A wayward math-muddler for bizarre designs, artificial intelligence options, and spotting trends no one wanted; articles on Medium as Anthony Repetto
Anthony Repetto
Karma: −82
Oh, no—not ‘because-dating-already’, nor as a favor, nor her aspiring to use beauty, or being unqualified. Rather, if people doing the hiring are selecting among excellent candidates, yet their selection favors people who those same authorities hope to try dating. It’s the hirer, not the one hired, who I call into question; as I said originally “hoping to hire-in” which places agency and blame with those being biased in their hiring.
Also, I don’t expect a flat ‘gender disparity’ to be indicative of this sort of hiring—rather, internal measure of co-worker and boss relationships would show if the social graph is incestuous. And, though it isn’t reasonable to say “the funder of a charity was hiring inappropriately, so the charity must also be doing so,”—and, at the same time, “a bunch of young college kids with money who all live and hang out together, dating each other,” is the shared characteristic that I argue warrants inclusion of that risk.
Thank you! You are welcome to check—the dismissals had begun, in multiple threads, before a peep from me; they were the initial replies. I became hot in response, only then, which your forum abhors—and I understand that I am downvoted for it! I don’t expect you to give me a soap-box in your living room, when I keep offending you.
I can also drop my guise, which I understand if you find doubly offensive: a troll-trap.
After being misrepresented repeatedly, this time I intentionally included the word ‘nerd’, to see if that would be enough to ignore the other points—YET! I didn’t expect that you would take my critique of hiring as a strike against the woman, who is a thoughtful and diligent member of your community, and would definitely do an excellent job assisting! I’m glad to speak in her favor—the question was why, with her quick hire, others languished in comparison? And I pointed to the risk of men in power pulling a 1950′s-style ‘I get $90k as researcher, and I date my $50k secretary’. THAT is where my heart-strings leapt to shout!
“I can also see it being possible that you bumped into situations where people were trying to sort out interpersonal issues privately, and you got wind of it and tried to make it public.”
Thank you for responding! And, no, that is not accurate. The leader of EA Berkeley was ousted; that’s not an ‘interpersonal issue, privately’. That’s the organization wanting to protect a brand by leaving their problems unmentioned, which is exactly the dishonesty part. I believe I’ve rebutted your argument—unless you have more to add?
Additionally, I understand if you took offense that I said ‘nerd’ - I’m happy to apologize to anyone in the Berkeley group who was offended or hurt, in person, with anyone else present they wish. Unfortunately, with Bankman’s incestuous corporate structure updating my assumptions, I do believe it is right to ask: are they dating their PAs? That’s a question for internal review, privacy, yet the statistical results should be public.
Thank you again for engaging with a rebuttal!
In other threads, my arguments were repeatedly misrepresented or unaddressed, while comments consisted of ‘we shouldn’t fund this, it’s not appropriate’ when I specified at the outset that I was not seeking funding; ‘this should be posted somewhere else’, etc. And only in a few instances, out of dozens of responses, have EA commenters addressed the substance of what I wrote.
Behaving decently is nice; that doesn’t remove the point I was asking about: ignoring the other arguments I brought-up. It seems, repeatedly, that the call of appropriateness is used to ignore the substance of the other arguments; which continues to be the case, in this thread.
Does that absolve EA of the other points? Finding a flaw with the speaker or one of their points, to ignore the rest of the argument, seems to be a pattern amongst forum-commenters here—followed by mass downvotes.
I’d also like to ask clarification about your last sentence: I said ‘nerds’, and that may be what you found particularly offensive, there; or, that I hypothesize that men in those organizations are hiring hoping for a date? I am not attempting to ‘blame a woman’ for getting a job, by the way—I am pointing to the people who are doing the hiring for potentially selfish reasons.
Well, there’s a simple empirical measure, rather than relying on whether an argument is approved-of or not: Do any of them date? Are they hoping to keep that fact hidden?
“Ben Delo’s involvement with EA just quietly stopped being talked about without any kind of public reflection on what could be done better moving forwards.”
“Failing to share information because you suspect it will make me less supportive or more critical of your views, decisions, or actions smells of overconfidence and makes you difficult to trust, and this has regularly happened to me in my engagement with EA.”
Yes, exactly. Thank you! EA Berkeley had to remove their leader just two years ago, for reasons that none of the membership there is willing to even mention—which makes it sound particularly bad, which means that ‘the fact that EA is keeping that bad stuff hidden’ is even worse.
Similarly, EA Berkeley members were targeted by a higher-up for blacklisting, and mentioned such in emails to me, only to go silent on the matter until I brought-up the blacklisting as an issue on their slack. At that point, they mentioned that “we’ve been in private talks with the Blacklister, asking them to stop their behavior”—nothing public until absolutely necessary.
The EA houses in Berkeley, who are a magnet for EA Berkeley campus members to move-into (most residents are post-grads who were EA Berkeley prior to graduation and moving into the EA house), had repeatedly splurged unnecessarily, and when I pointed this out, the near-universal response on the EA Berkeley slack was ‘well, that’s them, not us. We’re not responsible for anyone else in our org if they’re committing petty fraud.’ The slack poster Charles He even suggested that I be banned from their slack, for ‘disrupting’ things by bringing-up their bad behavior!
EA definitely has a brand they’re protecting, and other posters seem to be bumping into other icky spots under the surface, too! (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/eoLwR3y2gcZ8wgECc/hubris-and-coldness-within-ea-my-experience) & “Power dynamics: What procedures exist for protecting parties in asymmetric power relationships? Are there adequate opportunities for anonymous complaints or concerns to be raised? How are high-status individuals held accountable in the event of wrongdoing?” from (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sEpWkCvvJfoEbhnsd/the-ftx-crisis-highlights-a-deeper-cultural-problem-within)
Further: when I have posted new ideas on this forum, I was repeatedly strawmanned by EA members until other members eventually pointed-out that I was being strawmanned, and those who did so never admitted and apologized; they just downvoted every comment I made, as a team. EA protects the trolls who downvote-mafia and misrepresent, while looking for reasons to exclude ‘non-aligned views’.
I also wonder about the hiring for AI Safety, here in the Bay: after talking to people who struggled to get hired as a PA in AI Safety, despite a background in CS and an interest in AI and safety for 5 years… while a pretty girl with a psych background got hired as PA immediately, multiple offers? It sounds like the nerds at Berkeley are hoping to hire-in a Bankman-sized polycule as PAs.
Moderation of the boards, to point-out misrepresentations and fallacies, would put it on par with the philosophy message board I moderated in the 90s. New folks shouldn’t have to defend themselves from EA regulars’ misrepresentations.
And, the selection of judges seems an arcane cabal… did you notice the irony, that your own, privately selected judges are the ones who determine if critique of themselves is valid? That’s equivalent to being “judge in your own trial”.
I also fear that, by offering a prize to the ‘best’, you are then able to disregard all those who ‘didn’t make the prize-threshold’. You gave only two months for it, while other organizations have a suggestion box that is always available, without judges dismissing all but the ‘best’.
Oh, darn—I can’t tell you this stuff, because you had already closed the contest by the time word of it had trickled to me.
Thank you for your detailed critique! I’m glad to hear firm arguments—we are two halves of progress, Speculator and Skeptic. Isn’t the Constitution the means by which the Government inherits the Will of the People? Such that, though the oath is directly to the Constitution, it is ultimately to the People? The founders didn’t want a direct link, due to the whims of the majority and the moment… yet, we are not slaves to our own Constitution, instead its recipient?
Hmm… I suppose we’re looking at the “preferred agent” as different members: I think of the People as the privileged agents, with statesmen taking an oath to those People, which seems to be a breach of their oath of office if they intentionally misrepresent their goals in office. You favor the statesmen, even when the evidence of history is that voters are repeatedly fooled because there is no reliable account of politicians’ actions?
[Also, the existence of Representative government, by the way, is the admission that each voter not be burdened with every task of verification, and this seems to be another instance of that.]
When someone offers “what if we measure, to verify their claim?”—that is what destroys democracy, by limiting the speech of active politicians. Is that correct? Because it seems that “allowing politicians to lie on campaign to voters, thereby deceiving them in their vote and making that vote a lie” seems worse than limiting candidates’ extravagant claims , only.
Thank you!
1. Keeping promises is hard, being truthful seems to be hard to them… I’m not sure why their relative difficulty makes any difference? Could you outline the steps in that argument a bit more?
2. If the amendment operates by criteria, rather than dictate, it’s aligned with what I originally described. For example, “Make Everything Fantastic” would only be rated true if nothing declined. There are objective metrics for these things, and in those cases of ambiguity, you side on “broken promise” for safety. I don’t pretend to have perfect mechanism design on my first try, either—that’s why I shared a rough thought which might be developed further. I value investigating questions like “what is the repercussion of not admitting a broken promise?” Yet, the existence of such questions does not invalidate the task. It might be worth looking into. Do you see that?
3. Again, I’m missing your arguments. You’re making a claim, and then stating its consequent, without stating its necessary cause(s). What makes this intractable? Leaving-out your arguments implies that you assume you are right, which isn’t the “Scout’s Mindset” that I heard about...
“may politicize the courts” turned into “that would be really bad”. Did you have additional critique? I have a hunch that, if I’d stood in the Second Continental Convention and said, “What if the check-and-balance the courts could wield over the Legislature and Executive included making them admit their broken campaign promises?” Ben might wink! “A Democracy, if you can keep it...” meant you’d have to take active steps to preserve the spirit, as laws become loopholes and citizens become consumers.
So, it’s been a pattern among the hundreds of academics and dozens of engineers I’ve met—academics like to say “I have a single flaw, so your proposal is impossible/untenable.” Good engineers, giving constructive criticism, say “Well, that won’t work, unless you find a way to...” Do you have any constructive criticism? I’d be honored!
Apologies for forming a separate thread—I was just informed that the author posted here, as well.
Here is the link, if you are curious: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xEyzE2DGSiMQGjqmz/a-response-to-openphil-s-r-and-d-model
Thank you!
Thank you for recognizing that my concern was not addressed. I should mention, I am also not operating from an assumption of ‘intrinsically against me’ - it’s an unusually specific reaction that I’ve received on this forum, in particular. So, I’m glad that you have spoken-up in favor of due consideration. My stomach knots thank you :)
Yes, I understand that funding can let me hire people to do that work—and I don’t need funding to free my time. I understand that, if I delay for the sake of doing-it-alone, then I am responsible for that additional harm. It doesn’t make sense for me to run a simulation or lobby by myself; and I’ve been in the position of hiring people, as well as working with people who are internally motivated. I hoped to find the internally motivated people, first—that’s why I asked EA for connections, instead of just posting something on a job site.
Here are the less contentious parts, I hope?
“Ben Delo’s involvement with EA just quietly stopped being talked about without any kind of public reflection on what could be done better moving forwards.”
“Failing to share information because you suspect it will make me less supportive or more critical of your views, decisions, or actions smells of overconfidence and makes you difficult to trust, and this has regularly happened to me in my engagement with EA.”
Yes, exactly. Thank you! EA Berkeley had to remove their leader just two years ago, for reasons that none of the membership there is willing to even mention—which makes it sound particularly bad, which means that ‘the fact that EA is keeping that bad stuff hidden’ is even worse.
Similarly, EA Berkeley members were targeted by a higher-up for blacklisting, and mentioned such in emails to me, only to go silent on the matter until I brought-up the blacklisting as an issue on their slack. At that point, they mentioned that “we’ve been in private talks with the Blacklister, asking them to stop their behavior”—nothing public until absolutely necessary.
The EA houses in Berkeley, who are a magnet for EA Berkeley campus members to move-into (most residents are post-grads who were EA Berkeley prior to graduation and moving into the EA house), had repeatedly splurged unnecessarily, and when I pointed this out, the near-universal response on the EA Berkeley slack was ‘well, that’s them, not us. We’re not responsible for anyone else in our org if they’re committing petty fraud.’ The slack poster Charles He even suggested that I be banned from their slack, for ‘disrupting’ things by bringing-up their bad behavior!
EA definitely has a brand they’re protecting, and other posters seem to be bumping into other icky spots under the surface, too! (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/eoLwR3y2gcZ8wgECc/hubris-and-coldness-within-ea-my-experience) & “Power dynamics: What procedures exist for protecting parties in asymmetric power relationships? Are there adequate opportunities for anonymous complaints or concerns to be raised? How are high-status individuals held accountable in the event of wrongdoing?” from (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sEpWkCvvJfoEbhnsd/the-ftx-crisis-highlights-a-deeper-cultural-problem-within)
Further: when I have posted new ideas on this forum, I was repeatedly strawmanned by EA members until other members eventually pointed-out that I was being strawmanned, and those who did so never admitted and apologized; they just downvoted every comment I made, as a team. EA protects the trolls who downvote-mafia and misrepresent, while looking for reasons to exclude ‘non-aligned views’.