This critique strikes me as about as sensible as digging up someone’s old high-school essays and critiquing their stance on communism or the criminal justice system. I want to remind any reader that this is an opinion from 1999, when Eliezer was barely 20 years old. I am confident I can find crazier and worse opinions for every single leadership figure in Effective Altruism, if I am willing to go back to what they thought while they were in high-school. To give some character, here are some things I believed in my early high-school years
This is really minor and nitpicky, and I agree with much of your overall points, but I don’t think equivocating between “barely 20” and “early high-school” is fair. The former is a normal age to be a third-year university student in the US, and plenty of college-age EAs are taken quite seriously by the rest of us.
Oh, hmm, I think this is just me messing up the differences between the U.S. and german education systems (I was 18 and 19 in high-school, and enrolled in college when I was 20).
I think the first quote on nanotechnology was actually written in 1996 originally (though was maybe updated in 1999). Which would put Eliezer at ~17 years old when he wrote that.
The second quote was I think written in more like 2000, which would put him more in the early college years, and I agree that it seems good to clarify that.
This is really minor and nitpicky, and I agree with much of your overall points, but I don’t think equivocating between “barely 20” and “early high-school” is fair. The former is a normal age to be a third-year university student in the US, and plenty of college-age EAs are taken quite seriously by the rest of us.
Oh, hmm, I think this is just me messing up the differences between the U.S. and german education systems (I was 18 and 19 in high-school, and enrolled in college when I was 20).
I think the first quote on nanotechnology was actually written in 1996 originally (though was maybe updated in 1999). Which would put Eliezer at ~17 years old when he wrote that.
The second quote was I think written in more like 2000, which would put him more in the early college years, and I agree that it seems good to clarify that.
Thank you, this clarification makes sense to me!