Clara Torres Latorre 🔸

Karma: 420

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 12 Jun 2026 18:08 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: dan.pandori’s comment on: Are top existential risk estimates 50,000 times too high? An optimizer’s curse model and analysis
The difference between the most vs least spooky X-risks is way more than a 100X difference.

I think I would agree with this, if I had to put a number.

What I mean in my comment is, with this model, if you say okay let’s pick a bigger n so that we see bigger differences in OOMs, then you are also introducing more points of failure in the estimation, and that effect dominates.

Do you have an a priori reason to discard this? Besides the conclusion being wacky, which is a good reason to discard a model anyways.

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 12 Jun 2026 17:22 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: dan.pandori’s comment on: Are top existential risk estimates 50,000 times too high? An optimizer’s curse model and analysis
the OOM of variation in “ground truth” come from alpha and n, not xmin
alpha, we could talk all day, but the model is not extremely sensitive to it
on the other hand, if you say let’s have more OOMs in the possible values of ground truth, following the power law, that means jacking n up
and when you jack n up you have even more opportunities for errors to be crazy big, and this effect dominates (at least that’s what I read from the OP) and the curse becomes worse
now if we change alpha and n at the same time, idk
my honest opinion is that numbers are just one way to process information, and using them for this is so out of distribution that it’s essentially meaningless (as it is when discussing p(doom) and stuff like that)

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 9 Jun 2026 15:13 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Reasons To Be Skeptical Of Rethink Priorities’s Moral Weights Project
Ties in with the more meta-level fact that numbers are used a lot in EA/rationalist spaces, even when there are kinds of uncertainty that don’t go along with them.
I’m sure people have written about this many times but don’t know who to cite.

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 9 Jun 2026 11:51 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Reflections on the EA Bath Retreat 2026
Hi, could you share some info for reference:
- Breakdown of expenses
- How much did it cost (in time) to run the stuff
- Schedule

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 5 Jun 2026 8:52 UTC
1 point
1 ∶ 0
on: Implementation Matters: Why the EA Movement Needs Practitioners, Not Just Researchers
Hi, I don’t love talking to GPT but:
1. I agree with you that there is a vibe that if you aren’t doing The Most Impactful Thing (TM), you don’t count. That’s uncomfortable.
2. I disagree with your split between “practitioners” and “NGO workers”. NGOs have practitioners, if they are delivering something.
3. I think urbanism (and policy in general) can be a high impact area, but you need to compare it to other aspects and policy. I haven’t run any numbers so I can’t know.

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 4 Jun 2026 7:48 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: YouTube personal finance channels as an EA outreach opportunity?
Not an answer but Rational Reminder (nerdy evidence-based finance podcast by Ben Felix and colleagues) interviewed Elie Hassenfeld (from GiveWell). Super interesting:
https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/372

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 3 Jun 2026 10:52 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Kestrel🔸’s comment on: My disagreements with CEA’s approach to stewarding EA
I find this quite useful to avoid the failure mode that worries me the most, namely, that once one derives a source of income from being a community builder, their incentives start to look like “do whatever gets me renovated” and less like “do whatever I really believe is most impactful”.
So separating the operations layer (professional), from the more ideological/opinionable layer (not paid) seems like a very good idea to me.
The analogy with quakers having pastor and administrator roles separated is helpful to me to put words on why I have complicated feelings about EA paid CB roles, because they are in some sense both.

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 2 Jun 2026 21:11 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Kestrel🔸’s comment on: My disagreements with CEA’s approach to stewarding EA
I’ve been thinking about this for a while since I read your post about it:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Z9gdKj7eGsy3rzurH/you-should-donate-to-ea-fundraisers-or-community-builders
It would feel very weird and conflict-of-interest-y to fund someone in my local group to be a paid organizer, right now we’re a bunch of volunteers running it.
You say well stewarded meta-EA is very high impact. I agree in theory, but I’m not sure about how to know if something is well stewarded in practise.

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 28 May 2026 18:22 UTC
3 points
4 ∶ 1
on: My disagreements with CEA’s approach to stewarding EA
Fantastic post, thank you for airing it.
Something that I can say at a personal level is: I find it very hard to trust a paid community builder, be it a priest, an amateur orchestra conductor or an EA community builder. I see conflicts of interest everywhere.
On the other hand, I think growing the movement makes sense, and having people dedicated to it makes sense, so if someone is doing it you want to measure how they are doing, etc
I find it very hard to reconcile.

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 27 May 2026 20:10 UTC
16 points
2 ∶ 0
on: EA organizations should pay experts to peer review their paper drafts and research proposals
By the way, I clicked the link (finally), and:
- I don’t find Wiley anywhere
- I don’t see a physical address anywhere
- Meritpeer claims big numbers of users, but I didn’t find anyone talking about it (trustpilot, reddit, etc)
- They have premium pricing to speed review up to 5 days or even 2 days
I wouldn’t even give it a chance, this aren’t a couple red flags, we talking November 1917 situation here.
Which makes me sad, because I really like the broader point of engaging with mainstream academia and playing ball, and I’ve been nerdsniped by a discussion about peer review and feel that I’m derailing the comment section.
What links here?
- EA organizations should pay experts to peer review their paper drafts and research proposals by Yarrow Bouchard 🔸 (26 May 2026 21:06 UTC; 22 points)

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 27 May 2026 20:04 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: dan.pandori’s comment on: EA organizations should pay experts to peer review their paper drafts and research proposals
I computed the time that it takes me * my salary, approx.
Ofc if I did this as a freelancer I would charge more.

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 27 May 2026 16:45 UTC
4 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Yarrow Bouchard 🔸’s comment on: EA organizations should pay experts to peer review their paper drafts and research proposals
Take this with a huge grain of salt, because thing vary enormously field to field.
10 days turnaround sounds too good to be true to me. If it was 6 months I would maybe give it a try for value of information.
But there’s more:
Price seems cheap: Last paper I reviewed took me 10-15 hours, so 300-500 + tax would be a reasonable price range and 150-250 sounds meagre. And you need to factor in admin, infra and costs that are not just paying the reviewer.
In my field, peer review is “pro bono” but done during the “working hours” of people with public salaries mostly. And there’s the understanding that since we publish and someone else reviews, we also should review some. However, that means that the availability to review varies a lot depending on teaching, research, admin, etc, and we usually fit it in with low priority.
That means if you want someone to review a paper, even if they only need 2 days, the people that have the expertise usually have work to do and might not be willing to give up on next weekend.
About “what if I got paid”, it’s complicated, bc it depends on if I really have the time (meaning, no plans on the only weekend in the 10 day window, and willing to work), but probably not.
And there’s also an ugh factor about getting paid for something that we usually do for free / as part of a salaried job. I’m not decided on it.

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 27 May 2026 7:19 UTC
27 points
8 ∶ 0
on: EA organizations should pay experts to peer review their paper drafts and research proposals
I agree with the general point of the post.
But I disagree with specifically using Wiley’s services to obtain peer review [1].
I would be excited for people in EA sending their “research” pieces to mainstream academic journals more often.
[1] I’m a math researcher in academia. When I peer review an article, I’m usually granted 60 to 90 (sometimes more) days, depending on length. Adding admin, sometimes multiple times of revision, the time that editors need to find a suitable reviewer, missed deadlines… the whole process usually amounts to at least 6 months, and sometimes it takes years.
I don’t think 10 days is a reasonable timeline for peer review, and I find it even short to find a relevant and willing reviewer.

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 25 May 2026 19:06 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Tommy Crow’s comment on: Tommy Crow’s Quick takes
how big is the effect size?

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 21 May 2026 6:31 UTC
12 points
4 ∶ 0
in reply to: Benevolent_Rain’s comment on: Ulrik Horn’s Quick takes
Relatedly, I have met people doing “AI safety” stuff without having impact in mind, and end up doing research on whatever shiny academic vaguely related topic without a clear theory of change, while still being intermingled with the EA crowd sociologically.
Some of them pay lip service to impact and write theories of change to get funds (as a pure mathematician, we do that in my line of work and I think I can recognize when you say there is impact to get the research you are obsessed with funded, and when you are actually trying to do good in the world).

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 20 May 2026 20:07 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Laura Duffy’s comment on: Announcing the Rethink Priorities Cross-Cause Fund
Hey, thanks for your reply, I found it very informative.
I’m excited to read your sensitivity analysis writeup when you publish it.

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 20 May 2026 16:10 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Announcing the Rethink Priorities Cross-Cause Fund
I’m curious about how you model the time discounting more in detail:
As I read it right now, you pick six fixed multipliers for six fixed future time intervals. Am I understanding this correctly?
Under some assumptions that are common in EA that I don’t share such as the time of perils hypothesis, this would mean that, at least for some ways of computing, most utility is in the 500+ bucket.
And then the model would be very sensitive to people putting 0 vs any nonzero number for the 500+ years bucket. Is this the case?

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 18 May 2026 16:13 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 1
in reply to: Yarrow Bouchard 🔸’s comment on: Yarrow Bouchard’s Quick takes
I’m curious on why you can’t (as opposed to don’t want to or will not) discuss these on the EA Forum.
In my view, there are many points in the articles that could be interesting for discussion.

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 9 May 2026 8:26 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: SWAPC Commitments on Cost-Effectiveness, Transparency and Faith-Informed Impact
I think the devil is in the details. The principles are fine but what really matters is the operationalization. Hard to tell without more information about the program.

Clara Torres Latorre 🔸 6 May 2026 8:28 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Stephen McAleese’s comment on: What is the Expected Value of Working on AI Safety? I Ran the Numbers.
How so?
As I read it this post compares to donations to Givewell, not to donations to AI safety research.