Only the most elite 0.1 percent of people can even have a meaningful âpublic private disconnectâ as you have to have quite a prominent public profile for that to even be an issue.
Hmm yeah, thatâs kinda my point? Like complaining about your annoying coworker anonymously online is fine, but making a public blog post like âmy coworker Jane Doe sucks for these reasonsâ would be weird, people get fired for stuff like that. And referencing their wedding website would be even more extreme.
(Of course, most peopleâs coworkers arenât trying to reshape the lightcone without public consent so idk, maybe different standards should apply here. I can tell you that a non-trivial number of people Iâve wanted to hire for leadership positions in EA have declined for reasons like âI donât want people critiquing my personal life on the EA Forumâ though.)
No one is critiquing Danielaâs personal life though, theyâre critiquing something about her public life (ie her voluntary public statements to journalists) for contradicting what sheâs said in her personal life. Compare this with a common reason people get cancelled where the critique is that thereâs something bad in their personal life, and people are disappointed that the personal life doesnât reflect the public persona- in this case itâs the other way around.
most peopleâs coworkers arenât trying to reshape the lightcone without public consent so idk, maybe different standards should apply here
Exactly. Daniela and the senior leadership at one of the frontier AI labs are not the same as someoneâs random office colleague. Thereâs a clear public interest angle here in terms of understanding the political and social affiliations of powerful and influential peopleâwhich is simply absent in the case you describe.
Thatâs interesting and Iâm sad to hear about people declining jobs due those reasons. On the other hand though some leadership jobs might not be the right job fit if theyâre not up for that kind of critique. I would imagine though there are a bunch of ways to avoid the âEA limelightâ for many positions though, of course not public facing ones.
Slight quibble though I would consider âJane Doe sucks for these reasonsâ an order of magnitude more objectionable than quoting a wedding website to make a point. Maybe wedding website are sacrosanct in a way in missing tho...
the other hand though some leadership jobs might not be the right job fit if theyâre not up for that kind of critique
Yeah, this used to be my take but a few iterations of trying to hire for jobs which exclude shy awkward nerds from consideration when the EA candidate pool consists almost entirely of shy awkward nerds has made the cost of this approach quite salient to me.
Agree with Ben that this makes it harder to find folks for leadership positions.
In addition to excluding shy awkward nerds, youâre also actively selecting for a bunch of personality traits, not all of which are unalloyed positives.
By analogy, I think thereâs a very strong argument that very high levels of scrutiny are fair game for politicians but Iâm not particularly thrilled with what that does to our candidate pool.
(I donât know of a great way to resolve this tension.)
Hmm yeah, thatâs kinda my point? Like complaining about your annoying coworker anonymously online is fine, but making a public blog post like âmy coworker Jane Doe sucks for these reasonsâ would be weird, people get fired for stuff like that. And referencing their wedding website would be even more extreme.
(Of course, most peopleâs coworkers arenât trying to reshape the lightcone without public consent so idk, maybe different standards should apply here. I can tell you that a non-trivial number of people Iâve wanted to hire for leadership positions in EA have declined for reasons like âI donât want people critiquing my personal life on the EA Forumâ though.)
No one is critiquing Danielaâs personal life though, theyâre critiquing something about her public life (ie her voluntary public statements to journalists) for contradicting what sheâs said in her personal life. Compare this with a common reason people get cancelled where the critique is that thereâs something bad in their personal life, and people are disappointed that the personal life doesnât reflect the public persona- in this case itâs the other way around.
Exactly. Daniela and the senior leadership at one of the frontier AI labs are not the same as someoneâs random office colleague. Thereâs a clear public interest angle here in terms of understanding the political and social affiliations of powerful and influential peopleâwhich is simply absent in the case you describe.
Thatâs interesting and Iâm sad to hear about people declining jobs due those reasons. On the other hand though some leadership jobs might not be the right job fit if theyâre not up for that kind of critique. I would imagine though there are a bunch of ways to avoid the âEA limelightâ for many positions though, of course not public facing ones.
Slight quibble though I would consider âJane Doe sucks for these reasonsâ an order of magnitude more objectionable than quoting a wedding website to make a point. Maybe wedding website are sacrosanct in a way in missing tho...
Yeah, this used to be my take but a few iterations of trying to hire for jobs which exclude shy awkward nerds from consideration when the EA candidate pool consists almost entirely of shy awkward nerds has made the cost of this approach quite salient to me.
There are trade-offs to everything đ¤ˇââď¸
Agree with Ben that this makes it harder to find folks for leadership positions.
In addition to excluding shy awkward nerds, youâre also actively selecting for a bunch of personality traits, not all of which are unalloyed positives.
By analogy, I think thereâs a very strong argument that very high levels of scrutiny are fair game for politicians but Iâm not particularly thrilled with what that does to our candidate pool.
(I donât know of a great way to resolve this tension.)
100 percent man