All of stefan.torges's Comments + Replies
The Center on Long-term Risk is looking for a Community Manager, to work with Chi Nguyen and me on growing and supporting the community around our mission of reducing risks of astronomical suffering. The application deadline is October 16th. Details and application form on our website here: https://longtermrisk.org/community-manager/
The work in this role will be across areas like event & project management, 1:1 outreach & advising calls, setting up & improving IT infrastructure, writing, giving talks, and attending in-person net...
This question has been considered to some extent by people in the community already. Consider the following posts:
- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NfkEqssr7qDazTquW/the-expected-value-of-extinction-risk-reduction-is-positive
- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RkPK8rWigSAybgGPe/a-longtermist-critique-of-the-expected-value-of-extinction-2
- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cYf6Xx8w7bt9ivbon/which-world-gets-saved
It's would also be worth pointing out that most people in this community who hold views that can be categorized as negative uti...
Yes, the CLR Fund is still accepting applications. I will see that we clarify this in the appropriate places.
Answering this or similar questions will be challenging for any worldview that takes into account second-order and long-run consequences of actions, not just negative utilitarianism.
Saving a child has many such effects that will be very difficult to account for: not just effects on loved ones but also effects on the ecosystem, climate change, demand for meat, the economy more generally, etc. So assessing the grief experienced by loved ones is probably only a small piece of the answer to your overall question. At the same time, it might be particularly sali...
and 10% for Nicolás Maduro.
The time horizon for this is "before 1 June 2020." That seems reasonable.
Thanks for writing this! This seems to be very important if we want the community to tap increasingly into professional networks.
I agree with all of what you say here. Building things for others can often go badly wrong. Thanks for sharing this perspective!
I was referring to the option "Building the EA and related communities." If building such institutions is a form of community-building, then this gives some indication of its importance compared to other areas. Now, it might be the case that respondents didn't have this in mind when answering and if they did, they would give it a much lower score.
This introduction might in some ways be more accessible: S-risks: Why they are the worst existential risks, and how to prevent them (EAG Boston 2017)
Do you think these points make Europe/the EU more important than the US or China? Otherwise, they don't give a reason for focusing on the Europe/the EU over these countries to the extent that this focus is mutually exclusive, which it is to some extent (e.g., you either set up your think tank in Washington DC or Brussels, you either analyze the EU policy-making process or the US one).
Reasons to focus on the EU/Europe over these countries are in my opinion:
- personal fit/comparative advantage
- diminishing returns for additional people to focus on the US/China (should have noted this in the OP)
- threshold effects
Maybe I misunderstood. What's the point of highlighting only this statistic? It does not seem very representative of the report you're linking to or the overall claim this statistic might support if looked at in isolation.
EDIT: I didn't mean to imply intent on your part. Apologies for the unclear language. Edited original comment as well.
This strikes me as an isolated example of Europe leading on one metric. I plan to write something more comprehensive, but I think just seeing this statistic could create a wrong impression for some people.
(edited to remove accusatory tone)
This issue is something I am still somewhat confused about. Feynman makes a similar point about the IAS. I also know about a few more anecdotes in line with the "constraints breed creativity" point.
I think the 'constraints breed creativity' applies more to the tools people work with, and other constraints like teaching, administrative tasks, and grant applications mostly waste time.
There might be something to this, but I distinctly recall reading somewhere that having state of the art tools is also crucial for being able to work at the frontier. Withou
...How long do you estimate that you spent looking at each of the case studies?
Good question. I'd say on average about 10 hours; some more, some less.
It seems that most are based on a small number of sources. Did you find that reading additional sources changed your views about a particular research team compared to the first source or two that you read? Do you expect steeply diminishing returns from investing more time into digging further into particular case studies?
In my experience, most of the material went back to one or two authoritative account
...This post might be relevant to your question: https://kk.org/thetechnium/progression-of/
On Einstein:
...What about great geniuses like Einstein? Doesn’t he disprove the notion of inevitability? The conventional wisdom is that Einstein’s wildly creative ideas about the nature of the universe, first announced to world in 1905, were so out of the ordinary, so far ahead of his time, and so unique that if he had not been born we might not have a his theories of relativity even today, a century later. Einstein was a unique genius no doubt. But as always, others we
Thanks for your response, Denise! That's a helpful perspective, and we'll take it into account next time.
Usually, we gave applicants the benefit of the doubt in such cases, especially early on. Later in the process we discussed strengths and weaknesses, compared candidates directly, and asked ourselves if somebody could turn out to be strongest candidates if we learned more about them. One low score usually was not decisive in these cases.
I just ran the numbers. These are the GMA correlations with an equally-weighted combination of all other instruments of the first three stages (form, CV, work test(s), two interviews). Note that this make the sample size very small:
- Research Analyst: 0.19 (N=6)
- Operations Analyst: 0.79 (N=4)
First two stages only (CV, form, work test(s)):
- Research Analyst: 0.13 (N=9)
- Operations Analyst: 0.70 (N=7)
I think the strongest case is their cost-effectiveness in terms of time invested on both sides.
Reference checks can mimic a longer trial which allow you to learn much more about somebody's behavior and performance in a regular work context. This depends on references being honest and willing to share potential weaknesses of candidates as well. We thought the EA community was very exemplary in this regard.
No reference checks was decisive. I'd imagine this would only be the case for major red flags. Still, they informed our understanding of the relative strengths and weaknesses.
We think they're great because they're very cost-effective, and can highlight potential areas of improvement and issues to further investigate in a trial.
I'm not sure I understand your question correctly, so please respond if I didn't get it.
You ask: Could your donation be for nothing if we don't meet our fundraising goals. I don't think this is the case. If we don't even meet our minimal goal, we will possibly have to downsize or do so sooner than otherwise. Your donation would still help in those cases. The only scenario I see where your donation "would have been for nothing" is short-term insolvency. This is very unlikely.
Even if there were some scenarios in which your donation "will have been for nothin... (read more)