So I think that in many discussions “murder and assault is bad” is a reasonable conclusion along that axis. And there are many axes of discussion.
Look at FTX. I reckon we could agree that:
FTX crash hurt lots of random people
On balance it seems like Alameda’s trades were bad at the time
It has caused much goodwill to evaporate for EA and while our new reputation might be more accurate, it may now be too harsh on us
Individual EAs had a sense that SBF took large risks, but its unclear how that should transfer to reporting
Those might seem like pretty simple conclusions, but agreement is good! It helps us move forward and figure out what we disagree on. I think it would be genuinely healthy for community discourse if in the Bostrom/Cotton-Barrett cases we could have found where the baseline agreement was. I think that makes a lot of people feel safer.
edit: I’d appreciate some comments on where you lot disagree
Baseline agreement is good, and I think that in general there should be more comments “stating the obvious”, so it is clear that there are things we mostly agree on.
However, “everyone agrees on this” statements will only capture a very small part of the issue. For example, say we ask the question: “what should be EA’s relationship with cryptocurrency in light of FTX?”. It’s a perfectly valid question, and one that sparked a lot of interesting discussion. But given that some people think crypto is the currency of the future and our best insurance against tyranny, and others think it’s a worthless ponzi scam that should be banned outright, you’ll never get a consensus answer. I think that’s fine! The discussion is still valuable, people get more information, and consider more arguments, and are ultimately more informed coming out than in.
So I think that in many discussions “murder and assault is bad” is a reasonable conclusion along that axis. And there are many axes of discussion.
Look at FTX. I reckon we could agree that:
FTX crash hurt lots of random people
On balance it seems like Alameda’s trades were bad at the time
It has caused much goodwill to evaporate for EA and while our new reputation might be more accurate, it may now be too harsh on us
Individual EAs had a sense that SBF took large risks, but its unclear how that should transfer to reporting
Those might seem like pretty simple conclusions, but agreement is good! It helps us move forward and figure out what we disagree on. I think it would be genuinely healthy for community discourse if in the Bostrom/Cotton-Barrett cases we could have found where the baseline agreement was. I think that makes a lot of people feel safer.
edit: I’d appreciate some comments on where you lot disagree
Baseline agreement is good, and I think that in general there should be more comments “stating the obvious”, so it is clear that there are things we mostly agree on.
However, “everyone agrees on this” statements will only capture a very small part of the issue. For example, say we ask the question: “what should be EA’s relationship with cryptocurrency in light of FTX?”. It’s a perfectly valid question, and one that sparked a lot of interesting discussion. But given that some people think crypto is the currency of the future and our best insurance against tyranny, and others think it’s a worthless ponzi scam that should be banned outright, you’ll never get a consensus answer. I think that’s fine! The discussion is still valuable, people get more information, and consider more arguments, and are ultimately more informed coming out than in.