I think this is a useful exercise for a few reasons.
It’s helpful for outsiders and new people to reconcile different material that they see from different points in time.
It’s helpful for people to clarify if they hold a bundle of positions that’s associated with a particular wave. The old waves don’t necessarily go away, they just cease to dominate. It’s quite handy to be able to say “To understand my positions it may help to know that I’m a first-wave EA” or whatever.
I would be tempted to divide the second wave in two. I think there was a distinct period where career choice and talent constraints became a dominant theme, but before longtermism took off. So I’d say:
As you have it
Talent constraints become prominent, 80k becomes prominent, money becomes looser as OPP becomes a major player etc.
Longtermism becomes prominent, money becomes silly as FTX enters the scene, WWOTF
Not sure on dates. This gives us a very short third wave, but I think that matches reality: the FTX crisis and AI panic killed/substantially changed it.
Also, I think an interesting row for your table would be “Prominent thinkers”. It’s interesting that in other movements the waves are typically spearheaded by new people and thinkers, whereas in our case it’s often the same people again. Some extremely incomplete lists:
Singer, Ord, Karnofsky …
Todd, MacAskill …
Ord, Cotton-Barratt, MacAskill, Bostrom …
I also think this can help us with the question of “where is the next wave going?”. We can instead ask “who are the thinkers who are gaining prominence?”. It seems to me that there’s a bit of a void, except in the AIS space, so maybe that will dominate by default.
I think this is a useful exercise for a few reasons.
It’s helpful for outsiders and new people to reconcile different material that they see from different points in time.
It’s helpful for people to clarify if they hold a bundle of positions that’s associated with a particular wave. The old waves don’t necessarily go away, they just cease to dominate. It’s quite handy to be able to say “To understand my positions it may help to know that I’m a first-wave EA” or whatever.
I would be tempted to divide the second wave in two. I think there was a distinct period where career choice and talent constraints became a dominant theme, but before longtermism took off. So I’d say:
As you have it
Talent constraints become prominent, 80k becomes prominent, money becomes looser as OPP becomes a major player etc.
Longtermism becomes prominent, money becomes silly as FTX enters the scene, WWOTF
Not sure on dates. This gives us a very short third wave, but I think that matches reality: the FTX crisis and AI panic killed/substantially changed it.
Also, I think an interesting row for your table would be “Prominent thinkers”. It’s interesting that in other movements the waves are typically spearheaded by new people and thinkers, whereas in our case it’s often the same people again. Some extremely incomplete lists:
Singer, Ord, Karnofsky …
Todd, MacAskill …
Ord, Cotton-Barratt, MacAskill, Bostrom …
I also think this can help us with the question of “where is the next wave going?”. We can instead ask “who are the thinkers who are gaining prominence?”. It seems to me that there’s a bit of a void, except in the AIS space, so maybe that will dominate by default.