I think this is a fair pointâbut itâs not the frame Iâve been using to consider debate week topics.
My aim has been to generate useful discussion within the effective altruism community. Iâd like to choose topics which nudge people to examine assumptions theyâve been making, and might lead to them changing their minds, and perhaps their priorities, or the focus of their work. I havenât been thinking about debate weeks as a piece of communications work/â as a way of reaching out to a broader audience. This question in particular was chosen because the Forum audience wouldnât necessarily have cached takes on itâan audience outside the Forum would need a lot of context to get what we are talking about.
Perhaps Iâm missing something thoughâdo you think this is more public facing than Iâm assuming? To be clear, I know that it is public, but itâs not directed at an outside audience in the way a book or podcast or op-ed might be.
Edit: Iâm also uncertain on the claim that âthere are few interventions that are predictably differentiated along those linesââI think Forethought would disagree, and though Iâm not sure I agree with them, theyâve thought about it more than I have.
Thanks for engaging and for giving me the chance to outline more clearly and with more nuance what my take is.
I covered some of this in my reply to Ollie, but basically (a) I do think that Forum weeks are significant attentional devices signaling what we see as priorities, (b) the Forum has appeared in detail in many EA-critical pieces and (c) there are many Forum weeks we could be running right now that would be much better both from a point of action guiding and perception in the wider world.
I take as givenâI am not the right person to evaluate thisâthat there are some interventions that some EA funders might decide along those considerations.
But I am pretty confident it wonât matter to the wider philanthropic world, almost no one is thinking about philanthropic interventions saying âdoes this make a world better where we survive v does this mostly affect probability of extinction?â
If EA were ascendant and weâd be a significant share of philanthropy maybe thatâd be a good question to ask.
But in a world where our key longtermist priorities are not well funded and where most of the things we can be doing to broadly reduce risks are not clearly alignable to either side of the crux here, I think making this a key attentional priority seems to have, at least, significant opportunity cost.
EDIT:
I am mostly trying to give a consistent and clearly articulated perspective here, I am surely overlooking things and you have information on this that I do not have. I hope this is useful to you, but I donât want to imply I am able to have an all-things-considered view.
Thanks for engaging on this as well! I do feel the responsibility involved in setting event topics, and itâs great to get constructive criticism like this.
To respond to the points a bit (and this is just my view- quite quickly written because Iâve got a busy day today and Iâm happy to come back and clarify/âchange my mind in another reply):
(a) - maybe, but I think the actual content of the events almost always contains some scepticism of the question itself, discussion of adjacent debates etc⊠The actual topic of the event doesnât seem like a useful place to look for evidence on the communityâs priorities. Also, I generally run events about topics I think people arenât prioritising. However, I think this is the point I disagree with the leastâI can see that if you are looking at the forum in a pretty low-res way, or hearing about the event from a friend, you might get an impression that âEA cares about X nowâ.
(b) - The Forum does appear in EA-critical pieces, but I personally donât think those pieces distinguish much between what one post on the Forum says and what the Forum team puts in a banner (and I donât think readers who lack context would distinguish between those things either). So, I donât worry too much about what Iâm saying in the eyes of a very adversarial journalist (there are enough words on the forum that they can probably find whatever theyâd like to find anyway).
To clarifyâfor readers and adversarial journalistsâI still have the rule of âI donât post anything I wouldnât want to see my name attached to in publicâ (and think others should too), but thatâs a more general rule, not just for the Forum.
(c)- Iâm sure that it isnât the optimum Forum week. However (1) I do think this topic is important and potentially action-relevantâthere is increasing focus on âAI Safetyâ, but AI Safety is a possibly vast field with a range of challenges that a career or funding could address, and the topic of this debate is potentially an important distinction to have a take on when you are making those decisions. And (2) Iâm pretty bullish on forum events, and Iâd like to run more, and get the community involved more, so any suggestions for future events are always welcome.
I think ultimately we seem to have quite different intuitions on the trade-offs, but that seems unresolvable. Most of my intuitions there come from advising non-EA HNWs (and from spending time around advisors specialized in advising these), so this is quite different from mostly advising EAs.
I think this is a fair pointâbut itâs not the frame Iâve been using to consider debate week topics.
My aim has been to generate useful discussion within the effective altruism community. Iâd like to choose topics which nudge people to examine assumptions theyâve been making, and might lead to them changing their minds, and perhaps their priorities, or the focus of their work. I havenât been thinking about debate weeks as a piece of communications work/â as a way of reaching out to a broader audience. This question in particular was chosen because the Forum audience wouldnât necessarily have cached takes on itâan audience outside the Forum would need a lot of context to get what we are talking about.
Perhaps Iâm missing something thoughâdo you think this is more public facing than Iâm assuming? To be clear, I know that it is public, but itâs not directed at an outside audience in the way a book or podcast or op-ed might be.
Edit: Iâm also uncertain on the claim that âthere are few interventions that are predictably differentiated along those linesââI think Forethought would disagree, and though Iâm not sure I agree with them, theyâve thought about it more than I have.
Thanks for engaging and for giving me the chance to outline more clearly and with more nuance what my take is.
I covered some of this in my reply to Ollie, but basically (a) I do think that Forum weeks are significant attentional devices signaling what we see as priorities, (b) the Forum has appeared in detail in many EA-critical pieces and (c) there are many Forum weeks we could be running right now that would be much better both from a point of action guiding and perception in the wider world.
I take as givenâI am not the right person to evaluate thisâthat there are some interventions that some EA funders might decide along those considerations.
But I am pretty confident it wonât matter to the wider philanthropic world, almost no one is thinking about philanthropic interventions saying âdoes this make a world better where we survive v does this mostly affect probability of extinction?â
If EA were ascendant and weâd be a significant share of philanthropy maybe thatâd be a good question to ask.
But in a world where our key longtermist priorities are not well funded and where most of the things we can be doing to broadly reduce risks are not clearly alignable to either side of the crux here, I think making this a key attentional priority seems to have, at least, significant opportunity cost.
EDIT: I am mostly trying to give a consistent and clearly articulated perspective here, I am surely overlooking things and you have information on this that I do not have. I hope this is useful to you, but I donât want to imply I am able to have an all-things-considered view.
Thanks for engaging on this as well! I do feel the responsibility involved in setting event topics, and itâs great to get constructive criticism like this.
To respond to the points a bit (and this is just my view- quite quickly written because Iâve got a busy day today and Iâm happy to come back and clarify/âchange my mind in another reply):
(a) - maybe, but I think the actual content of the events almost always contains some scepticism of the question itself, discussion of adjacent debates etc⊠The actual topic of the event doesnât seem like a useful place to look for evidence on the communityâs priorities. Also, I generally run events about topics I think people arenât prioritising. However, I think this is the point I disagree with the leastâI can see that if you are looking at the forum in a pretty low-res way, or hearing about the event from a friend, you might get an impression that âEA cares about X nowâ.
(b) - The Forum does appear in EA-critical pieces, but I personally donât think those pieces distinguish much between what one post on the Forum says and what the Forum team puts in a banner (and I donât think readers who lack context would distinguish between those things either). So, I donât worry too much about what Iâm saying in the eyes of a very adversarial journalist (there are enough words on the forum that they can probably find whatever theyâd like to find anyway).
To clarifyâfor readers and adversarial journalistsâI still have the rule of âI donât post anything I wouldnât want to see my name attached to in publicâ (and think others should too), but thatâs a more general rule, not just for the Forum.
(c)- Iâm sure that it isnât the optimum Forum week. However (1) I do think this topic is important and potentially action-relevantâthere is increasing focus on âAI Safetyâ, but AI Safety is a possibly vast field with a range of challenges that a career or funding could address, and the topic of this debate is potentially an important distinction to have a take on when you are making those decisions. And (2) Iâm pretty bullish on forum events, and Iâd like to run more, and get the community involved more, so any suggestions for future events are always welcome.
Thanks for clarifying this!
I think ultimately we seem to have quite different intuitions on the trade-offs, but that seems unresolvable. Most of my intuitions there come from advising non-EA HNWs (and from spending time around advisors specialized in advising these), so this is quite different from mostly advising EAs.