I was going to write a comment responding but Neel basically did it for me.
The only thing I would object to is Holly being a “prominent member of the EA community”. The PauseAI/StopAI people are often treated as fringe in the EA community and the she frequently violates norms of discourse. EAs due to their norms of discourse, usually just don’t respond to her in the way she responds to others..
Just off the top of my head: Holly was a community builder at Harvard EA, wrote what is arguably one of the most influential forum posts ever, and took sincere career and personal decisions based on EA principles (first, wild animal welfare, and now, “making AI go well”). Besides that, there are several EAGs and community events and conversations and activities that I don’t know about, but all in all, she has deeply engaged with EA and has been a thought leader of sorts for a while now. I think it is completely fair to call her a prominent member of the EA community.[1]
I am unsure if Holly would like the term “member” because she has stated that she is happy to burn bridges with EA / funders, so maybe “person who has historically been strongly influenced by and has been an active member of EA” would be the most accurate but verbose phrasing.
I think there’s some speaking past each other due to differing word choices. Holly is prominent, evidenced by the fact that we are currently discussing her. She has been part of the EA community for a long time and appears to be trying to do the most good according to her own principles. So it’s reasonable to call her a member of the EA community. And therefore “prominent member” is accurate in some sense.
However, “prominent member” can also imply that she represents the movement, is endorsed by it, or that her actions should influence what EA as a whole is perceived to believe. I believe this is the sense that Marcus and Matthew are using it, and I disagree that she fits this definition. She does not speak for me in any way. While I believe she has good intentions, I’m uncertain about the impact of her work and strongly disagree with many of her online statements and the discourse norms she has chosen to adopt, and think these go against EA norms (and would guess they are also negative for her stated goals, but am less sure on this one).
My impression is that Holly has intentionally sacrificed a significant amount of influence within EA because she feels that EA is too constraining in terms of what needs to be done to save humanity from AI.
So that term would have been much more accurate in the past.
Right but most of this is her “pre-AI” stuff and I am saying that I don’t think “Pause AI” is very mainstream by EA standards, particularly the very inflammatory nature of the activism and the policy prescriptions are definitely not in the majority. It is in that sense that I object to Matthew calling her prominent since by the standard you are suggesting, Matthew is also prominent. He’s been in the movement for a decade and written a lot of extremely influential posts and was a well known part of Epoch for a long time and also wrote one of the most prescient posts ever.
I don’t dispute that Holly has been an active and motivated member of the EA community for a while
I was going to write a comment responding but Neel basically did it for me.
The only thing I would object to is Holly being a “prominent member of the EA community”. The PauseAI/StopAI people are often treated as fringe in the EA community and the she frequently violates norms of discourse. EAs due to their norms of discourse, usually just don’t respond to her in the way she responds to others..
Just off the top of my head: Holly was a community builder at Harvard EA, wrote what is arguably one of the most influential forum posts ever, and took sincere career and personal decisions based on EA principles (first, wild animal welfare, and now, “making AI go well”). Besides that, there are several EAGs and community events and conversations and activities that I don’t know about, but all in all, she has deeply engaged with EA and has been a thought leader of sorts for a while now. I think it is completely fair to call her a prominent member of the EA community.[1]
I am unsure if Holly would like the term “member” because she has stated that she is happy to burn bridges with EA / funders, so maybe “person who has historically been strongly influenced by and has been an active member of EA” would be the most accurate but verbose phrasing.
I think there’s some speaking past each other due to differing word choices. Holly is prominent, evidenced by the fact that we are currently discussing her. She has been part of the EA community for a long time and appears to be trying to do the most good according to her own principles. So it’s reasonable to call her a member of the EA community. And therefore “prominent member” is accurate in some sense.
However, “prominent member” can also imply that she represents the movement, is endorsed by it, or that her actions should influence what EA as a whole is perceived to believe. I believe this is the sense that Marcus and Matthew are using it, and I disagree that she fits this definition. She does not speak for me in any way. While I believe she has good intentions, I’m uncertain about the impact of her work and strongly disagree with many of her online statements and the discourse norms she has chosen to adopt, and think these go against EA norms (and would guess they are also negative for her stated goals, but am less sure on this one).
“Prominence” isn’t static.
My impression is that Holly has intentionally sacrificed a significant amount of influence within EA because she feels that EA is too constraining in terms of what needs to be done to save humanity from AI.
So that term would have been much more accurate in the past.
Right but most of this is her “pre-AI” stuff and I am saying that I don’t think “Pause AI” is very mainstream by EA standards, particularly the very inflammatory nature of the activism and the policy prescriptions are definitely not in the majority. It is in that sense that I object to Matthew calling her prominent since by the standard you are suggesting, Matthew is also prominent. He’s been in the movement for a decade and written a lot of extremely influential posts and was a well known part of Epoch for a long time and also wrote one of the most prescient posts ever.
I don’t dispute that Holly has been an active and motivated member of the EA community for a while
Not sure how relevant this is given I think she disapproves of them. (I agree they are so fringe as to be basically outside it).