Towards the top of the post I think you made a claim that EAs are often very optimistic (particularly agentic one’s doing ambitious things or in ‘elitist’ positions).
I just wanted to flag that this isn’t my impression of many EAs who I think are doing ambitious projects, I think a disproportionate number of agentic people I know in EA are pretty pessimistic in general.
I think the optimism thing and something like desire to try hard/motivation/ enthusiasm for projects are getting a bit confused here, but low confidence.
Re optimism bias
Towards the top of the post I think you made a claim that EAs are often very optimistic (particularly agentic one’s doing ambitious things or in ‘elitist’ positions).
I just wanted to flag that this isn’t my impression of many EAs who I think are doing ambitious projects, I think a disproportionate number of agentic people I know in EA are pretty pessimistic in general.
I think the optimism thing and something like desire to try hard/motivation/ enthusiasm for projects are getting a bit confused here, but low confidence.