I’d like to expand this shortform comment into a more detailed post with slightly better examples, some tentative conclusions, and a clear takeaway for what types of future research would be desirable.
2. A Post on Power Law distributions
Two possible posts here:
A. Power Law Distributions? It’s less likely than you think.
a. Basically, lots of EAs arguing that the distribution over {charitable organizations, interventions, people, causes} is ~power law.
b. I claim that this is unlikely. The distribution over most things that matter seem to be a heavy tail distribution that’s less extreme than power law.
d. Unfortunately understanding this well involves some mathematical machinery and a lot of real-world stats that’s been somewhat hard for me to make progress on (happy to hand it off to somebody else!)
B. What to do if we live in a power law world
The alternative post is to argue for why if were to take the power law hypothesis about EA-relevant things seriously, we should change our actions dramatically in key ways. I think it might be helpful to start a conversation about this.
3. Thoughts on South Bay EA
I cofounded and co-organized South Bay EA, and had a pretty comprehensive write-up about what futures we should be planning for. My co-organizers and I are still debating between whether to anonymize and share the write-up to benefit future organizers.
4. EA SF tentative plan
Similarly, I’ve vaguely been thinking of having a public write-up about plans for EA San Francisco so it’s easier to a) get feedback through external criticism and b) find collaborators/potential co-organizers online rather than entirely through my network.
I think I’d be interested in 1. Also, I recently collected all prior work I’d found that seemed substantially relevant to the unilateralist’s curse; unfortunately it wasn’t much, and you may have seen it all already, but just thought I’d mention it in case it could help you with that post idea.
(I’ve also added your shortform comment to that list now.)
1. Framing issues with the unilateralist’s curse.
I’d like to expand this shortform comment into a more detailed post with slightly better examples, some tentative conclusions, and a clear takeaway for what types of future research would be desirable.
2. A Post on Power Law distributions
Two possible posts here:
A. Power Law Distributions? It’s less likely than you think.
a. Basically, lots of EAs arguing that the distribution over {charitable organizations, interventions, people, causes} is ~power law.
b. I claim that this is unlikely. The distribution over most things that matter seem to be a heavy tail distribution that’s less extreme than power law.
c. outline here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17n27ygtUloGrFGqJyOV0Q-yUdGrK5HQoEI-de8lXTy0/edit
d. Unfortunately understanding this well involves some mathematical machinery and a lot of real-world stats that’s been somewhat hard for me to make progress on (happy to hand it off to somebody else!)
B. What to do if we live in a power law world
The alternative post is to argue for why if were to take the power law hypothesis about EA-relevant things seriously, we should change our actions dramatically in key ways. I think it might be helpful to start a conversation about this.
3. Thoughts on South Bay EA
I cofounded and co-organized South Bay EA, and had a pretty comprehensive write-up about what futures we should be planning for. My co-organizers and I are still debating between whether to anonymize and share the write-up to benefit future organizers.
4. EA SF tentative plan
Similarly, I’ve vaguely been thinking of having a public write-up about plans for EA San Francisco so it’s easier to a) get feedback through external criticism and b) find collaborators/potential co-organizers online rather than entirely through my network.
I’d be really excited to see 2A written up! Also 3 and 4 (in that order)
I think I’d be interested in 1. Also, I recently collected all prior work I’d found that seemed substantially relevant to the unilateralist’s curse; unfortunately it wasn’t much, and you may have seen it all already, but just thought I’d mention it in case it could help you with that post idea.
(I’ve also added your shortform comment to that list now.)