Vilfredo's Ghost

Karma: 593

Vilfredo's Ghost 18 Mar 2024 8:02 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Lorenzo Buonanno’s comment on: Why I worry about about EA leadership, explained through two completely made-up LinkedIn profiles
If RAF cadets work like USAF cadets it means they went to college at some kind of military academy and were essentially full time plus in military training alongside school.

Vilfredo's Ghost 12 Mar 2024 7:46 UTC
−24 points
1 ∶ 5
on: Lies and disrespect from the EA Infrastructure Fund
tbh you sound obnoxious from your own description of events and I would lose interest in working with someone, and downgrade my initial assessment of their abilities (especially in a field that involves knowledge about human behavior), if they sent me multiple emails a week complaining about delays. And I am thinking about this mostly in the context of a prospective client, where they’d be the one giving me money in exchange for putting up with their behavior; I can only imagine how much worse it is for a grantmaker who would prospectively be paying money out to the person behaving in this way.
Stuff takes time, sometimes it takes longer than planned. Especially when they are telling you other people (e.g. lawyers) have to be involved in the decision, you should know they can’t predict that accurately. Sometimes taking longer than planned is a way to reject you politely in hopes that you will get the message and move on, or a way for someone who is kind of interested but not that excited about an idea to resolve the issue in their mind.

Vilfredo's Ghost 8 Feb 2024 16:23 UTC
23 points
2 ∶ 2
in reply to: andrew_richardson’s comment on: Rates of Criminality Amongst Giving Pledge Signatories
Strong downvote on the OP because the counting is done in a HIGHLY misleading way. If I were the moderators I would take the post down or demand SUBSTANTIAL corrections.
For Claim 1. (25% of signatories have been accused of financial misconduct, and 10% convicted^[1]), the info provided in the footnote renders this claim outright false. Beyond the fact that many civil violations of the law are not even crimes, civil judgments are not convictions, require a substantially lower standard of proof, and from a legal strategy standpoint, there is often no reason not to settle a case that requires no admission of wrongdoing and where the legal consequences of a criminal conviction are not triggered and it’s just not worth the opportunity cost of spending time and money litigating it.
Using the experience of non-US billionaires is also extremely misleading without evidence about base rates of crime in those countries. My guess would be that India, for example, has historically had such high rates of corruption that virtually every Indian over ~50, and certainly those in business, have done things that would result in jail time if done in the US. But that’s not morally blameworthy; it’s just the system they have to operate in.
Beyond that issue, some more mundane ones:
No evidence is presented for the idea that white collar criminals are less likely to be punished than other criminals. It is probably the case that rich people are less likely to be punished for the same crime than poor people. But the nature of financial crime in publicly traded companies is that the evidence is just way more accessible to the government than the evidence of stealing toothpaste from Target. So financial crimes in publicly traded companies are likely prosecuted at much higher rates than other types of crimes.
Overall the rates listed appear to generally be lower than the general population, which is extremely impressive considering that most billionaires are men, who tend to have much higher rates of criminality. So I would expect billionaires to have almost double the population base rate of criminality just by virtue of that! I don’t know why Y-combinator funding is a remotely appropriate reference class.
Let’s review the individual claims now:
1. 25% of signatories have been accused of financial misconduct, and 10% convicted^[1]
2. 4% of signatories have spent at least one day in prison
3. Overall, 41% of signatories have had at least one allegation of substantial misconduct (financial, sexual, or otherwise
Claim 1. is blatantly false, as noted at the outset. Beyond that, we have only an explanation, hidden in the footnote, of what constitutes a “conviction”. No definition of the meaning of allegation. Based on the stated methodology I assume at least a criminal charge or the filing of a lawsuit to count. No indication on whether e.g. a public allegation with no suit counts, and no indication that a lawsuit needs to be credible to count.
Were it to be true, this would be lower than the overall % of Americans with criminal charges, which is about ¹⁄₃ of adults. This doesn’t include those who’ve been defendants in a civil lawsuit, which I can’t find good statistics for. I can’t find overall statistics for criminal convictions but 8% of American adults have felony convictions. Based on my experience as a lawyer, it’s surprising what kinds of minor bs count as a felony but I’d still be surprised if misdemeanor convictions don’t outnumber felonies (with substantial overlap), so I’d guess at least 16% have some kind of conviction. Miscount civil judgments as “convictions” and tons more people get thrown in.
Claim 2.--the population base rate is about 5% over a lifetime.
Claim 3. In addition to the problems noted with 1., it’s unclear what constitutes “substantial misconduct”. Crimes at least have a clear definition. Civil violations of the law have a clear-ish definition.

Vilfredo's Ghost 15 Jan 2024 4:29 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 1
in reply to: JesseSmith’s comment on: Obstacles to the Implementation of Indoor Air Quality Improvements
Would objective licensing standards help? Training itself can be BS’d but maybe a test run by the state is harder to rig.

Vilfredo's Ghost 23 Dec 2023 5:45 UTC
15 points
11 ∶ 0
in reply to: Chris Leong’s comment on: AI safety advocates should consider providing gentle pushback following the events at OpenAI
They got outplayed in the context of the internal politics of OpenAI, where there were A LOT of people with profit (Microsoft) or career (the employees) incentives to race ahead. But there seems to be an emerging public consensus in favor of more regulation, so I would expect that e.g. smart, ambitious politicians have quite different incentives.

Vilfredo's Ghost 21 Dec 2023 17:30 UTC
8 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: iamasockpuppet’s comment on: Effective Aspersions: How the Nonlinear Investigation Went Wrong
In the event of a successful lawsuit, we should consider NL fully vindicated and not engage in this sort of reputational retribution for daring to defend their rights. Actions that successfully punish wrongdoers are generally not negative sum because they discourage future misconduct. This is true even where it’s negligent and not malicious; knowing one may face consequences encourages greater care in the future.
Edit: I can see reasons it might be unfair to pursue a defamation suit against an unsophisticated/under-resourced party where it’s a really close call legally. But we are talking about legally sophisticated parties who effectively spent $ 6 figures’ worth of their time on this; the legal fees are chump change compared to what they’ve already put in.

Vilfredo's Ghost 21 Dec 2023 17:28 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jeff Kaufman’s comment on: Effective Aspersions: How the Nonlinear Investigation Went Wrong
Unlikely, but to the extent it’s true it mostly favors the defendant. Burden of proof is on the plaintiff.

Vilfredo's Ghost 21 Dec 2023 6:29 UTC
17 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jason’s comment on: Effective Aspersions: How the Nonlinear Investigation Went Wrong
My statement stands even on a negligence standard. It’s even harder to sue as a pubic figure, but truth is an absolute defense regardless.

Vilfredo's Ghost 21 Dec 2023 4:56 UTC
30 points
11 ∶ 8
in reply to: Jeff Kaufman’s comment on: Effective Aspersions: How the Nonlinear Investigation Went Wrong
US defamation law is not strict at all. It bends over backwards to respect the First Amendment. Truth is a complete defense. UK defamation law, and the law of many other un-free countries, is pretty ridiculous and I do think it’s unethical to take advantage of that. But in the US it’s so hard to bring a defamation suit that even bringing one and not being shot down by the anti-SLAPP law is strong evidence that the plaintiff is in the right.
I haven’t reviewed it closely enough to know if there’s enough for a viable defamation suit, but if there is, NL absolutely should sue Pace and those getting mad about that threat should be ashamed of themselves. A norm that you should not bring, or threaten to bring, lawsuits against people who are wronging you in a way the law recognizes as wrong is very very very bad. That norm privileges those who are doing wrong, at the expense of the innocent.

Vilfredo's Ghost 14 Dec 2023 15:47 UTC
10 points
10 ∶ 18
in reply to: Sean_o_h’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
I think norms should strongly push against taking seriously any public accusation made anonymously in most circumstances. I feel like we have taken a norm that was appropriate to a very limited set of circumstances and tried to make a grand moral principle out of it, and it doesn’t work. Giving some anonymity to victims of sexual assault/harassment, in some circumstances, makes sense because it’s a uniquely embarrassing thing to be a victim of due to our cultural taboos around sex. Anonymity might be appropriate for people revealing problems at their current employer. Or it might be appropriate in industries that are generally more amoral, for conduct I would expect most employers to want to commit—e.g. I would want people to be able to anonymously disclose that a doctor is biased in favor of prescribing drugs pushed by the pharma sales rep who buys him the fanciest lunches, because I think most doctors want to supplement their incomes by taking pharma bribes. But if people have legitimate fears about retaliation by unrelated employers within the EA ecosystem then we have lost the plot so thoroughly that we should probably burn the whole thing down.
If someone is going to make false accusations, the rest of us have a right to know that about their character and avoid dealing with them. A person making false accusations is in fact a predator; describing themself as a victim doesn’t change that. Mental illness doesn’t change that. I have a family member with mental health issues similar to what Kat has described of Alice. In my experience this person is a genuinely bad person, despite many professions of good intent. This person leaves a trail of wreckage in their wake wherever they go. I don’t introduce friends or significant others to them without a warning. It would be unfair to my friends/SOs to do otherwise. If I were in a position to warn their prospective employers, I would consider myself duty-bound to warn them as well.
If the accusations are true I don’t see how it possibly hurts their reputation to have their identities attached to them, except that it makes similarly abusive employers less likely to hire them. Which I wouldn’t exactly consider a negative if I were in their shoes.

Vilfredo's Ghost 14 Dec 2023 7:35 UTC
11 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Vilfredo’s Ghost’s Quick takes
Current or former Congressional staffers, help me out in the DMs:
I see members of Congress fairly often for short periods of time, and I feel like most of my time with them is wasted in chitchat or just like...whatever’s in the news. I wanna start using the time more effectively to promote the best available policy interventions at a given time. Assuming I will spend 5 minutes with a Congressperson per week (could be my Rep, could be others), and probably only have like 10 min available to spend on figuring out what to talk to them about, how do I efficiently figure out what I should be pushing that week? Should I just be a broken record about some specific thing no one is doing right now (esp given that I have access to Members other than my own; maybe this is a useful coordinating function), or should I focus more on already pending legislation?
Bonus points if you can suggest how to figure out timely appropriations that I should ask state/local elected officials to lobby for; I get wayyyyy more facetime with them.

Vilfredo’s Ghost’s Quick takes

Vilfredo's Ghost14 Dec 2023 7:35 UTC

4 points

1 comment1 min readEA link

Vilfredo's Ghost 14 Dec 2023 6:04 UTC
7 points
0 ∶ 0
on: PEPFAR, one of the most life-saving global health programs, is at risk
Is there a specific bill or amendment (or set of them) we should be asking ppl to support or oppose? Gonna see my Congressperson this weekend so good time to ask, but from a quick search it’s not obvious what specifically I should be asking for. I’d like to be as detailed as possible.
Second, what exactly needs to be reauthorized? The program itself, or an appropriation of funds? Or both? And if needs an appropriation, how much? Fun fact about the US system: Congress can effectively kill programs that are still technically on the books, by just not giving them $, so you gotta be very clear in what you’re demanding.

Vilfredo's Ghost 14 Dec 2023 5:41 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: salonium’s comment on: PEPFAR, one of the most life-saving global health programs, is at risk
It would be helpful to know who the key members of Congress to persuade are. The value of contacting your rep/senators likely varies a lot depending on where you live.

Vilfredo's Ghost 18 Nov 2023 1:46 UTC
34 points
10 ∶ 0
on: Pitfalls to consider when community-building with young people
Strongly endorse this post. I came to the EA movement relatively late in life. And I notice that A LOT of younger EAs are really invested in getting an EA org job, to an extent that makes me uncomfortable. I think this is actually unhealthy for the movement, not just the individuals. But there’s an incentives problem, where the orgs all say “no, people should apply even though it’s super-competitive; let us make the decision about who’s the best fit”, and that really is optimal from the narrow perspective of that org. But especially given the time commitment required to put together a serious application, it doesn’t really account adequately for all time being wasted by unsuccessful job applicants. I can’t blame the orgs for following their incentives, but those of us with a more neutral perspective should probably somewhat discourage the current levels of persistence in applying to EA org jobs, and/or encourage EA orgs to use less time-consuming hiring processes.
A few years ago I told a college-aged EA that I would be inconvenienced but not devastated if the movement collapsed, because as much as I enjoy being a part of it and having people to collaborate with or even just share ideas with, the underlying principles and not the movement are the thing that really matters, and I would still do my best to live up to the principles even if I had to do it all alone. This person was visibly offended by my comment. That’s not a healthy response, and I’ve been worried about the young’uns ever since.

Vilfredo's Ghost 2 Sep 2023 5:28 UTC
3 points
1 ∶ 1
in reply to: Zach Stein-Perlman’s comment on: Want to make a difference on policy and governance? Become an expert in something specific and boring
4 and 7 are not really questions that one can meaningfully develop expertise on. Even politicians, whose jobs depend on understanding public opinion, are worse at this than just running a poll, and depend heavily on polling to assess public opinion when they have the money to run adequate polls. They do bring a useful amount of additional judgment to that process and can give you a sense of when a poll result is likely to not hold up in an adversarial environment, but I don’t think you can develop an equivalent skill without actually spending a lot of time talking to the public. I also don’t think that would allow you to do much prediction of where public opinion is headed. Hillary Clinton would probably have been elected President in 2008 if she had been able to predict how Dem primary voters’ opinions on her Iraq vote would change, and she never lacked access to world-class experts at the time she was making her decision.
You could spend 30k to run a poll and get a better sense of current public sentiment and specific ways opinions can be pushed given information currently available. A world-expert level pollster could perhaps help you write better questions, and you could review the history of pubic opinion on topics you find to be analogous. I think with all that you’d outperform most unelected policymakers in understanding current public opinion, but only because their condescension toward the average person makes them especially bad at it (see, e.g. their obvious bungling of covid). I’d be extremely skeptical that you’d do any better at predicting what shifts public and elite opinion better than an average swing-district member of Congress who took 10 min to review your poll.

Vilfredo's Ghost 14 Apr 2023 3:36 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: AI Risk US Presidental Candidate
Why run a quixotic Presidential campaign when you could actually elect a bunch of Congresspeople? I don’t think you need to rebuild SBF’s infrastructure to do that; the average winner of an open House seat only spent $2.2 million in 2020. You wanna talk Senate/serious Presidential races you probably need better infrastructure; House races you could probably fund just from Carrick Flynn’s non-SBF donor list plus the connections anyone in position to be a viable candidate already has.

Vilfredo's Ghost 28 Feb 2023 3:47 UTC
−8 points
1 ∶ 3
in reply to: Jason’s comment on: Consent Isn’t Always Enough
That’s the tradeoff you have to accept when you decide to go on the warpath. Smearing completely uninvolved people because they have an ideological orientation in common with the guilty parties makes you the bad guy. Being a victim of one bad thing doesn’t give you a free pass to victimize other innocent people with a different bad thing. Again, it would be like if they published an article saying “Democrats have a sexual harassment problem” without specifying that they mean Bill Clinton and not Barack Obama.
The military’s policy is what I said it is, not the thing you’re trying to make it.

Vilfredo's Ghost 27 Feb 2023 2:30 UTC
−2 points
6 ∶ 5
on: Consent Isn’t Always Enough
I think this is something that mostly needs to be left up to individual organizations, and the media’s framing of “EA has a sexual harassment problem” is really misleading. It should be “Organizations X and Y have a sexual harassment problem”; if people didn’t want to name specific orgs then it never should’ve been published, and if people are going to try to tar others who were uninvolved that should be treated as the dishonest garbage it is. The media coverage and the community debate on this have been like if someone said “Democrats have a sexual harassment problem” and tried to paint Obama as a rapist based on what Clinton did.
Certainly employers do have an interest in their employees’ romantic relationships in the examples you cite and have a right to limit them. But I don’t think you can make a blanket rule that works community wide; informal power is often more important than formal power, especially in a small community, and if you start limiting relationships where there’s even informal power dynamics you get either infinite complexity or a total ban on intra-community relationships, neither of which is healthy. Individual employers should make their own decisions about HR policies and people can make their own decisions about how much protection they want.
Now, on an individual level I think a lot of people should be thinking more about how their relationships/hookups limit their ability to do the most good they could do, and should take a hard look at whether being able to sleep with whoever they want is really worth the losses it may cause in their effectiveness. This is true for all the reasons you cited that an employer may have an interest, but ALSO because public perceptions of them/the community may matter, and for long-term relationships it goes even beyond that because you need to think about the sacrifices people sometimes have to make for their SO. Who is supposed to take the career hit if one of you gets a great job offer far away and the other doesn’t have anything comparable to/better than their current job available there? For an EA dating a non-EA, the solution is you demand that your career take precedence and you do everything in your power to make it up to them somehow, but for an EA dating another EA who is approximately their equal in ability and dedication (and presumably you’re dating your equal...), you’ve created a dilemma that you could have avoided with different relationship choices.
Side note: “Hookups within a military unit” is an interesting example because those are mostly permitted, and not just in ancient Greece. At least when I was in service, the rule was no sleeping with anyone in your direct chain of command and no officers sleeping with enlisted even not in chain of command. Now, maybe this is a bad idea; the military does have a sexual assault problem and perhaps you’d reduce that by saying no one in the same platoon/company/whatever can sleep together, period. But that’s not the established rule.

Vilfredo's Ghost 4 Feb 2023 7:58 UTC
25 points
14 ∶ 2
in reply to: Lin BL’s comment on: EA, Sexual Harassment, and Abuse
I think you’re just playing in to a broader cultural problem here. Too many younger EAs are too invested in getting a job at an EA organization, and/or in having the movement as a part of their identity (as distinct from the underlying ideal). If you think the movement has serious flaws that make it not a good means for doing the most good, then you should not be trying to work for an EA org in the first place, and the access to those opportunities is irrelevant.
People should not be using the movement for career advancement independent of the goal of doing the most good they can do with their careers (and in most cases, can’t do that even if they intend to, because EA org jobs that are high-status within the movement are not similarly high-status outside of it).
I find the EA movement a useful source of ideas and a useful place to find potential collaborators for some of my projects, but I have no interest in working for an EA org because that’s not where I expect I’d have the biggest impact. I think the movement as a whole would be more successful, and a lot of younger EAs would be a lot happier, if they approached the movement with this level of detachment.