I’d say the assumptions in this paragraph require much further examination. They are very far from a given, and not something that I believe many of these people would definitively claim. There’s greater uncertainty in much of what they’re doing, so much so that their impact at least has the potential to be much less than those you don’t consider ‘rock stars’.
“The attention of some readers might be drawn to EA notables such as Peter Singer, William MacAskill, Tom Ash, Jon Behar, Ryan Carey, Brian Tomasik, Kerry Vaughn, Tyler Alterman, Julia Wise, Owen Cotton-Barratt, Ozzie Gooen, and others, including frequent EA Forum participants, when evaluating dedicated EA members. Indeed, they do more good, much more good, than 3-6X times the good done by typical EA participants, through a combination of convincing many more people to do EA-aligned activities and building the infrastructure of the EA movement. Yet we should remember that such notables are atypical, and do not represent the vast majority of dedicated EA members, and their contributions fold into the overall 3-6X contributions of dedicated people. Separately, one reader of the draft version suggested we should come up with an additional term for such EA notables, such as “rock stars,” who do more than 100X as much good as a typical EA participant, and I will leave that for readers to discuss in the comments.”
I agree that there’s greater uncertainty about the positive impact in the long term of what EA “rock stars” are doing (note—my use of the term does not indicate we should adopt it, I’m just using it as a placeholder). Yet the long-term impact can be said about the EA movement as a whole, of course.
My perspective is that people who are trying to do much more good than the typical EA − 100X—think much harder about their long-term impact and try to pick the best course of action. They might disagree with each other, but they would have spent a lot of time thinking through their options and choosing the ones they seriously consider the be the best ones going forward. My educated guess is that doing so is most likely to correlate with 100X positive outcomes.
Of course, this is not certain, and I acknowledge I should have been a bit more cautious in that statement to not convey certainty. Appreciate you calling me out on it!
I’d say the assumptions in this paragraph require much further examination. They are very far from a given, and not something that I believe many of these people would definitively claim. There’s greater uncertainty in much of what they’re doing, so much so that their impact at least has the potential to be much less than those you don’t consider ‘rock stars’.
“The attention of some readers might be drawn to EA notables such as Peter Singer, William MacAskill, Tom Ash, Jon Behar, Ryan Carey, Brian Tomasik, Kerry Vaughn, Tyler Alterman, Julia Wise, Owen Cotton-Barratt, Ozzie Gooen, and others, including frequent EA Forum participants, when evaluating dedicated EA members. Indeed, they do more good, much more good, than 3-6X times the good done by typical EA participants, through a combination of convincing many more people to do EA-aligned activities and building the infrastructure of the EA movement. Yet we should remember that such notables are atypical, and do not represent the vast majority of dedicated EA members, and their contributions fold into the overall 3-6X contributions of dedicated people. Separately, one reader of the draft version suggested we should come up with an additional term for such EA notables, such as “rock stars,” who do more than 100X as much good as a typical EA participant, and I will leave that for readers to discuss in the comments.”
That’s a fair point, and a good criticism!
I agree that there’s greater uncertainty about the positive impact in the long term of what EA “rock stars” are doing (note—my use of the term does not indicate we should adopt it, I’m just using it as a placeholder). Yet the long-term impact can be said about the EA movement as a whole, of course.
My perspective is that people who are trying to do much more good than the typical EA − 100X—think much harder about their long-term impact and try to pick the best course of action. They might disagree with each other, but they would have spent a lot of time thinking through their options and choosing the ones they seriously consider the be the best ones going forward. My educated guess is that doing so is most likely to correlate with 100X positive outcomes.
Of course, this is not certain, and I acknowledge I should have been a bit more cautious in that statement to not convey certainty. Appreciate you calling me out on it!