One clarification: given that the course is almost 100% EA/longtermist in content and structure (with the exception of just under half of week 7), does the mention of introducing existential risk without being explicitly associated with any particular philosophy refer to 1) intending to provide an even-handed introduction to the field, or 2) using the concept of existential risk as an EA/longtermism recruitment approach?
I see trade-offs with using either approach. 2) may lead to further impact down the line through career-alignment, but will necessarily reduce the quality of the course by narrowing the range of acceptable topics, readings, and approaches.
In practice the “create something which is ideologically independent from EA” wasn’t really what we went for, it’s more like “really hone in on this one area that lots of EAs care about”. We could have phrased it better in the post.
Yeah +1 to Nandini’s point, I think we should have been made this clearer in the post. I think people have a lot of misconceptions about EA (e.g. lots of people just think EA is about effective charitable giving), and we wanted to emphasise this particular part rather than trying to construct the whole tower of assumptions.
That being said, I do think that the abundance of writing from Ord/Bostrom is something that we could have done a better job of toning down, and different perspectives could have been included. If you have any specific recommendations for reading material you think would positively contribute in any week (or reading material already in the course that you think could be removed), we’d be really grateful!
Hi, thanks for sharing this!
One clarification: given that the course is almost 100% EA/longtermist in content and structure (with the exception of just under half of week 7), does the mention of introducing existential risk without being explicitly associated with any particular philosophy refer to 1) intending to provide an even-handed introduction to the field, or 2) using the concept of existential risk as an EA/longtermism recruitment approach?
I see trade-offs with using either approach. 2) may lead to further impact down the line through career-alignment, but will necessarily reduce the quality of the course by narrowing the range of acceptable topics, readings, and approaches.
In practice the “create something which is ideologically independent from EA” wasn’t really what we went for, it’s more like “really hone in on this one area that lots of EAs care about”. We could have phrased it better in the post.
Yeah +1 to Nandini’s point, I think we should have been made this clearer in the post. I think people have a lot of misconceptions about EA (e.g. lots of people just think EA is about effective charitable giving), and we wanted to emphasise this particular part rather than trying to construct the whole tower of assumptions.
That being said, I do think that the abundance of writing from Ord/Bostrom is something that we could have done a better job of toning down, and different perspectives could have been included. If you have any specific recommendations for reading material you think would positively contribute in any week (or reading material already in the course that you think could be removed), we’d be really grateful!