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.
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.