I’m glad you found my comment useful. I think then, with respect, you should consider retracting some of your previous comments, or at least reframing them to be more circumspect and be clear you’re taking issue with a particular framing/subset of the AIXR community as opposed to EA as a whole.
As for the points in your comment, there’s a lot of good stuff here. I think a post about the NRRC, or even an insider’s view into how the US administration thinks about and handles Nuclear Risk, would be really useful content on the Forum, and also incredibly interesting! Similarly, I think how a community handles making ‘right-tail recommendations’ when those recommendations may erode its collective and institutional legitimacy[1] would be really valuable. (Not saying that you should write these posts, they’re just examples off the top of my head. In general I think you have a professional perspective a lot of EAs could benefit from)
These are all great suggestions! As for my objections to EA as a whole versus a subset, it reminds me a bit of a defense that folks employ whenever a larger organization is criticised. Defenses that one hears from Republicans in the US for example. “It’s not all of us, just a vocal subset!” That might be true, but I think it misses the point. It’s hard to soul-search and introspect as an organization or a movement if we collectively say, “not all-EA” when someone points to the enthusiasm around SBF and ideas like buying up coal mines.
I’m glad you found my comment useful. I think then, with respect, you should consider retracting some of your previous comments, or at least reframing them to be more circumspect and be clear you’re taking issue with a particular framing/subset of the AIXR community as opposed to EA as a whole.
As for the points in your comment, there’s a lot of good stuff here. I think a post about the NRRC, or even an insider’s view into how the US administration thinks about and handles Nuclear Risk, would be really useful content on the Forum, and also incredibly interesting! Similarly, I think how a community handles making ‘right-tail recommendations’ when those recommendations may erode its collective and institutional legitimacy[1] would be really valuable. (Not saying that you should write these posts, they’re just examples off the top of my head. In general I think you have a professional perspective a lot of EAs could benefit from)
I think one thing where we agree is that there’s a need to ask and answer a lot more questions, some of which you mention here (beyond ‘is AIXR valid’):
What policy options do we have to counteract AIXR if true?
How do the effectiveness of these policy options change as we change our estimation of the risk?
What is the median view in the AIXR/broader EA/broader AI communities on risk?
And so on.
Some people in EA might write this off as ‘optics’, but I think that’s wrong
These are all great suggestions! As for my objections to EA as a whole versus a subset, it reminds me a bit of a defense that folks employ whenever a larger organization is criticised. Defenses that one hears from Republicans in the US for example. “It’s not all of us, just a vocal subset!” That might be true, but I think it misses the point. It’s hard to soul-search and introspect as an organization or a movement if we collectively say, “not all-EA” when someone points to the enthusiasm around SBF and ideas like buying up coal mines.