Whoa. Is this your parable? This is beautifully put and it captures something my essay only gestures at. My worry is narrower though I suppose: the city is about to get a lot richer and the new money is coming from people who built a specific tower. ‘the city wished them well and did not study where they went.’ will stay with me, thanks. That’s the selection mechanism I’m worried about.
Yes I wrote it (with some help from Claude), glad you enjoyed it!
You are right your specific worry/content of the post is narrower, and generally I think you have approximately the right sense for what is going on and didn’t mean for the parable to be an exact fictional substitute for your post but just related. Also maybe I missed it but I think you forgot to mention the selection effect of those who ends up at anthropic itself, which is arguably bigger than the value drift inside of it—the tower was to some extent built by believers!. It’s always hard for me to write these comments because I feel as though I could write a 40 page book about the group dynamics in EA :P.
I really do love this community but I basically have given up on it (in terms of my views of the long run trajectory, i still love the people and read what they write religiously). I think it’s already too late and it’s been institutionally/culturally captured. I’m never certain of course but I think probably FTX was EAs last chance to put in real political/financial policies (some of which you mentioned/gestured at) that stop it from value drifting with outer status/money loops, and at this point it’s most likely a waste of time to try to fix it. I didn’t realize it at the time but this is how I feel looking back. I mean god damn we didn’t even clear house of the majority of the people directly implicated in the scandal! That would have been a bare minimum, I think.
The problems are real but increasingly my advice is: you are better of hopping to something like humanism and working on improving it if you want to see the solutions implemented. The forum and EA movement at large if you don’t live in a group house or for a prestigious EA org or have a bunch of money is basically when your older brother hands you an unplugged controller. I read the forum almost every day and have done so for years so one starts to pick up on some patterns. Since FTX I see a post like yours approx once a month (although more recently). They usually get between 20-50 upvotes so there is definitely some sort of coalition there but it’s small and basically never does someone powerful in the movement interact with these posts, you can decide if that’s a coincidence or not. And ultimately the posts always seem drift away with the wind. In this sense one can see how the movement would get accused of being paid opposition or something like that.
Personally, I will be hopping ship the first chance I get (i.e. as soon as another community has a close level of intellectual rigor without the horrible incentives and incoherent structure). And yes I will still call myself an effective altruist :), only if asked will I clarify the lowercaseness of that statement. (see I always write way too much—I’m working on it lol).
Oh wow, the selection effect at hiring is an incredibly solid point I missed. The convergence I’m worried about downstream is indeed partly initiated at the door.
On the rest, the unplugged controller bit is… intriguing. I’m not where you are yet on giving up but I respect that you’ve been watching this pattern longer than I have. If you’re right that posts like this just drift away, I guess we’ll find out. I’d rather write it and be wrong about its impact than not write it and be right about the concern. Appreciate you sharing all this very much.
Whoa. Is this your parable? This is beautifully put and it captures something my essay only gestures at. My worry is narrower though I suppose: the city is about to get a lot richer and the new money is coming from people who built a specific tower. ‘the city wished them well and did not study where they went.’ will stay with me, thanks. That’s the selection mechanism I’m worried about.
Yes I wrote it (with some help from Claude), glad you enjoyed it!
You are right your specific worry/content of the post is narrower, and generally I think you have approximately the right sense for what is going on and didn’t mean for the parable to be an exact fictional substitute for your post but just related. Also maybe I missed it but I think you forgot to mention the selection effect of those who ends up at anthropic itself, which is arguably bigger than the value drift inside of it—the tower was to some extent built by believers!. It’s always hard for me to write these comments because I feel as though I could write a 40 page book about the group dynamics in EA :P.
I really do love this community but I basically have given up on it (in terms of my views of the long run trajectory, i still love the people and read what they write religiously). I think it’s already too late and it’s been institutionally/culturally captured. I’m never certain of course but I think probably FTX was EAs last chance to put in real political/financial policies (some of which you mentioned/gestured at) that stop it from value drifting with outer status/money loops, and at this point it’s most likely a waste of time to try to fix it. I didn’t realize it at the time but this is how I feel looking back. I mean god damn we didn’t even clear house of the majority of the people directly implicated in the scandal! That would have been a bare minimum, I think.
The problems are real but increasingly my advice is: you are better of hopping to something like humanism and working on improving it if you want to see the solutions implemented. The forum and EA movement at large if you don’t live in a group house or for a prestigious EA org or have a bunch of money is basically when your older brother hands you an unplugged controller. I read the forum almost every day and have done so for years so one starts to pick up on some patterns. Since FTX I see a post like yours approx once a month (although more recently). They usually get between 20-50 upvotes so there is definitely some sort of coalition there but it’s small and basically never does someone powerful in the movement interact with these posts, you can decide if that’s a coincidence or not. And ultimately the posts always seem drift away with the wind. In this sense one can see how the movement would get accused of being paid opposition or something like that.
Personally, I will be hopping ship the first chance I get (i.e. as soon as another community has a close level of intellectual rigor without the horrible incentives and incoherent structure). And yes I will still call myself an effective altruist :), only if asked will I clarify the lowercaseness of that statement. (see I always write way too much—I’m working on it lol).
Let us know what you find.
Have you seen the moral ambition folks?
Oh wow, the selection effect at hiring is an incredibly solid point I missed. The convergence I’m worried about downstream is indeed partly initiated at the door.
On the rest, the unplugged controller bit is… intriguing. I’m not where you are yet on giving up but I respect that you’ve been watching this pattern longer than I have. If you’re right that posts like this just drift away, I guess we’ll find out. I’d rather write it and be wrong about its impact than not write it and be right about the concern. Appreciate you sharing all this very much.