Hello from another group organizer in the Southwest! We are in Tucson AZ, just a six hours drive away. Hopefully, someday in the not-so-far future, organizing a southwestern meetup / retreat / something would be feasible and super cool!

Nice, I didn't know! Their research goals seem quite broad, which is good. Within the context of AI existential risk, this project looks interesting.

The hallmark experiences of undiagnosed ADHD seem to be saying “I just need to try harder” over and over for years, or kicking yourself for intending to start work and then not getting much done...

Extremely relatable.

Thank you very much for writing this. I am in the process of getting a diagnosis, and this helped me overcome some of the totally made-up mental barriers regarding ADHD medication.

I downvoted and want to explain my reasoning briefly: the conclusions presented are too strong, and the justifications don't necessarily support them. 

We simply don't have enough experience or data points to say what the "central problem" in a utilitarian community will be. The one study cited seems suggestive at best. People on the spectrum are, well, on a spectrum, and so is their behavior; how they react will not be as monolithic as suggested.

All that being said, I softly agree with the conclusion (because I think this would be true for any community).

All of this suggests that, as you recommend, in communities with lots of consequentialists, there needs to be very large emphasis on virtues and common sense norms.

It's maybe worth clarifying that I'm most concerned about people who a combination of high-confidence in utilitarianism and a lack of qualms about putting it into practice.

Thank you, that makes more sense + I largely agree.

However, I also wonder if all this could be better gauged by watching out for key psychological traits/features instead of probing someone's ethical view. For instance, a person low in openness showing high-risk behavior who happens to be a deontologist could cause as much trouble as a naive utilitarian optimizer. In either case, it would be the high-risk behavior that would potentially cause problems rather than how they ethically make decisions. 

...for example, I think we should be less welcoming to proudly self-identified utilitarians, since they’re more likely to have these traits.

Ouch. Could you elaborate more on this and back this up more? The statement makes it sound like an obvious fact, and I don't see why this would be true.

ML systems act when put in foreign situations wrt the training data. 

Could you elaborate on this more? My guess is that they could be working on the ML ethics side of things, which is great, but different than the Safety problem.

Disagree-voting for the following reasons:

1. 700 people — that is a substantial sample size. 
2. I think sampling bias will likely be small/inconsequential, given the sample size. 
   1. Ideally, yes, not having any logos would be great, but if I got an email asking me, "fill out this survey, and trust me, I am from a legitimate organization," I probably wouldn't fill out the survey.
   2. "very likely it is just the people familiar with lesswrong etc who has heard of these organizations" 
      1. Hard to say if this is true
      2. It is wrong to assume that familiarity with LW would lead people to answer a certain way. However, I can imagine people who dislike LW/similar would also be keen to complete the survey.
      3. The survey questions don't seem to prime respondents one way or the other.
      4. These 700 people did publish in ICML/NeurIPS; they have some degree of legitimacy.
3. Nitpicky, but "a proportion of ML researchers who have published in top conferences such as ICML and NeurIPS think AI research could be bad" is probably a more accurate statement. I agree that this doesn't make the statements they are commenting on = truth; however, I think their opinion has a lot of value.

I think Metaculus does a decent job at forecasting, and their forecasts are updated based on recent advances, but yes, predicting the future is hard.

There are two statements in this summary that I find somewhat confusing:

1. "He then discusses some reasons why our time might be unusual, but ultimately concludes that he does not think that the 'hinge of history' claim holds true."
2. "Overall, MacAskill thinks that these arguments provide evidence that our time may be the most influential."

I haven't dived into the working paper yet, but these two statements seem contradictory. Is it possible to not be at the hinge of history but live during the most influential time? I thought being at the hinge of history ≈ being at the most influential time. What am I missing?