‘EA is too elitist’ criticisms seem to be more valid from a neartermist perspective than a longtermist one
I sometimes see criticisms around
EA is too elitist
EA is too focussed on exceptionally smart people
I do think that you can have a very outsized impact even if you’re not exceptionally smart, dedicated, driven etc. However I think that from some perspectives focussing on outliery talent seems to be the right move.
A few quick claims that push towards focusing on attracting outliers:
The main problems that we have are technical in nature (particularly AI safety)
Most progress on technical problems historically seems to be attributable to a surprisingly small set of the total people working on the problem
We currently don’t have a large fraction of the brightest minds working on what I see as the most important problems
If you are more interested in neartermist cause areas I think it’s reasonable to place less emphasis on finding exceptionally smart people. Whilst I do think that very outliery-trait people have a better shot at very outliery impact, I don’t think that there is as much of an advantage for exceptionally smart people over very smart people.
(So if you can get a lot of pretty smart people for the price of one exceptionally smart person then it seems more likely to be worth it.)
This seems mostly true to me by observation, but I have some intuition that motivates this claim.
AIS is a more novel problem than most neartermist causes, there’s a lot of working going in to getting more surface area on the problem as opposed to moving down a well defined path.
Being more novel also makes the problem more first mover-y so it seems important to start with a high density of good people to push onto good trajectories.
The resources for getting up to speed on the latest stuff seemless good than in more established fields.
‘EA is too elitist’ criticisms seem to be more valid from a neartermist perspective than a longtermist one
I sometimes see criticisms around
EA is too elitist
EA is too focussed on exceptionally smart people
I do think that you can have a very outsized impact even if you’re not exceptionally smart, dedicated, driven etc. However I think that from some perspectives focussing on outliery talent seems to be the right move.
A few quick claims that push towards focusing on attracting outliers:
The main problems that we have are technical in nature (particularly AI safety)
Most progress on technical problems historically seems to be attributable to a surprisingly small set of the total people working on the problem
We currently don’t have a large fraction of the brightest minds working on what I see as the most important problems
If you are more interested in neartermist cause areas I think it’s reasonable to place less emphasis on finding exceptionally smart people. Whilst I do think that very outliery-trait people have a better shot at very outliery impact, I don’t think that there is as much of an advantage for exceptionally smart people over very smart people.
(So if you can get a lot of pretty smart people for the price of one exceptionally smart person then it seems more likely to be worth it.)
This seems mostly true to me by observation, but I have some intuition that motivates this claim.
AIS is a more novel problem than most neartermist causes, there’s a lot of working going in to getting more surface area on the problem as opposed to moving down a well defined path.
Being more novel also makes the problem more first mover-y so it seems important to start with a high density of good people to push onto good trajectories.
The resources for getting up to speed on the latest stuff seemless good than in more established fields.