You directly said that all the smart dedicated people are working on LT causes or interventions and also distinctly said that NT people aren’t very good or thought out and that’s why they are NT.
Moving to explicit slagging of different cause areas isn’t an orthodox or acceptable view IMO in EA, even among “pure” LT or NT talking about other respective areas.
Things get metal in a world without these norms, which is why EA leaders pay a lot of attention to maintaining them. Very strong people, who don’t perfectly agree with every possible aspect of LT implementations, are very happy to see strong AI safety work and see it grow greatly. Some NT people are sitting on pretty powerful and unvoiced novel criticisms on LT (and vice versa). These ideas can’t really be socialized and won’t be said.
Note that this does not involve horse trading or anything like that.
I would expect to provide aid or resources to other EAs working on their cause areas I am not interested in and vice versa. Not doing so is defection.
I guess another aspect is that the “large” resources that will need to be deployed to LT, like 7 figure comp for individual talent and small armies of PA, comms and operations, producing reams of impressive looking applied math output, outreach, public figures, and other work, is important. All of the above is like the expenses of medium size startup by the way.
Yet, there is anxiety among NT, who say, give up high six figure salaries, staff and can’t quite compete in a material sense, that the situation in the above paragraph will just runaway, with the resulting ”complex” leading to certain excesses, like insular, uncollegial and self interested views that consume other areas.
All the above is sort of known, has been thought about for a long time and the proximate issues are manageable, even stale.
So, anyways, sort of sitting in “the outer loop”, looking at the situation in the first two paragraphs, a reasonable view is to be concerned about the related anxiety and pressure manifesting in an unhealthy way, coloring and providing an unstable tail wind to topics or memes like “vultures”, “funding”, “trust” etc. These are genuinely important and valuable topics that need examination. But these anxieties and tailwinds risk poisoning and spoiling this thinking. They also provide a powerful soapbox for posturing and other malign behaviour.
In total, this might ultimately may foul up important transitions with bad effects on everyone.
So like, even if everything in your comment was true, comments just that go straight to “NT are bad”, are not helpful.
You directly said that all the smart dedicated people are working on LT causes or interventions and also distinctly said that NT people aren’t very good or thought out and that’s why they are NT.
Moving to explicit slagging of different cause areas isn’t an orthodox or acceptable view IMO in EA, even among “pure” LT or NT talking about other respective areas.
Things get metal in a world without these norms, which is why EA leaders pay a lot of attention to maintaining them. Very strong people, who don’t perfectly agree with every possible aspect of LT implementations, are very happy to see strong AI safety work and see it grow greatly. Some NT people are sitting on pretty powerful and unvoiced novel criticisms on LT (and vice versa). These ideas can’t really be socialized and won’t be said.
Note that this does not involve horse trading or anything like that.
I would expect to provide aid or resources to other EAs working on their cause areas I am not interested in and vice versa. Not doing so is defection.
I guess another aspect is that the “large” resources that will need to be deployed to LT, like 7 figure comp for individual talent and small armies of PA, comms and operations, producing reams of impressive looking applied math output, outreach, public figures, and other work, is important. All of the above is like the expenses of medium size startup by the way.
Yet, there is anxiety among NT, who say, give up high six figure salaries, staff and can’t quite compete in a material sense, that the situation in the above paragraph will just runaway, with the resulting ”complex” leading to certain excesses, like insular, uncollegial and self interested views that consume other areas.
All the above is sort of known, has been thought about for a long time and the proximate issues are manageable, even stale.
So, anyways, sort of sitting in “the outer loop”, looking at the situation in the first two paragraphs, a reasonable view is to be concerned about the related anxiety and pressure manifesting in an unhealthy way, coloring and providing an unstable tail wind to topics or memes like “vultures”, “funding”, “trust” etc. These are genuinely important and valuable topics that need examination. But these anxieties and tailwinds risk poisoning and spoiling this thinking. They also provide a powerful soapbox for posturing and other malign behaviour.
In total, this might ultimately may foul up important transitions with bad effects on everyone.
So like, even if everything in your comment was true, comments just that go straight to “NT are bad”, are not helpful.