Does he explicitely reject some EA ideas (e.g. longtermism) and does he give arguments against them? If not, it seems a bit odd to me to promote a new school that is like EA in most other important respects. It might be good to have this school additionally anyway, but it feels like its relation to EA and what its additional value might be are obvious questions that should be addressed.
Reminds me of when an article about Rutger popped up on the Forum a while back (my comments here)
I expect SMA people probably think something along the lines of:
EA funding and hard power is fairly centralised. SMA want more control over what they do/fund/associate with and so want to start their own movement.
EA has become AI-pilled and longtermist. Those who disagree need a new movement, and SMA can be that movement.
EA’s brand is terminally tarnished after the FTX collapse. Even though SMA agrees a lot with EA, it needs to market itself as ‘not EA’ as much as possible to avoid negative social contagion.
Not making a claim myself about whether and to what extent those claims are true.
I don’t have any insider information, but my speculation would be that they just think that they counterfactually reach more people by having a very separate brand.
i.e. SMA closely related to the EA brand/flavor/way of communicating would counterfactually help X more people do more good than EA by itself, while SMA as a separate movement with its own ideas/style on how to do the most good would counterfactually help Y extra people, and Y > X.
I also think it’s likely that SMA believes that for their target audience it would be more valuable to interact with AIM than with 80k or CEA, not necessarily for the 3 reasons you mention.
I also think it’s likely that SMA believes that for their target audience it would be more valuable to interact with AIM than with 80k or CEA, not necessarily for the 3 reasons you mention.
I mean the reasoning behind this seems very close to #2 no? The target audience they’re looking at is probably more interested in neartermism than AI/longtermism and they don’t think they can get much tractability working with the current EA ecosystem?
I mean the reasoning behind this seems very close to #2 no? The target audience they’re looking at is probably more interested in neartermism than AI/longtermism and they don’t think they can get much tractability working with the current EA ecosystem?
I think 2 and especially 3 are very likely, but I think it’s also likely that Bregman was very impressed with AIM, and possibly found it more inspiring than 80k/CEA, and/or more pragmatic, or a better fit for the kind of people he wanted to reach regardless of their views on AI.
Does he explicitely reject some EA ideas (e.g. longtermism) and does he give arguments against them? If not, it seems a bit odd to me to promote a new school that is like EA in most other important respects. It might be good to have this school additionally anyway, but it feels like its relation to EA and what its additional value might be are obvious questions that should be addressed.
Reminds me of when an article about Rutger popped up on the Forum a while back (my comments here)
I expect SMA people probably think something along the lines of:
EA funding and hard power is fairly centralised. SMA want more control over what they do/fund/associate with and so want to start their own movement.
EA has become AI-pilled and longtermist. Those who disagree need a new movement, and SMA can be that movement.
EA’s brand is terminally tarnished after the FTX collapse. Even though SMA agrees a lot with EA, it needs to market itself as ‘not EA’ as much as possible to avoid negative social contagion.
Not making a claim myself about whether and to what extent those claims are true.
I don’t have any insider information, but my speculation would be that they just think that they counterfactually reach more people by having a very separate brand.
i.e. SMA closely related to the EA brand/flavor/way of communicating would counterfactually help X more people do more good than EA by itself, while SMA as a separate movement with its own ideas/style on how to do the most good would counterfactually help Y extra people, and Y > X.
I also think it’s likely that SMA believes that for their target audience it would be more valuable to interact with AIM than with 80k or CEA, not necessarily for the 3 reasons you mention.
I mean the reasoning behind this seems very close to #2 no? The target audience they’re looking at is probably more interested in neartermism than AI/longtermism and they don’t think they can get much tractability working with the current EA ecosystem?
I think 2 and especially 3 are very likely, but I think it’s also likely that Bregman was very impressed with AIM, and possibly found it more inspiring than 80k/CEA, and/or more pragmatic, or a better fit for the kind of people he wanted to reach regardless of their views on AI.