The decision to attend this particular protest is actually a difficult one. Normally, most EA-minded people consistently do not vote or attend protests, since whether or not the protest succeeds depends on the non-EA masses who don’t do EV evaluations. Your decision not to attend predicts the decision of other EA-minded people not to attend, but does not predict the decision of non-EA people who almost entirely determine whether the protest/vote succeeds or fails.
However, with this specific protest, EA-minded people are the ones who almost entirely determine whether the protest succeeds or fails, because this is a protests by elites, against elites, and the general population is unwilling/unable to do EV calculations and will not attend either away. Therefore, your decision not to attend predicts whether this protest succeeds or fails. If a third of EA-affiliated people attend, then it actually probably intimidates Facebook quite a bit, whereas if it fails and only 12 people attend, then it might even embolden Facebook.
I’m someone who would normally not go to protests, because, in my own words, “that is obviously something that the world already has plenty of people doing”, and many people affiliated with EA have an extremely similar knee-jerk response to public protests. But this situation is different.
I appreciate it! But I want to say that I think even 12 or less will be a success if we learn from it and get media attention. (Pause AI was covered in Wired, the Guardian, etc and each of their protests had less than 10 people.)
Good call, strategy of protest is far far more than numbers. I hope you are in contact with climate change and animal rights activists too, as they have a lot of experience in this area.
replaceability misses the point (with why EAs skew heavily on not liking protests). it’s way more an epistemics issue—messaging and advocacy are just deeply corrosive under any reasonable way of thinking about uncertainty.
In my sordid past I did plenty of “finding the three people for nuanced logical mind-changing discussions amidst a dozens of ‘hey hey ho ho outgroup has got to go’”, so I’ll do the same here (if I’m in town), but selection effects seem deeply worrying (for example, you could go down to the soup kitchen or punk music venue and recruit all the young volunteers who are constantly sneering about how gentrifying techbros are evil and can’t coordinate on whether their “unabomber is actually based” argument is ironic or unironic, but you oughtn’t. The fact that this is even a question, that if you have a “mass movement” theory of change you’re constantly temped to lower your standards in this way, is so intrinsically risky that no one should be comfortable that ML safety or alignment is resorting to this sort of thing).
The decision to attend this particular protest is actually a difficult one. Normally, most EA-minded people consistently do not vote or attend protests, since whether or not the protest succeeds depends on the non-EA masses who don’t do EV evaluations. Your decision not to attend predicts the decision of other EA-minded people not to attend, but does not predict the decision of non-EA people who almost entirely determine whether the protest/vote succeeds or fails.
However, with this specific protest, EA-minded people are the ones who almost entirely determine whether the protest succeeds or fails, because this is a protests by elites, against elites, and the general population is unwilling/unable to do EV calculations and will not attend either away. Therefore, your decision not to attend predicts whether this protest succeeds or fails. If a third of EA-affiliated people attend, then it actually probably intimidates Facebook quite a bit, whereas if it fails and only 12 people attend, then it might even embolden Facebook.
I’m someone who would normally not go to protests, because, in my own words, “that is obviously something that the world already has plenty of people doing”, and many people affiliated with EA have an extremely similar knee-jerk response to public protests. But this situation is different.
I appreciate it! But I want to say that I think even 12 or less will be a success if we learn from it and get media attention. (Pause AI was covered in Wired, the Guardian, etc and each of their protests had less than 10 people.)
Good call, strategy of protest is far far more than numbers. I hope you are in contact with climate change and animal rights activists too, as they have a lot of experience in this area.
replaceability misses the point (with why EAs skew heavily on not liking protests). it’s way more an epistemics issue—messaging and advocacy are just deeply corrosive under any reasonable way of thinking about uncertainty.
In my sordid past I did plenty of “finding the three people for nuanced logical mind-changing discussions amidst a dozens of ‘hey hey ho ho outgroup has got to go’”, so I’ll do the same here (if I’m in town), but selection effects seem deeply worrying (for example, you could go down to the soup kitchen or punk music venue and recruit all the young volunteers who are constantly sneering about how gentrifying techbros are evil and can’t coordinate on whether their “unabomber is actually based” argument is ironic or unironic, but you oughtn’t. The fact that this is even a question, that if you have a “mass movement” theory of change you’re constantly temped to lower your standards in this way, is so intrinsically risky that no one should be comfortable that ML safety or alignment is resorting to this sort of thing).