I suggest there is waaaay to much to be on top of in EA and noone knows who is checking what. So some stuff goes unchecked. If there were a narrower set of “core things we study” then it seems more likely that those things would have been gone over by someone in detail and hence fewer errors in core facts.
One of the downsides of EA being so decentralized, I guess. I’m imagining an alternative history EA in which is was all AI alignment or it was all tropical disease prevention, and in those worlds the narrowing of “core things we study” would possibly result in more eyeballs on each thing.
I suggest there is waaaay to much to be on top of in EA and noone knows who is checking what. So some stuff goes unchecked. If there were a narrower set of “core things we study” then it seems more likely that those things would have been gone over by someone in detail and hence fewer errors in core facts.
One of the downsides of EA being so decentralized, I guess. I’m imagining an alternative history EA in which is was all AI alignment or it was all tropical disease prevention, and in those worlds the narrowing of “core things we study” would possibly result in more eyeballs on each thing.
I think we could still be better in this universe though no idea how.