Someone I know speaks to some pretty nice, reasonable people. Something that person hears, in private, high-trust situations, about EA is that “it’s too demanding” and “I don’t want to give up my life to charity, man”.
So very talented, virtuous, people are saying they don’t want to engage in EA not because of bad values, bad epistemics, or culture, but because it’s just seems too much.
This is not a defect, I’m saying it’s sort of the opposite.
EA gets a lot of criticism like “the people fell in love with AI” and “too much measurement”, “we just need to start the left/libertarian revolution and the markets/democracy will fix everything”.
But what if these ideas are just the chaff that appears online?
What if 50% of “criticism” (or maybe 95% of the potential population, weighted by potential contribution) amounts to mundane yet important things like, “Hey, this seems good, but I don’t want to give up my series A to figure out how to contribute.”[1]
That’s not something a lot of people will write publicly, especially people who don’t have a philosophical bent or a culture of writing online, and work 50+ hours in pretty demanding jobs.
There’s issues about dilution here and I’m not saying EA should try to get most or even 10% of these people. Even a small fraction of these people a huge amount of talent.
Many of these people aren’t ideological, materialistic, or selfish, it’s more like, “Wow, this seems like a lot, and I don’t know how to engage.”
Someone I know speaks to some pretty nice, reasonable people. Something that person hears, in private, high-trust situations, about EA is that “it’s too demanding” and “I don’t want to give up my life to charity, man”.
So very talented, virtuous, people are saying they don’t want to engage in EA not because of bad values, bad epistemics, or culture, but because it’s just seems too much.
This is not a defect, I’m saying it’s sort of the opposite.
EA gets a lot of criticism like “the people fell in love with AI” and “too much measurement”, “we just need to start the left/libertarian revolution and the markets/democracy will fix everything”.
But what if these ideas are just the chaff that appears online?
What if 50% of “criticism” (or maybe 95% of the potential population, weighted by potential contribution) amounts to mundane yet important things like, “Hey, this seems good, but I don’t want to give up my series A to figure out how to contribute.”[1]
That’s not something a lot of people will write publicly, especially people who don’t have a philosophical bent or a culture of writing online, and work 50+ hours in pretty demanding jobs.
There’s issues about dilution here and I’m not saying EA should try to get most or even 10% of these people. Even a small fraction of these people a huge amount of talent.
Many of these people aren’t ideological, materialistic, or selfish, it’s more like, “Wow, this seems like a lot, and I don’t know how to engage.”