All of Theo Hawking's Comments + Replies
Appreciate you engaging thoughtfully with these questions!
I'm slightly confused about this specific point - it seems like you're saying that work on digital minds (for example) might impose PR costs on the whole movement, and that you hope another funder might have the capacity to fund this while also paying a lot of attention to the public perception.
But my guess is that other funders might actually be less cautious about the PR of the whole movement, and less invested in comms that don't blow back on (for example) AI safety.
Like, personally I am in favou...
“PR risk” is an unnecessarily narrow mental frame for why we’re focusing.
Risky things are risky in multiple ways. Diffusing across funders mitigates some of them, some of the time.
AND there are other bandwidth issues: energy, attention, stress, political influence. Those are more finite than capital.
My guess would be yes. I too would really like to see data on this, although I don't know how I'd even start on getting it.
I imagine it would also be fairly worthwhile just to quantify how much is being lost by people burning out and how hard it is to intervene - maybe we could do better, and maybe it would be worth it.
I certainly agree that outside EA, consequentialism just means the moral philosophy. But inside I feel like I keep seeing people use it to mean this process of decision-making, enough that I want to plant this flag.
I agree that the criterion of rightness / decision procedure distinction roughly maps to what I'm pointing at, but I think it's important to note that Act Consequentialism doesn't actually give a full decision procedure. It doesn't come with free answers to things like 'how long should you spend on making a decision' or 'what kinds of decisions ...
I get the impression many orgs set up to support EA groups have some version of this. Here are some I found on the internet:
Global Challenges Project has a "ready-to-go EA intro talk transcript, which you can use to run your own intro talk" here: https://handbook.globalchallengesproject.org/packaged-programs/intro-talks
EA Groups has "slides and a suggested script for an EA talk" here: https://resources.eagroups.org/events-program-ideas/single-day-events/introductory-presentations
To be fair, in both cases there is also some encouragement to adapt the talks,...
I see, I thought you were referring to reading a script about EA during a one-on-one conversation. I don't see anything wrong with presenting a standardized talk, especially if you make it clear that EA is a global movement and not just a thing at your university. I would not be surprised if a local chapter of, say, Citizens' Climate Lobby, used an introductory talk created by the national organization rather than the local chapter.
I want to echo the other replies here, and thank you for how much you've already engaged on this post, although I can see why you want to stop now.
I did in fact round off what you were saying as being about PR risk yesterday, and I commented as such, and you replied to correct that, and I found that really helpful - I'm guessing a lot of others did too. I suppose if I had already understood, I wouldn't have commented.
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