My view is roughly that EAs were equally disposed to be deferential then as they are now (if there were a clear EA consensus then, most of these EAs would have deferred to it, as they do now), but that “because the ‘official EA consensus’ (i.e. longtermism) is more readily apparent” now, people’s disposition to defer is more apparent.
This is an interesting possibility. I still think there’s a difference. For example, there’s a lot of disagreement within AI safety about what kind of problems are important and how to work on them, and most EAs (and AI safety people) seem much less inclined to try to argue with each other about this than I think we were at Stanford EA.
Agreed, but I can’t remember the last time I saw someone try to argue that you should donate to AMF rather than longtermism.
I think this is probably a mixture of longtermism winning over most people who’d write this kind of post, and also that people are less enthusiastic about arguing about cause prio these days for whatever reason. I think the post would be recieved well inasmuch as it was good. Maybe we’re agreeing here?
Whenever I do see near-termism come up, people don’t seem afraid to communicate that they think that it is obviously indefensible, or that they think even a third-rate longtermist intervention is probably incomparably better than AMF because at least it’s longtermist.
I don’t see people say that very often. Eg I almost never see people say this in response to posts about neartermism on the EA Facebook group, or on posts here.
This is an interesting possibility. I still think there’s a difference. For example, there’s a lot of disagreement within AI safety about what kind of problems are important and how to work on them, and most EAs (and AI safety people) seem much less inclined to try to argue with each other about this than I think we were at Stanford EA.
I think this is probably a mixture of longtermism winning over most people who’d write this kind of post, and also that people are less enthusiastic about arguing about cause prio these days for whatever reason. I think the post would be recieved well inasmuch as it was good. Maybe we’re agreeing here?
I don’t see people say that very often. Eg I almost never see people say this in response to posts about neartermism on the EA Facebook group, or on posts here.