I think posting under pseudonyms makes sense for EAs who are young[1], who are unsure what they want to do with their lives, and/or people who have a decent chance of wanting jobs that require discretion in the future, e.g. jobs in politics or government.
I know at least some governance people who likely regret being openly tied with Future Fund and adjacent entities after the recent debacle.
Also in general I’m confused about how the tides of what’s “permissible internet dirt to dig up on people” will change in the future. Things might get either better or much worse, and in the worse worlds there’s some option value left in making sure our movement doesn’t unintentionally taint the futures of some extremely smart, well-meaning, and agentic young people.
That said, I personally prefer pseudonymous account names with a continued history like Larks or AppliedDivinityStudies[2], rather than anonymous accounts that draw attention to their anonymity, like whistleblower1984.
<22? Maybe <25, I’m not sure. One important factor to keep track of is how likely you are to dramatically change your mind in politically relevant ways, e.g. I think if you’re currently a firm Communist it’s bad to not tell your voters about it, but plenty of open-minded young people quickly go through phases of Communism then anarcho-capitalism then anarcho-socialism, etc, and depending on how the tides change maybe you don’t want your blog musings while 19 to become too tied in your public identity.
A consideration against, and maybe a strong enough consideration to make my whole point moot, is the live possibility of much much better AI stylometry in the next decade.
I’m not particularly young anymore, and work in a non-EA field where reputation is a concern, which is a large part of why I post pseudonymously. I think it would be bad if it became the norm that people could only be taken seriously if they posted under their real names, and discussion was reserved for “professional EAs”.
I use a semi-pseudonymous account for nominal privacy, but it isn’t very secure, both because in practice various well-meaning people (inc me at one point) have mentioned my name alongside it without thinking about it much—which is surely inevitable for anyone who keeps a pseudonym going for long enough—and because anyone with access to the forum’s database could get the email associated with it.
I think posting under pseudonyms makes sense for EAs who are young[1], who are unsure what they want to do with their lives, and/or people who have a decent chance of wanting jobs that require discretion in the future, e.g. jobs in politics or government.
I know at least some governance people who likely regret being openly tied with Future Fund and adjacent entities after the recent debacle.
Also in general I’m confused about how the tides of what’s “permissible internet dirt to dig up on people” will change in the future. Things might get either better or much worse, and in the worse worlds there’s some option value left in making sure our movement doesn’t unintentionally taint the futures of some extremely smart, well-meaning, and agentic young people.
That said, I personally prefer pseudonymous account names with a continued history like Larks or AppliedDivinityStudies[2], rather than anonymous accounts that draw attention to their anonymity, like whistleblower1984.
<22? Maybe <25, I’m not sure. One important factor to keep track of is how likely you are to dramatically change your mind in politically relevant ways, e.g. I think if you’re currently a firm Communist it’s bad to not tell your voters about it, but plenty of open-minded young people quickly go through phases of Communism then anarcho-capitalism then anarcho-socialism, etc, and depending on how the tides change maybe you don’t want your blog musings while 19 to become too tied in your public identity.
A consideration against, and maybe a strong enough consideration to make my whole point moot, is the live possibility of much much better AI stylometry in the next decade.
I’m not particularly young anymore, and work in a non-EA field where reputation is a concern, which is a large part of why I post pseudonymously. I think it would be bad if it became the norm that people could only be taken seriously if they posted under their real names, and discussion was reserved for “professional EAs”.
I use a semi-pseudonymous account for nominal privacy, but it isn’t very secure, both because in practice various well-meaning people (inc me at one point) have mentioned my name alongside it without thinking about it much—which is surely inevitable for anyone who keeps a pseudonym going for long enough—and because anyone with access to the forum’s database could get the email associated with it.
That at least seems easy to fix: register your pseudonym with a new email address that you configure to automatically forward to your main one.