People tend to underestimate the importance of ideas, because it’s hard to imagine what impact they will have without doing the work of coming up with them.
I’m also uncertain how impactful it is to find people who’re good at generating ideas, because the best ones will probably become prominent regardless. But regardless of that, it seems to me like you’ve now agreed with the three points that the influential EA made. Those weren’t comparative claims about where to invest marginal resources, but rather the absolute claim that it’d be very beneficial to have more talented people.
Then the additional claim I’d make is: some types of influence are very valuable and can only be gained by people who are sufficiently good at generating ideas. It’d be amazing to have another Stuart Russell, or someone in Stephen Pinker’s position but more onboard with EA. But they both got there by making pioneering contributions in their respective fields. So when you talk about “accumulating AI-weighted influence”, e.g. by persuading leading AI researchers to be EAs, that therefore involves gaining more talented members of EA.
People tend to underestimate the importance of ideas, because it’s hard to imagine what impact they will have without doing the work of coming up with them.
I’m also uncertain how impactful it is to find people who’re good at generating ideas, because the best ones will probably become prominent regardless. But regardless of that, it seems to me like you’ve now agreed with the three points that the influential EA made. Those weren’t comparative claims about where to invest marginal resources, but rather the absolute claim that it’d be very beneficial to have more talented people.
Then the additional claim I’d make is: some types of influence are very valuable and can only be gained by people who are sufficiently good at generating ideas. It’d be amazing to have another Stuart Russell, or someone in Stephen Pinker’s position but more onboard with EA. But they both got there by making pioneering contributions in their respective fields. So when you talk about “accumulating AI-weighted influence”, e.g. by persuading leading AI researchers to be EAs, that therefore involves gaining more talented members of EA.