Maybe there’s a huge illusion in EA of “someone else has probably worked out these big assumptions we are making”. This goes all the way up to the person at Open Phil thinking “Holden has probably worked these out” but actually no one has.
I just wanted to highlight this in particular; I have heard people at Open Phil say things along the lines of ”… but we could be completely wrong about this!” about large strategic questions. A few examples related to my work:
Is it net positive to have a dedicated community of EAs working on reducing GCBRs, or would it be better for people to be more fully integrated into the broader biosecurity field?
If we want to have this community, should we try to increase its size? How quickly?
Is it good to emphasize concerns about dual-use and information hazards when people are getting started in biosecurity, or does that end up either stymieing them (or worse, inspiring them to produce more harmful ideas)?
These are big questions, and I have spent dozens (though not hundreds) of hours thinking about them… which has led to me feeling like I have “working hypotheses” in response to each. A working hypothesis is not a robust, confident answer based on well-worked-out assumptions. I could be wrong, but I suspect this is also true in many other areas of community building and cause prioritisation, even “all the way up”.
I just wanted to highlight this in particular; I have heard people at Open Phil say things along the lines of ”… but we could be completely wrong about this!” about large strategic questions. A few examples related to my work:
Is it net positive to have a dedicated community of EAs working on reducing GCBRs, or would it be better for people to be more fully integrated into the broader biosecurity field?
If we want to have this community, should we try to increase its size? How quickly?
Is it good to emphasize concerns about dual-use and information hazards when people are getting started in biosecurity, or does that end up either stymieing them (or worse, inspiring them to produce more harmful ideas)?
These are big questions, and I have spent dozens (though not hundreds) of hours thinking about them… which has led to me feeling like I have “working hypotheses” in response to each. A working hypothesis is not a robust, confident answer based on well-worked-out assumptions. I could be wrong, but I suspect this is also true in many other areas of community building and cause prioritisation, even “all the way up”.