch with 80,000 Hours for free career coaching, or with organisations / individuals you might want to work with. Start working on impactful and rewarding projects!
-Ben Snodin

mlc
2y12
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Misconception: There’s tons of people working in all these important areas.
Reality: Once you start meeting people, you’ll realise that most areas have surprisingly few people giving a significant fraction of their time to them. And people are liable to spread themselves over multiple topics or switch to new things, so you can quickly become one of the “main people” in an area just by sticking around for a bit. 
-Ben Snodin

mlc
2y10
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0

“There is more scholarly work on the life habits of the dung fly than on existential risks.” Nick Bostrom 

Looking at our unresolved long-lasting moral debates, it is quite alarming to imagine the potential need for value lock-in within the next decades.

We are all in the same boat. The bad news is, it’s sinking. The good news is that we still have a chance to gather all our human power to try and solve this problem before it’s too late.

One of the main reasons for people’s objection to working in this field is that it’s so speculative and unexplored. This is precisely why we need more exploration. Your contribution here could really make a difference. 

The more severe and urgent the problem, the more resources we should be allocating to solving it. AI Safety is arguably one of the most imminent problems of our lifetime. It is also one of the most neglected areas, with about 150 full-time people currently working on it. We need you. 

2
Pablo
2y
Thanks for the suggestion. I created the entry here; it's currently empty. I basically share Michael's views and will try to think about what to do with personal development.
2
MichaelA
2y
I think this would be a subset of Personal development, so in some sense is "covered" by that, but really that tag is probably too broad and not very intuitively named. So I think I'm in favour of adding subsidiary tags or dividing that tag up or refactoring it or something. Not sure precisely what the best move is, though. Productivity would also overlap with Coaching and Time-money tradeoffs, but that seems ok.  

Thanks for the explanation. 

other thoughts: Abram’s decision theory  and Vanessa’s infrabayes work might be good for distillation. Also, might be worth thinking about some type of collab with current distillers, such as Robert Miles or Mark Xu, and the site distill.pub

 
 

1
a_e_r
2y
Oh, great idea! If nothing else, distill.pub is a great resource for me to list!

I am referring to people that chose alternative career paths to AI, autodidacts and independent ML researchers for example.

2
a_e_r
2y
Unfortunately, I created this contest to help build up university groups, so I think keeping the contest limited to enrolled students (including students who are entering college later this year and students who will graduate before the contest ends) would be the best way to ensure that students feel like they have an advantage in the contest. Thank you for clarifying!

more distillations, yay! 🥳

the Distillation Contest, is now open to any student enrolled in a university/college

could you organize this to also include people that aren't enrolled students?

1
a_e_r
2y
Thank you! Could you clarify what you mean? Do you mean students who are on a break from college, newly admitted students who aren’t yet attending, or something else?

Agreed, I was thinking about this as well, among other things to encourage action > inaction (might calm some peoples' fears of sharing their thoughts on the forum).

I could imagine newly submitted posts to go through an initial preliminary period of, say, 1 week. During that time they could be marked as "newly submitted" / "recent" / or similar, which makes it clear that larger changes could still be made, and encourages others' feedback (this might even increase total post engagement). This is the period in which most interaction happens, so most obvio... (read more)

Answer by mlcApr 20, 202281
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Disclaimer: Be careful about definitions and interpreting metaculus questions. The latter involves resolution criteria on defining AGI that does not align with my own (e.g. meeting the named criteria would not replace all human tasks). Also, there has been an inflow of additional forecasters based on recent developments which should be factored in.

I listed some of my current sources down below. I hope this helps!

... (read more)
0
Evan_Gaensbauer
2y
Thanks for putting in the effort. This is helpful information. I've got a few clarifying questions, though please don't feel obliged to answer them if you don't have the time or don't have a sense of the answer. You've already helped much and I can search for answers elsewhere if need be. 1. To summarize: a. The low/near end of the predicted distribution of the timeline for AI being at or near general intelligence is roughly 5 years out. b. The median prediction for when super-human AGI will be achieved, i.e., ‘transformative AI,’ or ‘superintelligence,’ is 10-20 years out. c. The average point at the 75% percentile for the spread of predicted timelines is over 20 years out. Is that correct? 1. The meaning of weakly general AI isn't clarified on the corresponding Metaculus webpage. I'm guessing it's intended meaning is something like: "AI competitive with  performance near the recorded human peak for a full range of all cognitive tasks, but not all such tasks being performed at super-human levels." Is that accurate? 2. How much confidence can we have that the timelines dovetailed on by many long-termists in effective altruism are accurately reflected by: * Different kinds of aggregated forecast models from Metaculus or other prediction/forecasting platforms? * Prominent experts and professionals in the field, such as Legg, Hassabis, Yudkowsky, Christiano or Cotra?

I was just wondering about the existence of such a project.  Fantastic that you're taking initiative! There are many old posts  still holding contemporary relevance that might benefit from such "revivals". Suggestions: 

  • Maybe a title like "LW Post (Revival) Club" might be more accessible? 
  • You could also think of connecting this to the book club/s to gain more traction there, since this represents a large overlap and is essentially the main target audience.
  • This seems obvious, but putting an 80/20 effort into some promotion might really be worth it/a deciding factor for this project's success or failure (e.g. putting it up on the EA newsletter) 
2
Jeremy
2y
I will put a bit more thought into the title/tag.  Can you point me to book club information? I am not familiar.  I agree about promotion, and am grateful for suggestions, but I may focus on doing a post or two to refine the concept before delving into much promotion.