Michael is correct that the inclusion criteria for entries of individual people hasn’t been made explicit. In deciding whether a person was a fit subject for an article, I haven’t followed any conscious procedure, but merely relied on my subjective sense of whether the person deserved a dedicated article. Looking at the list of people I ended up including, a few clusters emerge:
people who have had an extraordinary positive impact, and that are often discussed in EA circles (Arkhipov, Zhdanov, etc.)
people who have attained eminence in their fields and who are connected to EA to a significant degree (Pinker, Hassabis, Boeree, etc.)
academics who have conducted research of clear EA relevance (Ng, Duflo, Parfit, Tetlock, etc.)
historical figures that may be regarded as proto-EAs or that are seen as having inspired the EA movement (Bentham, Mill, Russell, etc.)
“core figures” in the EA community (Shulman, Christiano, Tomasik, etc.)
Some people, such Bostrom, MacAskill, Ord, fit into more than one of these clusters. My sense is that David Pearce doesn’t fit into any of the clusters. It seems relatively uncontroversial that he doesn’t fit into clusters 1-4, so the relevant question—at least if one broadly agrees with the approach I’ve taken—is whether he is sufficiently close to the “core” to merit inclusion as part of cluster 5.
As someone who has been involved with EA since its inception and who has (I believe) a reasonably good sense of how central to the movement different people have been, my impression is that Pearce isn’t central enough. If others have different (or similar) impressions, I would encourage them to post them here. We could, alternatively, try to go beyond impressionistic evidence and look at more objective measures, such as citation counts (broadly construed to include not just academic citations but links from the EA Forum and EA Blogs), though conducting that kind of analysis might be time consuming and may not be fully conclusive. Do others have thoughts on how to operationalize the relevant criteria?
Do others have thoughts on how to operationalize the relevant criteria?
FWIW, I think your comment is already a good step! I think I broadly agree that those people who fit into at least one of those clusters should typically have entries, and those who don’t shouldn’t. And this already makes me feel more of a sense of clarity about this.
I still think substantial fuzziness remains. This is mostly just because words like “eminence” could be applied more or less strictly. I think that that’s hard to avoid and maybe not necessary to avoid—people will probably generally agree, and then we can politely squabble about the borderline cases and thereby get a clearer sense of what we collectively think the “line” is.
But I think “people who have had an extraordinary positive impact, and that are often discussed in EA circles (Arkhipov, Zhdanov, etc.)” may require further operationalisation, since what counts as extraordinary positive impact can differ a lot based on one’s empirical, moral, epistemological, etc. views. E.g., I suspect that nil might think Pearce has been more impactful than most people who do have an entry, since Pearce’s impacts are more targeted at suffering reduction. (nil can of course correct me if I’m wrong about their views.)
So maybe we should say something like “people who are widely discussed in EA and who a significant fraction of EAs see as having had an extraordinary positive impact (Arkhipov, Zhdanov, etc.)”? (That leaves the fuzziness of “significant fraction”, but it seems a step in the right direction by not just relying on a given individual’s view of who has been extraordinarily impactful.)
Then, turning back to the original example, there’s the question: Would a significant fraction of EAs see Pearce as having had an extraordinary positive impact? I think I’d lean towards “no”, though I’m unsure, both because I don’t have a survey and because of the vagueness of the term “significant fraction”.
I think there’s a relatively clear sense in which Arkhipov, Borlaug, and similar figures (e.g. winners of the Future of Life Award, names included in Scientists Greater than Einstein, and related characters profiled in Doing Good Better or the 80,000 Hours blog) count as having had an extraordinary positive impact and Pearce does not, namely, the sense in which also Ord, MacAskill, Tomasik, etc. don’t count. I think it’s probably unnecessary to try to specify in great detail what the criterion is, but the core element seems to be that the former are all examples of do-gooding that is extraordinary from both an EA and a common-sense perspective, whereas if you wanted to claim that e.g. Shulman or Christiano are among humanity’s greatest benefactors, you’d probably need to make some arguments that a typical person would not find very persuasive. (The arguments for that conclusion would also likely be very brittle and fail to persuade most EAs, but that doesn’t seem to be so central.)
So I think it really boils down to the question of how core a figure Pearce is in the EA movement, and as noted, my impression is that he just isn’t a core enough figure. I say this, incidentally, as someone who admires him greatly and who has been profoundly influenced by his writings (some of which I translated into Spanish a long time ago), although I have also developed serious reservations about various aspects of his work over the years.
If you mean that the vast majority of EAs would agree that Arkhipov, Borlaug, Zhdanov, and similar figures count as having had an extraordinary positive impact, or that that’s the only reasonable position one could hold, I disagree, for reasons I’ll discuss below.
But if you just mean that a significant fraction of EAs would agree that those figures count as having had an extraordinary impact, I agree. And, as noted in my previous comment, I think that using a phrasing like “people who are widely discussed in EA and who a significant fraction of EAs see as having had an extraordinary positive impact (Arkhipov, Zhdanov, etc.)” would probably work.
And that phrasing also seems fine if I’m wrong about (1), so maybe there’s no real need to debate (1)?
(Relatedly, I also do ultimately agree that Arkhipov etc. should have entries.)
Expanding on (1):
This is mostly due to crucial considerations that could change the sign or (relative) magnitude of the moral value of the near-term effects that these people are often seen as having had. For example:
It’s not obvious that a US-Russia nuclear war during the Cold War would’ve caused a negative long-term future trajectory change.
I expect it would, and, for related reasons, am currently focused on nuclear risk research myself.
But I think one could reasonably argue that the case for this view is brittle and the case for e.g. the extraordinary positive impact of some people focused on AI is stronger (conditioning on strong longtermism).
Some EAs think extinction risk reduction is or plausibly is net negative.
It’s plausible that expected moral impact is dominated by effects on the long-term future, farm animals, wild animals, invertebrates, or similar, in which case it may be both less clear that e.g. Borlaug and Zhdanov had a net positive impact and less clear that it is “extraordinary” relative to the impact of people whose actions were more targeted to helping those populations.
But it’s also because of uncertainties about whether they really had those near-term effects, whether similar things would’ve happened without them, and—at least in Zhdanov’s case—whether they had other near-term effects that may have been very negative. For example:
My understanding is that it’s not actually very clear whether Arkhipov played a crucial role in preventing a launch.
E.g., Baum, de Neufville, and Barrett write “The second captain, Vassily Arkhipov, has been credited with having vetoed the decision to launch the torpedo over the objections of the two other officers (Lloyd 2002). Sources conflict on whether the submarine crew had the authority to launch the torpedo without direct orders from Moscow. The submarine’s communications officer later said in an interview that Arkhipov did play an important role in calming the captain down, but that while there was a danger of an accident or equipment malfunction, they were never close to intentionally launching the nuclear torpedo (Savranskaya 2007).”
Zhdanov also “chaired the Soviet Union’s Interagency Science and Technology Council on Molecular Biology and Genetics, which among its many functions directed the Soviet biological weapons program” (Wikipedia), which I think makes it plausible that his expected impact (evaluated during the Cold War) on the long-term future was very negative.
My more basic point is just that it seems very hard to say with high confidence what actions had net positive vs net negative impacts and how to rank them, and there’s room for reasonable disagreement.
Again, though, I think we can probably sidestep all of this by just saying “people who are widely discussed in EA and who a significant fraction of EAs see as having had an extraordinary positive impact (Arkhipov, Zhdanov, etc.)”.
Michael is correct that the inclusion criteria for entries of individual people hasn’t been made explicit. In deciding whether a person was a fit subject for an article, I haven’t followed any conscious procedure, but merely relied on my subjective sense of whether the person deserved a dedicated article. Looking at the list of people I ended up including, a few clusters emerge:
people who have had an extraordinary positive impact, and that are often discussed in EA circles (Arkhipov, Zhdanov, etc.)
people who have attained eminence in their fields and who are connected to EA to a significant degree (Pinker, Hassabis, Boeree, etc.)
academics who have conducted research of clear EA relevance (Ng, Duflo, Parfit, Tetlock, etc.)
historical figures that may be regarded as proto-EAs or that are seen as having inspired the EA movement (Bentham, Mill, Russell, etc.)
“core figures” in the EA community (Shulman, Christiano, Tomasik, etc.)
Some people, such Bostrom, MacAskill, Ord, fit into more than one of these clusters. My sense is that David Pearce doesn’t fit into any of the clusters. It seems relatively uncontroversial that he doesn’t fit into clusters 1-4, so the relevant question—at least if one broadly agrees with the approach I’ve taken—is whether he is sufficiently close to the “core” to merit inclusion as part of cluster 5.
As someone who has been involved with EA since its inception and who has (I believe) a reasonably good sense of how central to the movement different people have been, my impression is that Pearce isn’t central enough. If others have different (or similar) impressions, I would encourage them to post them here. We could, alternatively, try to go beyond impressionistic evidence and look at more objective measures, such as citation counts (broadly construed to include not just academic citations but links from the EA Forum and EA Blogs), though conducting that kind of analysis might be time consuming and may not be fully conclusive. Do others have thoughts on how to operationalize the relevant criteria?
FWIW, I think your comment is already a good step! I think I broadly agree that those people who fit into at least one of those clusters should typically have entries, and those who don’t shouldn’t. And this already makes me feel more of a sense of clarity about this.
I still think substantial fuzziness remains. This is mostly just because words like “eminence” could be applied more or less strictly. I think that that’s hard to avoid and maybe not necessary to avoid—people will probably generally agree, and then we can politely squabble about the borderline cases and thereby get a clearer sense of what we collectively think the “line” is.
But I think “people who have had an extraordinary positive impact, and that are often discussed in EA circles (Arkhipov, Zhdanov, etc.)” may require further operationalisation, since what counts as extraordinary positive impact can differ a lot based on one’s empirical, moral, epistemological, etc. views. E.g., I suspect that nil might think Pearce has been more impactful than most people who do have an entry, since Pearce’s impacts are more targeted at suffering reduction. (nil can of course correct me if I’m wrong about their views.)
So maybe we should say something like “people who are widely discussed in EA and who a significant fraction of EAs see as having had an extraordinary positive impact (Arkhipov, Zhdanov, etc.)”? (That leaves the fuzziness of “significant fraction”, but it seems a step in the right direction by not just relying on a given individual’s view of who has been extraordinarily impactful.)
Then, turning back to the original example, there’s the question: Would a significant fraction of EAs see Pearce as having had an extraordinary positive impact? I think I’d lean towards “no”, though I’m unsure, both because I don’t have a survey and because of the vagueness of the term “significant fraction”.
I think there’s a relatively clear sense in which Arkhipov, Borlaug, and similar figures (e.g. winners of the Future of Life Award, names included in Scientists Greater than Einstein, and related characters profiled in Doing Good Better or the 80,000 Hours blog) count as having had an extraordinary positive impact and Pearce does not, namely, the sense in which also Ord, MacAskill, Tomasik, etc. don’t count. I think it’s probably unnecessary to try to specify in great detail what the criterion is, but the core element seems to be that the former are all examples of do-gooding that is extraordinary from both an EA and a common-sense perspective, whereas if you wanted to claim that e.g. Shulman or Christiano are among humanity’s greatest benefactors, you’d probably need to make some arguments that a typical person would not find very persuasive. (The arguments for that conclusion would also likely be very brittle and fail to persuade most EAs, but that doesn’t seem to be so central.)
So I think it really boils down to the question of how core a figure Pearce is in the EA movement, and as noted, my impression is that he just isn’t a core enough figure. I say this, incidentally, as someone who admires him greatly and who has been profoundly influenced by his writings (some of which I translated into Spanish a long time ago), although I have also developed serious reservations about various aspects of his work over the years.
If you mean that the vast majority of EAs would agree that Arkhipov, Borlaug, Zhdanov, and similar figures count as having had an extraordinary positive impact, or that that’s the only reasonable position one could hold, I disagree, for reasons I’ll discuss below.
But if you just mean that a significant fraction of EAs would agree that those figures count as having had an extraordinary impact, I agree. And, as noted in my previous comment, I think that using a phrasing like “people who are widely discussed in EA and who a significant fraction of EAs see as having had an extraordinary positive impact (Arkhipov, Zhdanov, etc.)” would probably work.
And that phrasing also seems fine if I’m wrong about (1), so maybe there’s no real need to debate (1)?
(Relatedly, I also do ultimately agree that Arkhipov etc. should have entries.)
Expanding on (1):
This is mostly due to crucial considerations that could change the sign or (relative) magnitude of the moral value of the near-term effects that these people are often seen as having had. For example:
It’s not obvious that a US-Russia nuclear war during the Cold War would’ve caused a negative long-term future trajectory change.
I expect it would, and, for related reasons, am currently focused on nuclear risk research myself.
But I think one could reasonably argue that the case for this view is brittle and the case for e.g. the extraordinary positive impact of some people focused on AI is stronger (conditioning on strong longtermism).
Some EAs think extinction risk reduction is or plausibly is net negative.
Some EAs think population growth is or plausibly is net negative, e.g. for reasons related to the meat-eater problem or to differential progress.
It’s plausible that expected moral impact is dominated by effects on the long-term future, farm animals, wild animals, invertebrates, or similar, in which case it may be both less clear that e.g. Borlaug and Zhdanov had a net positive impact and less clear that it is “extraordinary” relative to the impact of people whose actions were more targeted to helping those populations.
But it’s also because of uncertainties about whether they really had those near-term effects, whether similar things would’ve happened without them, and—at least in Zhdanov’s case—whether they had other near-term effects that may have been very negative. For example:
My understanding is that it’s not actually very clear whether Arkhipov played a crucial role in preventing a launch.
E.g., Baum, de Neufville, and Barrett write “The second captain, Vassily Arkhipov, has been credited with having vetoed the decision to launch the torpedo over the objections of the two other officers (Lloyd 2002). Sources conflict on whether the submarine crew had the authority to launch the torpedo without direct orders from Moscow. The submarine’s communications officer later said in an interview that Arkhipov did play an important role in calming the captain down, but that while there was a danger of an accident or equipment malfunction, they were never close to intentionally launching the nuclear torpedo (Savranskaya 2007).”
Zhdanov also “chaired the Soviet Union’s Interagency Science and Technology Council on Molecular Biology and Genetics, which among its many functions directed the Soviet biological weapons program” (Wikipedia), which I think makes it plausible that his expected impact (evaluated during the Cold War) on the long-term future was very negative.
My more basic point is just that it seems very hard to say with high confidence what actions had net positive vs net negative impacts and how to rank them, and there’s room for reasonable disagreement.
Again, though, I think we can probably sidestep all of this by just saying “people who are widely discussed in EA and who a significant fraction of EAs see as having had an extraordinary positive impact (Arkhipov, Zhdanov, etc.)”.