What percentage of the people on the panel are longtermists? It seems, at first glance, that almost everyone is, or at least working in a field/org that strongly implies they are. If so, isn’t this a problem for the impartiality of the results? Even if not, how is an independent outsider (like the people making submissions) supposed to believe that?
This is likely to have the opposite effect; it will reinforce the current thinking in EA rather than challenge it, while monetarily rewarding people for parroting back the status quo.
I sympathise with this and generally think that EA should take conflicts of interest more seriously.
That said, I think this is subtly the wrong question: what we really want is, “how rational are the judges?” How often did they change their mind in response to arguments of various kinds from various places of various tones?
Can we say anything to convince you of that? Maybe.
Anyway: Most days I feel like more of a “holy shit x-risk” guy than a strong longtermist. I briefly worked in international development, was a socialist, a feminist, a vegan, an e2g, etc, etc. I took and liked a bunch of classes on weird things like Nietzsche, Derrida, Bourdieu. My comments on here are a good sample of me on my best behaviour.
What percentage of the people on the panel are longtermists? It seems, at first glance, that almost everyone is, or at least working in a field/org that strongly implies they are. If so, isn’t this a problem for the impartiality of the results? Even if not, how is an independent outsider (like the people making submissions) supposed to believe that?
This is likely to have the opposite effect; it will reinforce the current thinking in EA rather than challenge it, while monetarily rewarding people for parroting back the status quo.
I sympathise with this and generally think that EA should take conflicts of interest more seriously.
That said, I think this is subtly the wrong question: what we really want is, “how rational are the judges?” How often did they change their mind in response to arguments of various kinds from various places of various tones?
Can we say anything to convince you of that? Maybe.
Anyway: Most days I feel like more of a “holy shit x-risk” guy than a strong longtermist. I briefly worked in international development, was a socialist, a feminist, a vegan, an e2g, etc, etc. I took and liked a bunch of classes on weird things like Nietzsche, Derrida, Bourdieu. My comments on here are a good sample of me on my best behaviour.
The crucial complementary question is “what percentage of people on the panel are neartermists?”
FWIW, I have previously written about animal ethics, interviewed Open Phil’s neartermist co-CEO, and am personally donating to neartermist causes.