I think the extent to which “member of the EA community” comes along with a certain way of thinking (i.e. “a lot of useful frames”) is exaggerated by many people I’ve heard talk about this sort of thing. I think ~50% of the perceived similarity is better described as similar ways of speaking and knowledge of jargon. I think that there actually not that many people who have fully internalized new ways of thinking that are 1.) very rare outside of EA, and 2.) shared across most EA hiring managers.
Another way to put this would be: I think EA hiring managers often weight “membership in the EA community” significantly more highly than it should be weighted. I think our disagreement is mostly about how much this factor should be weighted.
Fair point on the fast changing thing. I have some thoughts, but they’re not very clear and I think what you said is reasonable. One very rough take: Yes you’d still the people you know, but you might go from, “I know 50% of the people in AI alignment” to “I know 10% of the people in AI Alignment” in 3 months, which could be disorienting and demoralizing. So it’s more of a relative thing than the absolute number of people you know.
I think the extent to which “member of the EA community” comes along with a certain way of thinking (i.e. “a lot of useful frames”) is exaggerated by many people I’ve heard talk about this sort of thing. I think ~50% of the perceived similarity is better described as similar ways of speaking and knowledge of jargon. I think that there actually not that many people who have fully internalized new ways of thinking that are 1.) very rare outside of EA, and 2.) shared across most EA hiring managers.
Another way to put this would be: I think EA hiring managers often weight “membership in the EA community” significantly more highly than it should be weighted. I think our disagreement is mostly about how much this factor should be weighted.
Fair point on the fast changing thing. I have some thoughts, but they’re not very clear and I think what you said is reasonable. One very rough take: Yes you’d still the people you know, but you might go from, “I know 50% of the people in AI alignment” to “I know 10% of the people in AI Alignment” in 3 months, which could be disorienting and demoralizing. So it’s more of a relative thing than the absolute number of people you know.