Why an ellipse? I understand why the pure EA position might be the Y=X line depicted, a line from bottom-left to top-right. But surely the opposite ought to be considered too, there must be some whose anti-EA perspective would be the Y = -X line, a diagonal from top-left to bottom right.
Yup—that would be the limiting case of an ellipse tilted the other way!
The idea for the ellipse is that what EA values is correlated (but not perfectly) with my utility function, so (under certain modeling assumptions) the space of most likely career outcomes is an ellipse, see e.g. here.
Given a correlation, the envelope of the distribution should form some sort of ellipse, narrower as the correlation goes stronger, and more circular as it gets weaker
Why an ellipse? I understand why the pure EA position might be the Y=X line depicted, a line from bottom-left to top-right. But surely the opposite ought to be considered too, there must be some whose anti-EA perspective would be the Y = -X line, a diagonal from top-left to bottom right.
Yup—that would be the limiting case of an ellipse tilted the other way!
The idea for the ellipse is that what EA values is correlated (but not perfectly) with my utility function, so (under certain modeling assumptions) the space of most likely career outcomes is an ellipse, see e.g. here.
You might also be interested in this post https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/09/25/the-tails-coming-apart-as-metaphor-for-life/