Ho-ho-ho, Merry-EV-mas everyone. It is once more the season of festive cheer and especially effective charitable donations, which also means that itâs time for the long-awaited-by-nobody-return of the đâ¨đ totally-not-serious-worth-no-internet-points-JWS-Forum-Awards đâ¨đ, updated for the 2024! Spreading Forum cheer and good vibes instead of nitpicky criticism!!
It was a tough choice this year, but I think this deep, deep dive into the different cost effectiveness calculations that were being used to anchor discussion in the GH v AW Debate Week was thorough, well-presented, and timely. Anyone could have done this instead of just taking he Saulius/âRethink estimates at face value, but titotal actually put in the effort. It was the culmination of a lot of work across multiple threads and comments, especially this one, and the full google doc they worked through is here.
This was, I think, an excellent example of good epistemic practices on the EA Forum. It was a replication which involved people on the original post, drilling down into models to find the differences, and also surfacing where the disagreements are based on moral beliefs rather than empirical data. Really fantastic work. đ
Honourable Mentions:
Towards more cooperative AI safety strategies by @richard_ngo: This was a post that I read at exactly the right time for me, as it was a point that I was also highly concerned that the AI Safety field was having a âlegitimacy problemâ.[1] As such, I think Richardâs call to action to focus on legitimacy and competence is well made, and I would urge those working explicitly in the field to read it (as well as the comments and discussion on the LessWrong version), and perhaps consider my quick take on the âvibe shiftâ in Silicon Valley as a chaser.
On Owning Our EA Affiliationby @Alix Pham: One of the most wholesome EA posts this year on the Forum? The post is a bit bittersweet to me now, as I was moved by it at the time but now I affiliate and identify less with EA now that than I have for a long time. The vibes around EA have not been great this year, and many people are explicitly or implicitly abandoning the movement, alix actually took the radical idea of âdo the oppositeâ. Sheâs careful to try to draw a distinction between affiliation and identity, and really engages in the comments leading to very good discussion.
Policy advocacy for eradicating screwworm looks remarkably cost-effective by @MathiasKBđ¸:EA Megaprojects are BACK baby! More seriously, this post people had the most âblow my mindâ effect on me this year. Who knew that the US Gov already engages in a campaign of strategic sterile-fly bombing, dropping millions of them on Central America every week? I feel like Mathias did great work finding a signal here, and Iâm sure other organisations (maybe an AIM-incubated kind of one) are well placed to pick up the baton.
Forum Posters of the Year:
@Vasco Grilođ¸ - I presume that the Forum has a bat-signal of sorts, where long discussions are made without anyone trying to do an EV calculation. And in such dire times, vasco appears, and always with amazing sincerity and thoroughness. Probably the Forumâs current postchild of âcalculate all the thingsâ EA. I think this year heâs been an awesome presence on the Forum, and long may it continue.
@Matthew_BarnettâMatthew is somewhat of an engima to me ideologically, there have been many cases where Iâve read a position of his and gone âno that canât be rightâ. Nevertheless, I think the consistently high-quality nature of his contributions on the Forum, often presenting an unorthodox view compared to the rest of EA, is worth celebrating regardless of whether I personally agree. Furthermore, one of my major updates this year has been towards viewing the Alignment Problem as one of political participation and incentives, and this can probably traced back significantly to his posts this year.
Non-Forum Poasters of the Year:
Matt Reardon (mjreard on X) - Currently, X is not a nice place to be an Effective Altruist at the moment. It seems to be attacked from all directions, and it means itâs not fun at all to push back on people and defend the EA point-of-view. Yet Matt has just consistently pushed back on some of the most egregious cases of this,[2] and also has had good discussion in EA Twitter too.
Jacques Thibodeau (JacquesThibs on X) - I think Jacques is great. He does interesting cool work on Alignment and you should consider working with him if youâre also in that space. I think one of the most positivie things that Jacques does on X to build bridges across the wider âAGI Twitterâ, including many who are sceptical or even hostile to AI Safety work like teortaxesTex or jd_pressman? I think this to his great credit, and Iâve never (or rarely) seen him get that angry on the platform, which might even deserve another award!
Congratulations to all of the winners! I also know that there were many people who made excellent posts and contributions that I couldnât shout out, but I want to know that I appreciate all of you for sharing things on the Forum or elsewhere.
My final ask is, once again, for you all to share your appreciation for others on the Forum this year and tell me what your best posts/âcomments/âcontributors were this year!
I think that the fractured and mixed response to the latest Apollo reports (both for OpenAI and Anthropic) is partially downstream of this loss of trust and legitimacy
This is great JWS, thanks for writing it! After Forum Wrapped is out in Jan, we should have a list of underrated posts (unsure on exact wording), weâll see how it compares.
As a bit of a lurker, let me echo all of this, particularly the appreciation of @Vasco Grilođ¸. I donât always agree with him, but adding some numbers makes every discussion better!
Ho-ho-ho, Merry-EV-mas everyone. It is once more the season of festive cheer and especially effective charitable donations, which also means that itâs time for the long-awaited-by-nobody-return of the đâ¨đ totally-not-serious-worth-no-internet-points-JWS-Forum-Awards đâ¨đ, updated for the 2024! Spreading Forum cheer and good vibes instead of nitpicky criticism!!
Best Forum Post I read this year:
Explaining the discrepancies in cost effectiveness ratings: A replication and breakdown of RPâs animal welfare cost effectiveness calculations by @titotal
It was a tough choice this year, but I think this deep, deep dive into the different cost effectiveness calculations that were being used to anchor discussion in the GH v AW Debate Week was thorough, well-presented, and timely. Anyone could have done this instead of just taking he Saulius/âRethink estimates at face value, but titotal actually put in the effort. It was the culmination of a lot of work across multiple threads and comments, especially this one, and the full google doc they worked through is here.
This was, I think, an excellent example of good epistemic practices on the EA Forum. It was a replication which involved people on the original post, drilling down into models to find the differences, and also surfacing where the disagreements are based on moral beliefs rather than empirical data. Really fantastic work. đ
Honourable Mentions:
Towards more cooperative AI safety strategies by @richard_ngo: This was a post that I read at exactly the right time for me, as it was a point that I was also highly concerned that the AI Safety field was having a âlegitimacy problemâ.[1] As such, I think Richardâs call to action to focus on legitimacy and competence is well made, and I would urge those working explicitly in the field to read it (as well as the comments and discussion on the LessWrong version), and perhaps consider my quick take on the âvibe shiftâ in Silicon Valley as a chaser.
On Owning Our EA Affiliation by @Alix Pham: One of the most wholesome EA posts this year on the Forum? The post is a bit bittersweet to me now, as I was moved by it at the time but now I affiliate and identify less with EA now that than I have for a long time. The vibes around EA have not been great this year, and many people are explicitly or implicitly abandoning the movement, alix actually took the radical idea of âdo the oppositeâ. Sheâs careful to try to draw a distinction between affiliation and identity, and really engages in the comments leading to very good discussion.
Policy advocacy for eradicating screwworm looks remarkably cost-effective by @MathiasKBđ¸: EA Megaprojects are BACK baby! More seriously, this post people had the most âblow my mindâ effect on me this year. Who knew that the US Gov already engages in a campaign of strategic sterile-fly bombing, dropping millions of them on Central America every week? I feel like Mathias did great work finding a signal here, and Iâm sure other organisations (maybe an AIM-incubated kind of one) are well placed to pick up the baton.
Forum Posters of the Year:
@Vasco Grilođ¸ - I presume that the Forum has a bat-signal of sorts, where long discussions are made without anyone trying to do an EV calculation. And in such dire times, vasco appears, and always with amazing sincerity and thoroughness. Probably the Forumâs current postchild of âcalculate all the thingsâ EA. I think this year heâs been an awesome presence on the Forum, and long may it continue.
@Matthew_BarnettâMatthew is somewhat of an engima to me ideologically, there have been many cases where Iâve read a position of his and gone âno that canât be rightâ. Nevertheless, I think the consistently high-quality nature of his contributions on the Forum, often presenting an unorthodox view compared to the rest of EA, is worth celebrating regardless of whether I personally agree. Furthermore, one of my major updates this year has been towards viewing the Alignment Problem as one of political participation and incentives, and this can probably traced back significantly to his posts this year.
Non-Forum Poasters of the Year:
Matt Reardon (mjreard on X) - Currently, X is not a nice place to be an Effective Altruist at the moment. It seems to be attacked from all directions, and it means itâs not fun at all to push back on people and defend the EA point-of-view. Yet Matt has just consistently pushed back on some of the most egregious cases of this,[2] and also has had good discussion in EA Twitter too.
Jacques Thibodeau (JacquesThibs on X) - I think Jacques is great. He does interesting cool work on Alignment and you should consider working with him if youâre also in that space. I think one of the most positivie things that Jacques does on X to build bridges across the wider âAGI Twitterâ, including many who are sceptical or even hostile to AI Safety work like teortaxesTex or jd_pressman? I think this to his great credit, and Iâve never (or rarely) seen him get that angry on the platform, which might even deserve another award!
Congratulations to all of the winners! I also know that there were many people who made excellent posts and contributions that I couldnât shout out, but I want to know that I appreciate all of you for sharing things on the Forum or elsewhere.
My final ask is, once again, for you all to share your appreciation for others on the Forum this year and tell me what your best posts/âcomments/âcontributors were this year!
I think that the fractured and mixed response to the latest Apollo reports (both for OpenAI and Anthropic) is partially downstream of this loss of trust and legitimacy
e.g. here and here
I wish it could be EV-mas every dayâŚ
This is great JWS, thanks for writing it! After Forum Wrapped is out in Jan, we should have a list of underrated posts (unsure on exact wording), weâll see how it compares.
As a bit of a lurker, let me echo all of this, particularly the appreciation of @Vasco Grilođ¸. I donât always agree with him, but adding some numbers makes every discussion better!