If you want to suggest a change to the article portal (e.g. a different sorting system, or a particular article that should be moved), send a message to Aaron Gertler. He knows the portal is a mess right now, and he appreciates feedback.
I imagine it’d be better to also suggest people could make their suggestions publicly here (or somewhere else)? That way these could inspire further suggestions, get upvoted or downvoted, etc.
Will Aaron, Pablo, or other people by default look at all newly created tags to decide where to add them in the Tags Portal? Or is there any need for people who create the tags to flag their creation to someone, and maybe make suggestions about where to put them?
I have now updated the Tag Portal so that it reflects the current state of the Wiki, and will henceforth add to it any newly created entries, so it should always remain up-to-date.
I look at all newly created tags every morning, so there’s no need to flag their creation. I’ll coordinate with Aaron to find a process for incorporating new tags into the Tags Portal periodically.
Currently the Cause Areas part of the tags portal has two sections for GCRs but none for longtermism. I think it’s probably now more common to think about the main EA cause areas as including longtermism than to think about them as including x-risks or GCRs; i.e., the framing often primarily focuses on the long-term future, with x-risks and GCRs as big examples of what one might focus on within longtermism. And this seems like a useful way to frame it, given that longtermism can include both stuff to do with x-risks/GCRs and other stuff (e.g., non-existential trajectory changes, or speeding up progress). (Though this is complicated by the fact that one could prioritise x-risks or GCRs for non-longtermist reasons.)
So I think it might be better to have a category for longtermism and then have the GCR stuff all as part of that.
Alternatively, there could be an additional category for “Longtermism (other than GCRs)”, or something like that.
We have two categories (“Moral Philosophy”, “Long-Term Risks and Flourishing”) which capture lots of material relevant to longtermism.
As for the cause area section specifically:
AI is its own cluster because we currently have an enormous number of articles about it. If we only had one article about AI risk, I’d put it under “Global Catastrophic Risks” and that would be that.
The “Global Catastrophic Risks (other)” cluster feels well-defined to me in a way that a “longtermist” cluster wouldn’t. When I look at the “Other” cluster, most of the seemingly “longtermist” causes are still things that many people work on hoping to achieve substantial change within their lifetimes, for the sake of present-day people — anti-aging research, land use reform, climate change...
If you ask me about a cause area in that section, I can fairly confidently say whether or not it counts as a GCR. In many cases, I wouldn’t be able to say whether or not it counted as “longtermist”. (And as you mention, many of the areas could be prioritized for longtermist or non-longtermist reasons.)
I think of longtermism as a common value system in EA. Many causes seem especially valuable to work on given a longtermist value system, but few such causes require a longtermist value system to make sense. (But I spend less time thinking about this kind of thing than you do, so I’m open to counterpoints I might not be considering.)
Currently, the tags portal says:
I imagine it’d be better to also suggest people could make their suggestions publicly here (or somewhere else)? That way these could inspire further suggestions, get upvoted or downvoted, etc.
I’ve added a link to your “tag proposal” thread (rather than this article, which isn’t meant to be a permanent resource).
Will Aaron, Pablo, or other people by default look at all newly created tags to decide where to add them in the Tags Portal? Or is there any need for people who create the tags to flag their creation to someone, and maybe make suggestions about where to put them?
I have now updated the Tag Portal so that it reflects the current state of the Wiki, and will henceforth add to it any newly created entries, so it should always remain up-to-date.
I look at all newly created tags every morning, so there’s no need to flag their creation. I’ll coordinate with Aaron to find a process for incorporating new tags into the Tags Portal periodically.
Currently the Cause Areas part of the tags portal has two sections for GCRs but none for longtermism. I think it’s probably now more common to think about the main EA cause areas as including longtermism than to think about them as including x-risks or GCRs; i.e., the framing often primarily focuses on the long-term future, with x-risks and GCRs as big examples of what one might focus on within longtermism. And this seems like a useful way to frame it, given that longtermism can include both stuff to do with x-risks/GCRs and other stuff (e.g., non-existential trajectory changes, or speeding up progress). (Though this is complicated by the fact that one could prioritise x-risks or GCRs for non-longtermist reasons.)
So I think it might be better to have a category for longtermism and then have the GCR stuff all as part of that.
Alternatively, there could be an additional category for “Longtermism (other than GCRs)”, or something like that.
We have two categories (“Moral Philosophy”, “Long-Term Risks and Flourishing”) which capture lots of material relevant to longtermism.
As for the cause area section specifically:
AI is its own cluster because we currently have an enormous number of articles about it. If we only had one article about AI risk, I’d put it under “Global Catastrophic Risks” and that would be that.
The “Global Catastrophic Risks (other)” cluster feels well-defined to me in a way that a “longtermist” cluster wouldn’t. When I look at the “Other” cluster, most of the seemingly “longtermist” causes are still things that many people work on hoping to achieve substantial change within their lifetimes, for the sake of present-day people — anti-aging research, land use reform, climate change...
If you ask me about a cause area in that section, I can fairly confidently say whether or not it counts as a GCR. In many cases, I wouldn’t be able to say whether or not it counted as “longtermist”. (And as you mention, many of the areas could be prioritized for longtermist or non-longtermist reasons.)
I think of longtermism as a common value system in EA. Many causes seem especially valuable to work on given a longtermist value system, but few such causes require a longtermist value system to make sense. (But I spend less time thinking about this kind of thing than you do, so I’m open to counterpoints I might not be considering.)