Unfair: he/âshe did not propose speaking in vibes ourselves he/âshe merely argued that this is how many other people will process things.
Condoms are a classic public health measure because they prevent STDs, apart from the benefits of giving people control over their fertility.
Obviously rationalists have contributed a lot to EA, and of the early adopters probably started with views closest to where the big orgs are now (i.e. AI risk as the number one problem). But there have always been non-rationalist EAs. When I first took the GWWC pledge in 2012, I was only vaguely aware that rationalism/âLW existed. As far as I can tell none of Toby Ord, Will MacAskill, Holden Karnofsky or Elie Hassenfeld identified as rationalists when EA was first being set up, and they seem the best candidates for âfounders of EAâ, especially Toby (since he was working on GWWC before he met Will if I recall what Iâve read about the history correctly.) Not that there werenât strong connections to the rationalist community right from the beginning-Bostrom was always a big influence and he had known Eliezer Yudkowksy for years before even the embyronic period of EA. But itâs definitely wrong in my view to see EA as just an offshoot of rationalism. (I am a bit biased about this I admit, because I am an Oxford philosophy PhD, and although I wasnât involved, I was in grad school when a lot of the EA stuff was starting up.)
Unfair: he/âshe did not propose speaking in vibes ourselves he/âshe merely argued that this is how many other people will process things.
Condoms are a classic public health measure because they prevent STDs, apart from the benefits of giving people control over their fertility.
Obviously rationalists have contributed a lot to EA, and of the early adopters probably started with views closest to where the big orgs are now (i.e. AI risk as the number one problem). But there have always been non-rationalist EAs. When I first took the GWWC pledge in 2012, I was only vaguely aware that rationalism/âLW existed. As far as I can tell none of Toby Ord, Will MacAskill, Holden Karnofsky or Elie Hassenfeld identified as rationalists when EA was first being set up, and they seem the best candidates for âfounders of EAâ, especially Toby (since he was working on GWWC before he met Will if I recall what Iâve read about the history correctly.) Not that there werenât strong connections to the rationalist community right from the beginning-Bostrom was always a big influence and he had known Eliezer Yudkowksy for years before even the embyronic period of EA. But itâs definitely wrong in my view to see EA as just an offshoot of rationalism. (I am a bit biased about this I admit, because I am an Oxford philosophy PhD, and although I wasnât involved, I was in grad school when a lot of the EA stuff was starting up.)