This is true about many good things a person could do. Some people see AI safety as a special case because they think it’s literally the most good thing, but other people see other causes the same way — and I don’t think we want to make any particular thing a default “justify if not X”.
I’m unsure how much I want AI safety to be the default, there are a lot of factors pushing in both directions. But I think one should have a reason why one isn’t doing each of the top ~10 things one could, and for a lot of people AI safety (not necessarily technical research) should be on this list.
When someone in EA tells me they work on X, my default assumption is that they think their (traction on X * assumed size of X) is higher than the same number would be for any other thing. Maybe I’m wrong, because they’re in the process of retraining or got rejected from all the jobs in Y or something. But I don’t see it as my job to make them explain to me why they did X instead of Y, unless they’re asking me for career advice or something.
My guess is that the median person who filled out the EA survey isn’t being consistent in this way. I expect that they could have a one-hour 1-1 with a top community-builder that makes them realize they could be doing something at least 10% better. This is a crux for me.
Separately, I do feel a bit weird about making every conversation into a career advice conversation, but often this seems like the highest impact thing.
If someone finds EA strategy in [global health] unconvincing, do they need to justify why they aren’t writing up their arguments?
This was thought-provoking for me. I think existingposts of similar types were hugely impactful. If money were a bottleneck for AI safety and I thought money currently spent on global health should be reallocated to AI safety, writing up some document on this would be among the best things I could be doing. I suppose in general it also depends on one’s writing skill.
My guess is that the median person who filled out the EA survey isn’t being consistent in this way. I expect that they could have a one-hour 1-1 with a top community-builder that makes them realize they could be doing something at least 10% better. This is a crux for me.
I agree with most of this. (I think that other people in EA usually think they’re doing roughly the best thing for their skills/beliefs, but I don’t think they’re usually correct.)
I don’t know about “top community builder”, unless we tautologically define that as “person who’s really good at giving career/trajectory advice”. I think you could be great at building or running a group and also bad at giving advice. (There are several ways to be bad at giving advice — you might be ignorant of good options, bad at surfacing key features of a person’s situation, bad at securing someone’s trust, etc.)
Separately, I do feel a bit weird about making every conversation into a career advice conversation, but often this seems like the highest impact thing.
I’m thinking about conversations in the vein of an EAG speed meeting, where you’re meeting a new person and learning about what they do for a few minutes. If someone comes to EAG and all their speed meetings turn into career advice with an overtone of “you’re probably doing something wrong”, that seems exhausting/dispiriting and unlikely to help (if they aren’t looking for help). I’ve heard from a lot of people who had this experience at an event, and it often made them less interested in further engagement.
If I were going to have an hour-long, in-depth conversation with someone about their work, even if they weren’t specifically asking for advice, I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually got into probing questions about how they made their choices (and I hope they’d challenge me about my choices, too!). But I wouldn’t try to ask probing questions unprompted in a brief conversation unless someone said something that sounded very off-base to me.
Thanks for the good reply.
I’m unsure how much I want AI safety to be the default, there are a lot of factors pushing in both directions. But I think one should have a reason why one isn’t doing each of the top ~10 things one could, and for a lot of people AI safety (not necessarily technical research) should be on this list.
My guess is that the median person who filled out the EA survey isn’t being consistent in this way. I expect that they could have a one-hour 1-1 with a top community-builder that makes them realize they could be doing something at least 10% better. This is a crux for me.
Separately, I do feel a bit weird about making every conversation into a career advice conversation, but often this seems like the highest impact thing.
This was thought-provoking for me. I think existing posts of similar types were hugely impactful. If money were a bottleneck for AI safety and I thought money currently spent on global health should be reallocated to AI safety, writing up some document on this would be among the best things I could be doing. I suppose in general it also depends on one’s writing skill.
I agree with most of this. (I think that other people in EA usually think they’re doing roughly the best thing for their skills/beliefs, but I don’t think they’re usually correct.)
I don’t know about “top community builder”, unless we tautologically define that as “person who’s really good at giving career/trajectory advice”. I think you could be great at building or running a group and also bad at giving advice. (There are several ways to be bad at giving advice — you might be ignorant of good options, bad at surfacing key features of a person’s situation, bad at securing someone’s trust, etc.)
I’m thinking about conversations in the vein of an EAG speed meeting, where you’re meeting a new person and learning about what they do for a few minutes. If someone comes to EAG and all their speed meetings turn into career advice with an overtone of “you’re probably doing something wrong”, that seems exhausting/dispiriting and unlikely to help (if they aren’t looking for help). I’ve heard from a lot of people who had this experience at an event, and it often made them less interested in further engagement.
If I were going to have an hour-long, in-depth conversation with someone about their work, even if they weren’t specifically asking for advice, I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually got into probing questions about how they made their choices (and I hope they’d challenge me about my choices, too!). But I wouldn’t try to ask probing questions unprompted in a brief conversation unless someone said something that sounded very off-base to me.