AnonymousTurtle

Karma: 1,011

AnonymousTurtle 29 Aug 2022 22:11 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: calebp’s comment on: Long-Term Future Fund: December 2021 grant recommendations
I’m a bit confused about why people aren’t sure whether it’s worth their time to apply when the form takes less than an hour and people can apply for arbitrarily large amounts of money, the EV/hour seems very high (based on previous report acceptance rates).

I don’t know how representative it is, but I know one person that worked pretty hard on the “less than an hour” application form. Asked feedback and had calls with several people to optimize it, rewrote it from scratch at least once, probably spent >30 hours on it in total.
It was probably worth it, they got a big raise and a much more exciting job. It was understandably life changing, and I think they’ll do a lot of good!
Being so life changing, I understand why applying could be a large investment, it can be large amounts of money on the line.

AnonymousTurtle 23 Sep 2022 14:34 UTC
48 points
16 ∶ 4
on: My Personal Story of Rejection from EA Global
Thank you for sharing a very personal story, I think it will lead to even more improvements to the overall process and community health.
As someone that was accepted to EAG with basically no EA accomplishments, I do strongly believe that admissions are not about “worthiness” but about “how much would going to EAG help you or others do the most good”.
Looking at the application, as a random nobody, I personally agree with the CEA decision (even ignoring the fact that they probably have a lot more information).
Not sure about discussing why in a comment, but happy to do it if someone would find it useful.

Edit: I really liked this paragraph
Let’s create a warmer community and be present for one another. There are many out there that have the capacity to listen and appreciate your unique talents. EA is a huge global community with different niches. Don’t leave just because one part of the community couldn’t/wouldn’t accept you.
And the fact that you actually found a solution/improvement (the gather town space) to solve your needs, I wish I had more of this mindset!

AnonymousTurtle 23 Sep 2022 15:14 UTC
3 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Arepo’s comment on: My Personal Story of Rejection from EA Global
Wow, thanks so much for sharing this publicly!

AnonymousTurtle 23 Sep 2022 15:25 UTC
3 points
3 ∶ 0
in reply to: Arepo’s comment on: My Personal Story of Rejection from EA Global
I strongly disagree, [edit: deleted a sentence]. Happy to talk about this via DM, will send you a DM with my thoughts.

edit: DM sent

AnonymousTurtle 17 Nov 2022 10:11 UTC
23 points
14 ∶ 4
on: late entry for the EA criticism contest
This post really does not match my perspective.

Some parts I especially disagree with:
You want to stop malaria on the grounds of maximum impact per dollar spent? Actually, this week the hot thing is criminal justice reform ³ in a first world country—why don’t you go rationalize that cause for us?
I’m really annoyed by this line of reasoning, where once you give 1 dollar to the AMF then you can’t give anything else to any cause area that critics might not like, otherwise you’re killing children.
If Moskovitz was spending it on boats instead it would be seen as ok? Should we criticize everyone that spends 1% of their net worth on something we don’t like? Was criminal justice reform ever recommended to small donors? Was it ever a GiveWell top charity?
This part enrages me:
If you’re curious what kind of press you can buy, consider this fluff profile of SBF by Dylan Matthews. Is Matthews’ conveyance of admiration feigned? I doubt it. Would he have gotten it past his editors if SBF hadn’t donated to his employer? Maybe. Would SBF keep donating to Vox if they didn’t deliver fawning coverage? I’m sure Vox editors wondered this themselves right up to the point where it became clear that there would be no donations forthcoming regardless of what they printed.
Please I encourage people to read the “fluff profile”! Dylan Matthews also literally wrote:
The enmity is particularly pronounced for Bankman-Fried, given the fact that crypto is, let’s be blunt, a completely useless asset class that has serious environmental costs.
(Disclosure: Bankman-Fried’s family foundation, Building a Stronger Future, is funding some of the Future Perfect section at Vox, so let me bite the hand that feeds me and say that I think him buying up Super Bowl ads and Vogue spreads with Gisele Bündchen to encourage ordinary people to put their money into this pile of mathematically complex garbage is … actually morally questionable. Bankman-Fried can do a lot of good with the money FTX produces, but parts of the production process make me increasingly uncomfortable.)
At the top of another article. Is Matthews’ conveyance of enmity and discomfort feigned? I doubt it.
As long as EA is reliant on large and especially on public donors, EA is owned by those donors and will over time evolve to serve them even more than they already do. [...] like everything else, EA will become a skinsuit shambling around and doing everything awful that the old charities do, and have nothing to do with its original goals.
There are thousands of donors in EA, and dozens of organizations doing all sorts of stuff independent stuff! My favorite example is Charity Entrepreneurship, and their incubated charities. They are doing really amazing stuff and are saving thousands of lives, I don’t see them (and all their 20 charities) going away any time soon.
I am literally an economist and I am sorry to report that this is the way of the world. [charities existing to optimize taxes and reputation] [...] But What If No One Will Donate If They Can’t Influence Us, or Generate Flattering Press About Having Donated. And What If No One Cares Anymore When We Talk About This At Parties
Then you will have learned something valuable about the role of charity organizations in the world.
[Sorry for ranting a bit from now on]
This kind of “altruism doesn’t exist” reasoning seems really common and really annoys me. I’m not donating 70% of my income to “optimize taxes” or “manage my reputation”, Giving What We Can just reached 8000 pledgers (I know not all pledgers actually end up giving >10% for their whole lives, but many do!).
SBF is a symptom, not a freak one-off. As long as EA is reliant on large and especially on public donors, EA is owned by those donors and will over time evolve to serve them even more than they already do.
For many people, EA is still a place to decide where to give their money and/or time. Not to get money. Many many EA direct workers are both donating significant amounts and earning significantly less than they would be in the private sector.
”Altruism doesn’t exist” seems especially common in some rationalists and post-rationalists that really cannot imagine someone being in any way altruistic: it’s always all signaling, nothing could ever falsify this.

Personal take: SBF/FTX stole a lot of money from a lot of people, and ruined the reputation of coworkers, families, industries, and politicians. I really think EA is making it all about ourselves in a very egocentric manner, and long-time critics are mostly using it to justify their existing “altruism is bad” or “EA is bad” takes.

AnonymousTurtle 19 Nov 2022 15:43 UTC
16 points
7 ∶ 4
in reply to: Wei Dai’s comment on: My takes on the FTX situation will (mostly) be cold, not hot
An important difference is that OpenAI has been distancing itself from EA after the Anthropic split

AnonymousTurtle 24 Nov 2022 23:08 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: The biggest red flag about SBF
I do think it’s mostly hindsight bias, and I don’t know how useful this comment is, but watching these two videos this week definitely made me sad: https://youtu.be/5YZyUTg7MHQ?t=1607 and https://youtu.be/uymLJoKFlW8

AnonymousTurtle 14 Dec 2022 23:49 UTC
1 point
2 ∶ 4
in reply to: trevor1’s comment on: Wall Street Journal Reporter Looking to Speak to EAs
I think this is a better article to link to https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-moral-vanity-of-sam-bankman-fried-delusion-charity-morals-big-think-ftx-cryptocurrency-twitter-philanthropy-11669846009 (unpaywalled: https://archive.ph/cLPvN )
“Sam Bankman-Fried said he wanted to prevent nuclear war and stop future pandemics.” It gives new meaning to thinking big. It’s also delusional, which has become a political characteristic of his generation. [...]
It’s no surprise Mr. Bankman-Fried would think his cryptocurrency profits could prevent nuclear war. [...] He is describing what has come to be known in our time as virtue signaling, which is the current version of moral vanity—the presumption that doing good deserves the public’s support and esteem. But why has this urge to assert public virtue in outsize ways become a mass movement? People who did good used to be humble. Now they won’t get out of our faces.
One inevitably cynical answer is politics. The political left embraced the technique known as “controlling the narrative,” which is a euphemism for propaganda. The new element in our time is that these “narratives” always include sweeping, if vague, claims of moral certitude and superiority. [...]
The purpose of this moral grandiosity isn’t to engage one’s opponents but to marginalize them, to place them beyond the pale of what the new gatekeepers of virtue define as acceptable discourse. [...]
Overlooked in the Bankman-Fried saga is the implicit admission inside the idea of effective altruism that capitalism—for-profit enterprise—is the indispensable means to good ends.

AnonymousTurtle 14 Dec 2022 23:53 UTC
22 points
8 ∶ 1
in reply to: Minh Nguyen’s comment on: Wall Street Journal Reporter Looking to Speak to EAs
As far as I understand, almost no-one who participated in the FTX EA fellowship program “crossed paths with Sam Bankman-Fried”

AnonymousTurtle 16 Dec 2022 12:06 UTC
1 point
1 ∶ 1
in reply to: stecas’s comment on: How would you estimate the value of delaying AGI by 1 day, in marginal GiveWell donations?
Oh no, I’m sorry if that’s the case!
I’m unsure if deletion is the right response to bad posts (which this one likely is!), instead of explaining why the post is bad so that others can understand that it’s wrong (and that the forum thinks is wrong, which I guess could be as important!).
For context, I’m not a longtermist. I’m just worried about global catastrophic risks, since a billion people is a lot of people, and the marginal cost of life saved per GiveWell seems relatively high ($10k/life)
1) is extremely unlikely to convince anyone to work on x-risk who isn’t already doing so
My personal current career trajectory hinges a bit on this :/
Like, is it more likely for me to (help) influence AI timelines or billions of capital?
2) hedges on very unlikely risky scenarios without incorporating principles involving discounting, epistemic humility, or moral uncertainty
Is that the same as There’s significantly less than a 1% risk from AGI for lives that morally matter (which I agree is my main uncertainty), or is it a different consideration?
3) is certain to alienate people and is the kind of thing that makes enemies—not friends—which reduces the credibility and sociopolitical capital of longtermism
What would make friends and not enemies? In a conflict between e.g. workers/artists and AI companies that want to stay unregulated, can you avoid making enemies while helping one side?
4) is very disrespectful toward real people in the real world who suffer from real, large problems that GiveWell charities try to address.
I am mostly worried about real people in the real world that (maybe) suffer from a real large risk. I think a marginal GiveWell dollar might help us real people less than lowering those risks.

AnonymousTurtle 16 Dec 2022 12:56 UTC
6 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: jsilter ’s comment on: How would you estimate the value of delaying AGI by 1 day, in marginal GiveWell donations?
This assumes that there is a 10% chance of extinction via AGI per day. I don’t think anyone believes it to be that high; frankly if it ever gets that high we’ve already lost.

I don’t think so, I think it assumes a 10% of extinction one time after we get AGI.

E.g. “we get AGI in 2050 → 10B people die (on average) in 2060 with a 10% chance” vs “we get AGI in 2050 + 1 day → 10B people die (on average) in 2060 + 1 day with a 10% chance”

AnonymousTurtle 16 Dec 2022 13:02 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: stecas’s comment on: How would you estimate the value of delaying AGI by 1 day, in marginal GiveWell donations?
Do you think it would be possible to edit this post to make it less harmful/bad/wrong, and still allow me to get feedback on what’s wrong with my thinking? (I think something’s wrong, and posted asking for feedback/thoughts).

E.g. keeping feedback like this
It’s easy to talk about the importance of x-risks without making poverty and health charities the direct comparison.
For me it is the direct comparison that matters though, I need to choose between those two
I believe so.
I don’t understand, you believe which one?
I still presume you care about people who suffer from systemic issues in the world. This kind of post would not be the kind of thing that would make anyone like this feel respected.
Does that also apply to any post about e.g. animal welfare and climate change?
As for damage: maybe I can write more clearly that I’m probably wrong and that I’m a random anonymous account? Would be happy to edit this post!

AnonymousTurtle 16 Dec 2022 13:58 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: stecas’s comment on: How would you estimate the value of delaying AGI by 1 day, in marginal GiveWell donations?
Edited the title, do you think this is good enough?
Could you please point out your estimation? Since at the end of the day we do need to decide what to work on.

AnonymousTurtle 16 Dec 2022 14:19 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: stecas’s comment on: How would you estimate the value of delaying AGI by 1 day, in marginal GiveWell donations?
Thank you for the pushback on the title!
I wonder what are your thoughts on delaying timelines, instead of working on tooling, but I guess it might hinge on being more longtermist and personal fit.

AnonymousTurtle 19 Dec 2022 20:05 UTC
8 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: Jason’s comment on: Update on spending for CEA-run events
I’m pretty sure EVF will send all that it’s legally required to send to EVF depositors.
After that I really hope that the argument “that money could instead go to FTX depositors” will not replace “that money could literally save several lives”, when talking about buying food/drinks vs donating money.

AnonymousTurtle 15 Jan 2023 23:48 UTC
11 points
5 ∶ 0
in reply to: Arepo’s comment on: Thread for discussing Bostrom’s email and apology
Also, I would add at the very least Gwern (which might be relevant to note regarding the current topic) and Scott Alexander as other two clear cases of “personalities” in LW

AnonymousTurtle 18 Jan 2023 11:11 UTC
55 points
16 ∶ 3
on: Doing EA Better
As other comments have noted, a lot of the proposals seem to be bottlenecked by funding and/or people leading them.

I would recommend people interested in these things to strongly consider Earning to Give or fundraising, or even just actually donating much more of their existing income or wealth.
If the 10 authors of this post can find other 10 people sympathetic to their causes, and each donate or fundraise on average 50k/year, they would have $1M/year of funding for causes that they think are even better than the ones currently funded by EA! If they get better results than existing EA funds people and resources would flock to them!
If you think the current funding allocation is bad, the value of extra funding that you would be able to allocate better becomes much higher.
Especially if you want to gather funds for work on climate change, I suspect fundraising would be easier than for any other global cause area. Instead of asking Moskovitz/Openphil for funding, it might be even higher EV to ask Gates, Bezos, or other billionaires. Anecdotically, when I talk to high net worth people about EA (non billionaires), the first comment is almost always “but what about climate change, which clearly is the most important thing to fund?”

I disagree with a lot of of the content and the general vagueness/EA Should of this post, but I appreciate the huge effort that went into it and here I am trying to be constructive. I might write a less constructive comment with all my disagreements at some point if I can think of a way that could inform more consequentially useful criticism.
After reading most of the post, as a person that is in EA to give money/support, and not to get money/support, it’s not clear to me how can I help you.
What links here?
- AnonymousTurtle's comment on [Linkpost] Leif Wenar’s The Deaths of Effective Altruism by Arden Wiese (28 Mar 2024 7:05 UTC; 35 points)

AnonymousTurtle 18 Jan 2023 23:02 UTC
23 points
8 ∶ 0
in reply to: Dustin Moskovitz’s comment on: The EA community does not own its donors’ money
Thanks so much for sharing your perspective, as the main party involved.^[1] A minor nitpick:
As an example, the top-rated fund at GWWC is the one for Climate Change: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/charities/founders-pledge-climate-change-fund
I think this might be misleading: there are 12 top-rated funds. The Climate Change one is one of the three “Top-rated funds working across multiple cause areas”.
1. ^
  (and thank you for all the good you’re doing)

AnonymousTurtle 26 Jan 2023 1:01 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Arepo’s comment on: Doing EA Better: Preamble, Summary, and Introduction
Not exactly an answer, but as an anecdote I know an EA employee who was asked not to publish something 100% supportive of their employer in response to some criticism. We both found it a bit weird, but I assume that’s how all organisations work

AnonymousTurtle 26 Jan 2023 1:17 UTC
17 points
6 ∶ 1
in reply to: lukeprog’s comment on: When Did EA Start?
MacAskill was definitely a longtermist in 2012. But I don’t think he mentioned it in Doing Good Better, or any of the more public/introductory narrative around EA.

I think the “pivot to longermism” narrative is a reaction to a change in communication strategy (80000 hours becoming explicitly longtermist, EA intro materials becoming mostly longtermist). I think critics see it as a “sharp left turn” in the AI Alignment sense, where the longtermist values were there all along but were much more dormant while EA was less powerful.

There’s a previous discussion here