This is a good account of what EA gets from Rationality, and why EAs would be wise to maintain the association with rationality, and possibly also with Rationality.
What does Rationality get from EA, these days? Would Rationalists be wise to maintain the association with EA?
Rationality has supported and been supported by EA a bunch. In that time, Rationality+EA has caused a bunch of harm (I’m not certain about net harm, but I do think a bunch of harm has happened: supporting scaling labs, supporting SBF, low integrity political manoeuvring (I hear)). I think Rationality should own its relationship to EA and its mixed legacy.
IIRC, while most of Alameda’s early staff came from EA, the early investment came largely from Jaan Tallinn, a big Rationalist donor. This was a for-profit investment, not a donation, but I would guess that the overlapping EA/Rationalist social networks made the deal possible.
That said, once Bankman-Fried got big and successful he didn’t lean on Rationalist branding or affiliations at all, and he made a point of directing his “existential risk” funding to biological/pandemic stuff but not AI stuff.
I think Rationality provided undirected support to EA during that period (sharing goodwill and labour, running events together), and received funding from EA funders, and so is not clean of the stuff listed in my comment. I think it probably overall made those things worse by supporting EA more, even if it helped the bad things somewhat less than it helped the good things.
This is a good account of what EA gets from Rationality, and why EAs would be wise to maintain the association with rationality, and possibly also with Rationality.
What does Rationality get from EA, these days? Would Rationalists be wise to maintain the association with EA?
Rationality has supported and been supported by EA a bunch. In that time, Rationality+EA has caused a bunch of harm (I’m not certain about net harm, but I do think a bunch of harm has happened: supporting scaling labs, supporting SBF, low integrity political manoeuvring (I hear)). I think Rationality should own its relationship to EA and its mixed legacy.
There’s no reason to blame the Rationalist influence on the community for SBF that I can see. What would the connection be?
IIRC, while most of Alameda’s early staff came from EA, the early investment came largely from Jaan Tallinn, a big Rationalist donor. This was a for-profit investment, not a donation, but I would guess that the overlapping EA/Rationalist social networks made the deal possible.
That said, once Bankman-Fried got big and successful he didn’t lean on Rationalist branding or affiliations at all, and he made a point of directing his “existential risk” funding to biological/pandemic stuff but not AI stuff.
I think Rationality provided undirected support to EA during that period (sharing goodwill and labour, running events together), and received funding from EA funders, and so is not clean of the stuff listed in my comment. I think it probably overall made those things worse by supporting EA more, even if it helped the bad things somewhat less than it helped the good things.