Vilfredo's Ghost

• Vilfredo's Ghost 20 Jul 2026 14:20 UTC

  7 points

  1 ∶ 1

  on: an­nounc­ing High Im­pact Aliens

  I am skeptical of this. If you can’t afford to pay a lawyer, it’s unlikely your accomplishments would qualify you for anything you could self-petition for, especially under this Administration. In fact for some visa categories, commanding unusually high pay is literally one of the qualifying factors. And if your employer is petitioning for you then their lawyer should be helping resolve any challenges. I think EAs are less likely to delude themselves about this sort of thing than most people, but the risk is not zero.

  There are exceptions, such as family-based petitions, where your salary history wouldn’t be relevant. But I would advise that this group should steer clear of anything like the extraordinary ability visa’s referenced in the post, because the nature of the group creates an adverse selection problem.

• Vilfredo's Ghost 27 Jun 2025 7:46 UTC

  12 points

  1 ∶ 1

  on: Please re­con­sider your use of adjectives

  I’m against most adjectives and also against most uses of “nonviolent communication”, so let me offer a more fundamental reason to reduce your use of adjectives: It’s just clearer writing/​speaking to omit them. And the attempt to write more clearly probably forces you to think more clearly. Precisely-chosen adjectives are fine, but “bad” conveys more noise than signal. The fact that it may hurt someone’s feelings is beside the point. You could just as easily offer a commentary on “AI 2027′s excellent timeline models” and “excellent” would be similarly uninformative. OTOH, a bare description of the facts will hurt an emotionally intelligent person’s feelings just as much as you calling it “bad”, because they get the point. Depending on context, it might even hurt more, because they know it’s a rationally-considered take and not an emotional one that you are likely to feel differently about once you calm down.

  The focus should be on speaking/​writing in a way that will most clearly convey meaning. “The kitchen is dirty” obfuscates; “the dishes need to be washed” makes clear what you want (and conveys just as much “judgment” to all but the most obtuse). “Your presentation was too dry”, OTOH, is better than “I didn’t like it”. But better still would be “I would like more examples of what these budget numbers mean for our day to day operations” or “expert consensus is that people will pay more attention if you sound excited when you give a presentation”.

• Vilfredo's Ghost 21 Feb 2025 10:05 UTC

  −2 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Vilfredo’s Ghost’s Quick takes

  I want to note that the political staffer talent gap previously observed in posts such as “Go Republican, Young EA” has swung in the opposite direction now.

  America PAC ran a get out the vote campaign that Dems are still struggling to understand and most staffers in the party still don’t grasp that it did this because “hurr hurr Elon dumb bad man”. To the smartest among us it was obvious at the time that he was running circles around the Harris campaign, but the Harris campaign’s leadership seemed to sincerely believe they had the stronger field campaign because they couldn’t see outside the limited set of metrics they were using.

  The tech--->right wing politics pipeline has ensured that the GOP will have it’s share of the most talented and ambitious young staffers. Meanwhile the Dems seem to be actively seeking out staff who don’t want to work too hard, reducing the hours campaign staffers are expected to work and in some cases even the hours Congressional staffers are required to work, to levels where it’s not really possible to do such a difficult job competently. More broadly, a lot of management practices have become focused on the comfort of the staff rather than the accomplishment of the mission. This obviously discourages people who want to do a good job from even applying.

  Given the Dems’ ideologically-driven preference for lower-quality staff and dysfunctional operating conditions, I think it’s somewhat tricky to arbitrage this, but you could either run in a primary against a Dem candidate who has adopted bad hiring practices, or go to work for a candidate who has rejected such practices, and your odds of winning would be higher than most outside observers would expect. James Carville expressed a frustration that many of us in the Democratic party have with the quality of young staffers in this video: https://​​www.facebook.com/​​reel/​​918431933580060. I think more candidates and elected officials over the next few years will start to select more for staff who are achievement-oriented rather than lifestyle-oriented, but this change will be pretty unevenly adopted.

• Vilfredo's Ghost 13 Oct 2024 1:22 UTC

  −1 points

  3 ∶ 4

  in reply to: Evan_Gaensbauer’s comment on: Evan_Gaens­bauer’s Shortform

  I’m an anti-Bay Area EA because from the stuff I’ve read about sexual harassment in EA it’s like 90% Bay Area EAs doing it, and seems to be enabled by specific subcultural factors there that I don’t see anywhere else in the movement.

• Vilfredo's Ghost 25 Sep 2024 1:44 UTC

  7 points

  0 ∶ 2

  on: How to help cru­cial AI safety leg­is­la­tion pass with 10 min­utes of effort

  If you’re not a CA resident, I would probably discourage writing a letter. Exceptions if you have special expertise or are a donor to Newsom. But in general letters from non-constituents are not persuasive to politicians and often are used against the desired policy, to show their constituents how much pressure from outsiders they’re “standing up against”.

• Vilfredo's Ghost 28 Jun 2024 18:50 UTC

  21 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Vilfredo’s Ghost’s Quick takes

  How much should 80k’s US policy career advice change in light of the Supreme Court striking down Chevron deference? My quick take: In principle this is more power for the judiciary, but they still lack the power to initiate policy changes. So my quick take is it probably means someone who was undecided or weakly in favor of executive branch should try to get a job in Congress now. Should be a premium on experts who can write detailed legislation well now that that responsibility can’t be delegated to the agencies. Interested in hearing others’ thoughts.

Call for At­tor­neys for OpenAI Em­ploy­ees and Ex-Employees

• 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

  −7 points

  3 ∶ 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

  29 points

  3 ∶ 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

  29 points

  11 ∶ 9

  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 ∶ 19

  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 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.