Note: this is mostly about your earlier videos. I think this one was better done, so maybe my points are redundant. Posting this here because the writer has expressed some unhappiness with reception so far. I’ve watched the other videos some weeks ago and didn’t rewatch them for this comment. I also didn’t watch the bitcoin one.
First of, I think trying out EA content on youtube is really cool (in the sense of potentially high value), really scary, and because of this really cool (in the sense of “of you to do this”.) Kudos for that. I think this could be really good and valuable if you incorporate feedback and improve over time.
Some reasons why I was/am skeptical of the channel when I watched the videos:
For the 4 videos before this one, I didn’t see how they were going to help make the world better. (I can tell some hypothetical stories for 3 of them, but I don’t think they achieved that goal because of some of the things later in this comment.)
I found the title for the Halo effect one aversive. I’m personally fine with a lot of internet meme humour, but also know some EAs who actually take offense by the Virgin vs. Chad meme. I think for something so outward facing, I want to avoid controversy where it’s unnecessary. (And to be clear: not avoid it where it’s necessary.) It also just feels click-baity.
Watching the videos, I just didn’t feel like I could trust the content. If I didn’t know some of the content already, it would be really hard for me to tell from the video whether the content was legitimate science or buzzfeed-level rigour. For example, I really didn’t know how to treat the information in the cringe one and basically decided to ignore it. This is not to say that the content wasn’t checked and legitimate, just that it’s not obvious from the videos. Note that this wasn’t true for the longtermism one.
I found the perceived jump in topic in the cringe video aversive, and it reinforced my impression that the videos weren’t very rigorous/truthseeking/honest. I was overall kind of confused by that video.
I think the above (and the titles) matter because of the kind of crowd you want to attract and retain with your videos.
I think the artistic choice is fine, but also contributes. I don’t think that’s a problem when not combined with the other things.
In general, the kind of questions I would ask myself, and the reason why I think all of the above are a concern are:
Which kind of people does this video attract?
Which of these people will get involved/in contact with EA because of these videos?
Do we want these people to be involved in the EA project?
Which kind of people does this video turn off?
Which of these people will be turned off of EA in general because of these videos?
Do we want these people to be involved in the EA project?
I’m somewhat concerned that the answer for too many people would be “no” for 3, and “yes” for 6. Obviously there will always be some “no” for 3 and some “yes”for 6, especially for such a broad medium like youtube, and balancing this is really difficult. (And it’s always easier to take the skeptical stance.) But I think I would like to see more to tip the balance a bit.
Maybe one thing that’s both a good indicator but also important in its own right is the kind of community that forms in the comment section. I’ve so far been moderately positively surprised by the comment section on the longtermism video and how your handling it, so maybe this is evidence that my concerns are misplaced. It still seems like something worth paying attention to. (Not claiming I’m telling you anything new.)
I’m not sure what your plans and goals are, but I would probably prioritise getting the overall tone and community of the channel right before trying to scale your audience.
Some comments on this video:
I thought it was much better in all the regards I mentioned above.
There were still some things I felt slightly uneasy about, but there were much, much smaller, and might be idiosyncratic taste or really-into-philosophy-or-even-specific-philosophical-positions type things. I might also have just noticed them in the context of your other videos, and might have been fine with this otherwise. I feel much less confident that they are actually bad. Examples:
I felt somewhat unhappy with your presentation of person-affecting views, mostly because there are versions that don’t only value people presently alive. (Actually, I’m pretty confused about this. I thought your video explicitly acknowledged that, but then sounded different later. I didn’t go back to check again, so feel free to discard this if it’s inaccurate.) Note that I sympathise a lot with person-affecting views, so might just be biased and feel attacked.
I feel a bit unhappy that trajectory-change wasn’t really discussed.
I felt somewhat uneasy about the “but what if I tell you that even this is nothing compared to what impact you could have” part when transitioning from speeding up technological progress to extincition risk reduction. It kind of felt buzzfeedy again, but I think it’s plausibly I only noticed because I had the context of your other videos. On the more substantive side, I’m not familiar with the discussion around this at all, but I can imagine that whether speeding up growth or preventing extinction risk is more important is an open question to some researchers involved? Really don’t know though.
Again, I think it is really cool and potentially highly valuable that you’re doing this, and I have a lot of respect for how you’ve handled feedback so far. I don’t want to discourage you from producing further videos, just want to give an idea of what some people might be concerned about/why there’s not more enthusiasm for your channel so far. As I said, I think this video is definitely in the IMO right direction and find this encouraging.
edit: Just seen the comment you left on Aaron Gertler’s comment about engagement. Maybe this is a crux.
Update: as a result of feedback here and in other comments (and some independent thinking), we made a few updates to the channel.
Made new thumbnails without the clickbaity feel that the previous ones had.
Changed titles (I did that already weeks ago, but it’s worth mentioning again).
Removed the arm from the cover photo.
Removed mentions of EA from the channel description. For now, I will associate the channel with EA and LW the least I can. I will mention names of specific EA topics (e.g. Longtermism) only when I think it’s really necessary. And it will be probably never necessary to mention the EA movement itself. In this way, I can focus on improving with a lighter heart since the probability of causing PR damage is now lower. Obviously, I’ll have to relax these constraints in the future if I want to increase impact.
Hidden the weakest of the two “digital circuits in Minecraft” videos.
The future direction the channel will take is more important than previous videos, but still, I wanted to let people know that I made these changes. I wanted to make a post to explain both these changes and future directions in detail, but I don’t know if I’ll manage to finish it, so in the meanwhile, I figured that it would probably be helpful to comment here.
I feel like this is the most central criticism I had so far. Which means it is also the most useful. I think it’s very likely that what you said is also the sentiments of other people here.
I think you’re right about what you say and that I botched the presentation of the first videos. I’ll defend them a little bit here on a couple of points, but not more. I will not say much in this comment other than this, but know that I’m listening and updating.
1. The halo effect video argues in part that the evolution of that meme has been caused by the halo effect. It is certainly not an endorsement.
2. The truth is cringe video is not rigorous and was not meant to be rigorous. It was mostly stuff from my my intuitions and pre-existing knowledge. The example I used made total sense to me (and I considered it interesting because it was somewhat original), but heh apparently only to me.
Note: I’m not going to do only core EA content (edit: not even close actually). I’m trying to also do rationality and some rationality-adjacent and science stuff. Yes, currently the previous thumbnails are wrong. I fixed the titles more recently. I’m not fond of modifying previous content too hard, but I might make more edits.
Note: this is mostly about your earlier videos. I think this one was better done, so maybe my points are redundant. Posting this here because the writer has expressed some unhappiness with reception so far. I’ve watched the other videos some weeks ago and didn’t rewatch them for this comment. I also didn’t watch the bitcoin one.
First of, I think trying out EA content on youtube is really cool (in the sense of potentially high value), really scary, and because of this really cool (in the sense of “of you to do this”.) Kudos for that. I think this could be really good and valuable if you incorporate feedback and improve over time.
Some reasons why I was/am skeptical of the channel when I watched the videos:
For the 4 videos before this one, I didn’t see how they were going to help make the world better. (I can tell some hypothetical stories for 3 of them, but I don’t think they achieved that goal because of some of the things later in this comment.)
I found the title for the Halo effect one aversive. I’m personally fine with a lot of internet meme humour, but also know some EAs who actually take offense by the Virgin vs. Chad meme. I think for something so outward facing, I want to avoid controversy where it’s unnecessary. (And to be clear: not avoid it where it’s necessary.) It also just feels click-baity.
Watching the videos, I just didn’t feel like I could trust the content. If I didn’t know some of the content already, it would be really hard for me to tell from the video whether the content was legitimate science or buzzfeed-level rigour. For example, I really didn’t know how to treat the information in the cringe one and basically decided to ignore it. This is not to say that the content wasn’t checked and legitimate, just that it’s not obvious from the videos. Note that this wasn’t true for the longtermism one.
I found the perceived jump in topic in the cringe video aversive, and it reinforced my impression that the videos weren’t very rigorous/truthseeking/honest. I was overall kind of confused by that video.
I think the above (and the titles) matter because of the kind of crowd you want to attract and retain with your videos.
I think the artistic choice is fine, but also contributes. I don’t think that’s a problem when not combined with the other things.
In general, the kind of questions I would ask myself, and the reason why I think all of the above are a concern are:
Which kind of people does this video attract?
Which of these people will get involved/in contact with EA because of these videos?
Do we want these people to be involved in the EA project?
Which kind of people does this video turn off?
Which of these people will be turned off of EA in general because of these videos?
Do we want these people to be involved in the EA project?
I’m somewhat concerned that the answer for too many people would be “no” for 3, and “yes” for 6. Obviously there will always be some “no” for 3 and some “yes”for 6, especially for such a broad medium like youtube, and balancing this is really difficult. (And it’s always easier to take the skeptical stance.) But I think I would like to see more to tip the balance a bit.
Maybe one thing that’s both a good indicator but also important in its own right is the kind of community that forms in the comment section. I’ve so far been moderately positively surprised by the comment section on the longtermism video and how your handling it, so maybe this is evidence that my concerns are misplaced. It still seems like something worth paying attention to. (Not claiming I’m telling you anything new.)
I’m not sure what your plans and goals are, but I would probably prioritise getting the overall tone and community of the channel right before trying to scale your audience.
Some comments on this video:
I thought it was much better in all the regards I mentioned above.
There were still some things I felt slightly uneasy about, but there were much, much smaller, and might be idiosyncratic taste or really-into-philosophy-or-even-specific-philosophical-positions type things. I might also have just noticed them in the context of your other videos, and might have been fine with this otherwise. I feel much less confident that they are actually bad. Examples:
I felt somewhat unhappy with your presentation of person-affecting views, mostly because there are versions that don’t only value people presently alive. (Actually, I’m pretty confused about this. I thought your video explicitly acknowledged that, but then sounded different later. I didn’t go back to check again, so feel free to discard this if it’s inaccurate.) Note that I sympathise a lot with person-affecting views, so might just be biased and feel attacked.
I feel a bit unhappy that trajectory-change wasn’t really discussed.
I felt somewhat uneasy about the “but what if I tell you that even this is nothing compared to what impact you could have” part when transitioning from speeding up technological progress to extincition risk reduction. It kind of felt buzzfeedy again, but I think it’s plausibly I only noticed because I had the context of your other videos. On the more substantive side, I’m not familiar with the discussion around this at all, but I can imagine that whether speeding up growth or preventing extinction risk is more important is an open question to some researchers involved? Really don’t know though.
Again, I think it is really cool and potentially highly valuable that you’re doing this, and I have a lot of respect for how you’ve handled feedback so far. I don’t want to discourage you from producing further videos, just want to give an idea of what some people might be concerned about/why there’s not more enthusiasm for your channel so far. As I said, I think this video is definitely in the IMO right direction and find this encouraging.
edit: Just seen the comment you left on Aaron Gertler’s comment about engagement. Maybe this is a crux.
Update: as a result of feedback here and in other comments (and some independent thinking), we made a few updates to the channel.
Made new thumbnails without the clickbaity feel that the previous ones had.
Changed titles (I did that already weeks ago, but it’s worth mentioning again).
Removed the arm from the cover photo.
Removed mentions of EA from the channel description. For now, I will associate the channel with EA and LW the least I can. I will mention names of specific EA topics (e.g. Longtermism) only when I think it’s really necessary. And it will be probably never necessary to mention the EA movement itself. In this way, I can focus on improving with a lighter heart since the probability of causing PR damage is now lower. Obviously, I’ll have to relax these constraints in the future if I want to increase impact.
Hidden the weakest of the two “digital circuits in Minecraft” videos.
I have also read CEA’s models of community building, which were suggested in some comments.
The future direction the channel will take is more important than previous videos, but still, I wanted to let people know that I made these changes. I wanted to make a post to explain both these changes and future directions in detail, but I don’t know if I’ll manage to finish it, so in the meanwhile, I figured that it would probably be helpful to comment here.
I feel like this is the most central criticism I had so far. Which means it is also the most useful. I think it’s very likely that what you said is also the sentiments of other people here.
I think you’re right about what you say and that I botched the presentation of the first videos. I’ll defend them a little bit here on a couple of points, but not more. I will not say much in this comment other than this, but know that I’m listening and updating.
1. The halo effect video argues in part that the evolution of that meme has been caused by the halo effect. It is certainly not an endorsement.
2. The truth is cringe video is not rigorous and was not meant to be rigorous. It was mostly stuff from my my intuitions and pre-existing knowledge. The example I used made total sense to me (and I considered it interesting because it was somewhat original), but heh apparently only to me.
Note: I’m not going to do only core EA content (edit: not even close actually). I’m trying to also do rationality and some rationality-adjacent and science stuff. Yes, currently the previous thumbnails are wrong. I fixed the titles more recently. I’m not fond of modifying previous content too hard, but I might make more edits.
Edit to your edit: yes.