I’m not sure the most impactful people need have high alignment. We’ve disagreed about Elon Musk in the past, but I still think he’s a better candidate for the world’s most counterfactually positive human than anyone else I can think of. Bill Gates is similarly important and similarly kinda-but-conspicuously-not-explicitly aligned.
Yes, if you rank all humans by counterfactual positive impact, most of them are not EA, because most humans are not EAs.
This is even more true if you are mostly selecting on people who were around long before EA started, or if you go by ex post rather than ex ante counterfactual impact (how much credit should we give to Bill Gates’ grandmother?)
(I’m probably just rehashing an old debate, but also Elon Musk is in the top 5-10 of contenders for “most likely to destroy the world,” so that’s at least some consideration against him specifically).
I don’t think background rate is relevant here. I was contesting your claim that ‘the people who are most impactful within EA have both high alignment and high competence’. It depends on what you mean ‘within EA’ I guess. If you mean ‘people who openly espouse EA ideas’, then the ‘high alignment’ seems uninterestingly true almost by definition. If you mean ‘people who are doing altruistic work effectively’ then Gates and Musk are , IMO, strong enough counterpoints to falsify the claim.
I’m not sure the most impactful people need have high alignment. We’ve disagreed about Elon Musk in the past, but I still think he’s a better candidate for the world’s most counterfactually positive human than anyone else I can think of. Bill Gates is similarly important and similarly kinda-but-conspicuously-not-explicitly aligned.
Yes, if you rank all humans by counterfactual positive impact, most of them are not EA, because most humans are not EAs.
This is even more true if you are mostly selecting on people who were around long before EA started, or if you go by ex post rather than ex ante counterfactual impact (how much credit should we give to Bill Gates’ grandmother?)
(I’m probably just rehashing an old debate, but also Elon Musk is in the top 5-10 of contenders for “most likely to destroy the world,” so that’s at least some consideration against him specifically).
I don’t think background rate is relevant here. I was contesting your claim that ‘the people who are most impactful within EA have both high alignment and high competence’. It depends on what you mean ‘within EA’ I guess. If you mean ‘people who openly espouse EA ideas’, then the ‘high alignment’ seems uninterestingly true almost by definition. If you mean ‘people who are doing altruistic work effectively’ then Gates and Musk are , IMO, strong enough counterpoints to falsify the claim.
There are many/most people who openly espouse EA ideas who I do not consider highly aligned.