Sorry to hear you found this saddening and confusing :/
Just to share another perspective: To me, the post did not come across as insensitive. I found the tone clear and sober, as I’m used to from 80k content, and I appreciated the explicit mention that there might now be space for another org to cover other cause areas like bio or nuclear.
These trade-offs are always difficult, but as any EA org, 80k should do what they consider highest expected impact overall rather than what’s best for the EA community, and I’m glad they’re doing that.
What confused/saddened me wasn’t so much their reasons the change, but why they didn’t address perhaps the 3-5 biggest potential objections / downsides / trade offs to the decision. They even had a section “What does this mean for non-AI cause areas?” without stating the most important things that this means for non-AI cause areas, which include
1. Members the current community feeling left out/frustrated because for the first time they are no longer aligned with / no longer served by a top EA organisation 2. (From ZDGroff) “Organizations like 80,000 Hours set the tone for the community, and I think there’s good rule-of-thumb reasons to think focusing on one issue is a mistake. As 80K’s problem profile on factory farming says, factory farming may be the greatest moral mistake humanity is currently making, and it’s good to put some weight on rules of thumb in addition to expectations.” 3. The risk of narrowing the funnel into EA as less people will be attracted to a narrower AI focus (mentioned a few times). This seems like a pretty serious issue to not address, given that 80k (like it or not) is an EA front page
Just because 80k doesn’t necessarily have these issues as their top goal, doesnt’ mean these issues don’t exist. I sense a bit of “Ostrich” mindset. I’ve heard a couple of times that they aren’t aiming to be an onramp to EA, but that doesn’t stop them from being one of the main Onramps evidenced by studies that have asked people how they got into EA....
I think the tone of the post is somewhat tone deaf and could easily have been mitigated with some simple soft and caring language, such as “we realise that some people may feel...”, and “This could make it harder for....”. Maybe that’s not the tone 80k normally take, but I think that’s a nicer way to operate which costs you basically nothing.
Sorry to hear you found this saddening and confusing :/
Just to share another perspective: To me, the post did not come across as insensitive. I found the tone clear and sober, as I’m used to from 80k content, and I appreciated the explicit mention that there might now be space for another org to cover other cause areas like bio or nuclear.
These trade-offs are always difficult, but as any EA org, 80k should do what they consider highest expected impact overall rather than what’s best for the EA community, and I’m glad they’re doing that.
What confused/saddened me wasn’t so much their reasons the change, but why they didn’t address perhaps the 3-5 biggest potential objections / downsides / trade offs to the decision. They even had a section “What does this mean for non-AI cause areas?” without stating the most important things that this means for non-AI cause areas, which include
1. Members the current community feeling left out/frustrated because for the first time they are no longer aligned with / no longer served by a top EA organisation
2. (From ZDGroff) “Organizations like 80,000 Hours set the tone for the community, and I think there’s good rule-of-thumb reasons to think focusing on one issue is a mistake. As 80K’s problem profile on factory farming says, factory farming may be the greatest moral mistake humanity is currently making, and it’s good to put some weight on rules of thumb in addition to expectations.”
3. The risk of narrowing the funnel into EA as less people will be attracted to a narrower AI focus (mentioned a few times). This seems like a pretty serious issue to not address, given that 80k (like it or not) is an EA front page
Just because 80k doesn’t necessarily have these issues as their top goal, doesnt’ mean these issues don’t exist. I sense a bit of “Ostrich” mindset. I’ve heard a couple of times that they aren’t aiming to be an onramp to EA, but that doesn’t stop them from being one of the main Onramps evidenced by studies that have asked people how they got into EA....
I think the tone of the post is somewhat tone deaf and could easily have been mitigated with some simple soft and caring language, such as “we realise that some people may feel...”, and “This could make it harder for....”. Maybe that’s not the tone 80k normally take, but I think that’s a nicer way to operate which costs you basically nothing.