Davidmanheim

Karma: 6,842

Davidmanheim 18 May 2022 6:36 UTC
85 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Some potential lessons from Carrick’s Congressional bid
I think that these are good lessons learned, but regarding the last point, I want to highlight a comment by Oliver Habryka;
It seems obvious to me that anyone saying anything bad right now about Carrick would be pretty severely socially punished by various community leaders, and I expected the community leadership to avoid saying so many effusively positive things in a context where it’s really hard for people to provide counterevidence, especially when it comes with an ask for substantial career shifts and funding.
This seems really important, and while I’m not sure that politics is the mind-killer, I think that the forum and EA in general needs to be really, really careful about the community dynamics. I think that the principal problem pointed out by the recent “Bad Omens” post was peer pressure towards conformity in ways that lead to people acting like jerks, and I think that we’re seeing that play out here as well, but involving central people in EA orgs pushing the dynamics, rather than local EA groups. And that seems far more worrying.

So yes, I think there are lots of important lessons learned about politics, but those matter narrowly. And I think that the biggest risk of failing to tread carefully here isn’t about wasting money on political campaigns, it’s undermining the ability to make trustworthy claims far more generally. We need to do our best to exhibit epistemic standards that are not just better than anyone else in politics—a bar too low to be worth noticing, much less aiming for—but ones that actually should engender trust among both EAs, and the rapidly growing set of people who are watching. And because politics operates at high simulacra levels, I’m concerned that in our rush to focus on various legitimate concerns and lessons while “doing politics” at the object level, we aren’t learning those lessons.

Davidmanheim 3 Jan 2023 18:29 UTC
74 points
26 ∶ 0
in reply to: Lukas_Gloor’s comment on: If EA Community-Building Could Be Net-Negative, What Follows?
3) Critics (eg @CarlaZoeC @LukaKemp) warned that EA should decentralize funding so it doesn’t become a closed validation loop where the people in SBF’s inner circle get millions to promote his & their vision for EA while others don’t. But EA funding remained overcentralized
I think the FTX regranting program was the single biggest push to decentralize funding EA has ever seen, and it’s crazy to me that anyone could look at what FTX Foundation was doing and say that the key problem is that the funding decisions were getting more, rather than less, centralized. (I would be interested in hearing from those who had some insight into the program whether this seems incorrect or overstated.)
That said, first, I was a regrantor, so I am biased, and even aside from the tremendous damage caused by the foundation needing to back out and the possibility of clawbacks, the fact that at least some of the money which was being regranted was stolen makes the whole thing completely unacceptable. However, it was unacceptable in ways that have nothing to do with being overly centralized.

Davidmanheim 17 Sep 2023 17:24 UTC
71 points
21 ∶ 5
on: AI Pause Will Likely Backfire
There’s a giant straw man in this post, and I think it’s entirely unreasonable to ignore. It’s the assertion, or assumption, that the “pause” would be a temporary measure imposed by some countries, as opposed to a stop-gap solution and regulation imposed to enable stronger international regulation, which Nora says she supports. (I’m primarily frustrated by this because it ignores the other two essays, which Nora had access to a week ago, that spelled this out in detail.)
What links here?

Davidmanheim 10 Jan 2023 18:59 UTC
70 points
20 ∶ 3
on: Reflections on Wytham Abbey
I understand that it’s been at most 9 months since this purchase occurred.

As I’ve said in other contexts, requiring immediate public disclosure of decisions is a standard not applied anywhere else—banks and public companies have to report some things quarterly, as the linked comment suggests CEA should do, but that’s not a reasonable standard anywhere else, given the amount of extra accounting and other work needed. The charitable groups that score highly on transparency report yearly, and all of the groups involved in this do, in fact, regularly report their grants. I’d be shocked if any charity issued quarterly reconciliations publicly. It’s incredibly expensive in terms of personnel and time to report things immediately, and both CEA and OpenPhil are actually amazingly transparent—both formally, with their reports, and informally, with many senior people responding to questions and criticism on the forum, on facebook, and on twitter.
Given that, I think it’s especially weird to say EVF hasn’t said anything while linking to an explanation by the board member who was most involved. (If you want to criticize CEA for failing on transparency, people could ask why they haven’t done an annual review post in 2 years, as I did in earlier discussions. But it seems they just fixed that.)

I am still concerned that EVF seems to have lots of less transparent pieces, and it’s unclear what gets reported where, since this isn’t part of CEA, so it wasn’t reported by them—but in the case of Wytham Abbey, I think OpenPhil, as the actual donor, is the one that needs to talk about why it made that decision—and no, it still isn’t on their grants page.

Davidmanheim 10 Jan 2022 15:53 UTC
60 points
0 ∶ 0
on: The Bioethicists are (Mostly) Alright
I think that there is a difference which is being elided here between “bioethicists have bad opinions” (they mostly don’t,) and “bioethics as a field is bad for the world $^{1}$ .” I’m going to try to make at least part of the case for the second, which I don’t think you addressed clearly.
In my view, one key problem is that bioethics functions almost entirely as a veto, as it relates to medicine, public health, and policy $^{2}$ . Even when individuals argue for something, the field doesn’t have the ability to push something forward. And checks and balances are important, but they can be take too far. I think it’s very obvious that this is the case, where abuses are rare, or not addressed by where bioethics actually focuses. Bioethics informs IRBs, which slow research—sometimes for good reason, but at a very high implicit cost. And because there are legal requirements and potential legal threats that come from failing to fully address bioethical concerns, the shadow of bioethics looms larger than the field itself. So even when ethicists wouldn’t oppose anything, the existence of the field is a barrier to research which imposes huge costs in research or treatments not pursued $^{3}$ .
So it’s not the fault of bioethics as field, necessarily, that there are such huge systemic barriers and institutional barriers—but the barriers emerge from the field, so pleading that the institutional dynamics are the real problem just means blaming immoral mazes rather than the participants who are building and reinforcing them, instead of fighting it.
1. And if so, people should fight back, or at least not participate.
2. The field does other things. They just don’t intersect with what EA cares about, in general.
3. To counter this criticism, you’d need to find something the field does that contributes positively to a greater extent than it contributes to slowing down medical research and the practice of medicine that saves lives.

Davidmanheim 18 May 2022 13:31 UTC
49 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: IanDavidMoss’s comment on: Some potential lessons from Carrick’s Congressional bid
There are a variety of reasons that having people who are both aligned with our goals, and ALSO willing to listen to pitches on specific policy suggestions, is far more impactful than having people who we are just aligned with in general—but if you look at the list of candidates that Guarding Against Pandemics is supporting, it’s definitely inclusive of many people who are aligned with our goals and not aware or not particularly engaged with EA, but have more background in politics. And while we’re focused on longtermist policy, rather than EA more generally $^{1}$ , we are doing much of what you suggest in terms of finding and vetting candidates—and doing more to actually engage and develop relationships.

I think that among the majority of EAs, we haven’t been as clear as we should be that Carrick’s campaign was part of a larger set of things that GAP is doing, and there are lots of specific political campaigns we still encourage donations towards—in addition to being happy for people to donate directly to the “hard money” PAC, which is capped at $5,000 per donor.
1. We’re supportive of other EA policy ideas and goals, but we both have limited capacity, and are not currently supporting or opposing anyone on that basis.

Davidmanheim 5 Oct 2021 10:05 UTC
48 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: John G. Halstead’s comment on: Noticing the skulls, longtermism edition
It also seems strange to defend longtermists as only being harmful in theory, since the vast majority of longtermism is theory, and relatively few actions have been taken. That is, almost all longtermist ideas so far have implications which are currently only hypothetical.

But there is at least one concrete thing that has happened—many people in effective altruism who previously worked on and donated to near-term causes in global health and third world poverty have shifted focus away from those issues. And I don’t disagree with that choice, but if that isn’t an impact of longtermism which counterfactually harms the global poor, what do you think would qualify?

Davidmanheim 26 Oct 2021 7:18 UTC
47 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Halffull’s comment on: FTX EA Fellowships
If it’s an EA project and you need support, I’d apply to EA Funds, and tell FTX that you’re interested and say you’re still seeking funding. Even if they have the money, they also aren’t throwing cash at anything that moves—and FTX isn’t the best placed group to evaluate EA projects. And I’d note that EA funds also aren’t particularly funding constrained—but if they were, it would make more sense for FTX to give them money instead of trying to evaluate projects and fund people directly.

Davidmanheim 16 Nov 2022 9:41 UTC
43 points
5 ∶ 1
on: Open Phil is seeking applications from grantees impacted by recent events
If a grant / grantee is doing work which aligns with Open Phil’s work, but is more properly classified as global health or animal welfare, can they still apply here, should they apply in some other way, or is Open Phil not the correct vehicle?

Davidmanheim 15 Nov 2022 20:14 UTC
40 points
11 ∶ 5
on: Why didn’t the FTX Foundation secure its bag?
I disagree with lots of this, as I said privately before.

Yes, it would be great if funders donated everything upfront and had foundations manage the money. But that only works if the donors are liquid, or the funds can be donated as stock, often where the donor maintains voting control, for example, for startups. In other cases, many cases, it’s reasonable to have them put in money as it is needed, and as it is committed. Yes, Dustin says that they have moved towards having lots of money controlled by Open Phil, but evidently that wasn’t always the situation. That’s fine.
And even if the Future Fund had cash to cover all its outstanding commitments as of the beginning of November (which I suspect they did not, given that at least a reasonable fraction of donations I know about were to be given over multiple years,) the reason they stopped giving out money had nothing to do with lack of cash on hand. The stopped because they legally, and morally, couldn’t continue to donate money once they knew it might have been the product of fraud. So if they did what you suggest, and they were given money before it was committed… they still couldn’t have done anything differently. Maybe they’d be able to pay it out in, optimistically, another decade, once the lawsuits are all settled. But that doesn’t help now, and likely wouldn’t change anything, since the funds would be taken FTX creditors.

The failure here wasn’t the way the foundation was managed, it was the fraud.

Davidmanheim 28 Dec 2021 21:37 UTC
39 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Democratising Risk—or how EA deals with critics
Good for you!

I’m sad that this seemed necessary, and happy to see that despite some opposition, it was written published. I sincerely hope that the cynics saying it could damage your credibility or careers are wrong, and that most of the criticisms are not as severe as they may seem—but if so, it’s great that the issues are being pointed out, and if not, it’s critical that they are.

Davidmanheim 4 Jul 2022 14:33 UTC
38 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: John G. Halstead’s comment on: The Future Might Not Be So Great.
I’m confused that you seem to claim strong evidence on the basis on a variety of things that seem like weak evidence to me. While I am sure details should not be provided, can you clarify whether you have non-public information about what happened post 2016 that contradicts what Kelly and Jacy have said publicly about it?

Davidmanheim 3 Dec 2020 17:10 UTC
38 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Long-Term Future Fund: November 2020 grant recommendations
I would strongly support the ability of the fund to make anonymous grants, despite the decreased transparency, with suitable outside review—as happened in this case.

First, for a graduate student, I understand that it isn’t necessarily positive to be publicly known as being well funded. (This applies far less to people doing research, for who funding is a stronger signal.) Second, I think that while transparency on the part of funders is very important, respective individuals’ privacy is an important norm, and allows people who are doing valuable work but might otherwise only want to apply for less public grants, likely focused on other topics, or to seek non-research employment, to ask for money to work on longtermist projects.

Potential COI disclosure: I have applied to the fund for future funding, and have received one grant from them in the past. (I have no interest in personally receiving anonymous funding.)

Davidmanheim 24 Feb 2021 12:26 UTC
37 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Be Specific About Your Career
Strongly endorsed, and I would go even further; a huge amount of job satisfaction is about what you do every hour, not what you do every week. If you like or dislike writing, or like meeting people, or like reading technical papers, pay attention to that—because spending lots of time doing something you dislike is painful even if you like the career in general. And this will guide a lot of more specific decisions—not just “should I work in Biorisk,” but “should I take this specific class” or “will I enjoy this specific job.”

Davidmanheim 12 Oct 2022 19:10 UTC
34 points
6 ∶ 0
on: Cultural EA considerations for Nordic folks
- In the US, it is quite common to donate large sums of money. This is because there are significant tax benefits in doing so, effectively meaning that in some cases you can somewhat choose to either pay taxes or to donate to an organization of your choice.
I’ve seen this misunderstanding before by non-Americans, which seems weird because most places have similar setups. In the US, charity is tax deductible, but not a tax credit—so at any income level, you will personally have more money not donating than donating. And given that typical maximum marginal tax levels between state and federal taxes are under 50%, it means you are losing $0.50 for every dollar you give away, which is far less than needing to pay he full amount, but not anything like “pick whether to give the dollar to the government or to a charity.”
What links here?
- Cultural EA considerations for Nordic folks by Ada-Maaria Hyvärinen (12 Oct 2022 17:11 UTC; 154 points)

Davidmanheim 8 Aug 2021 16:17 UTC
34 points
1 ∶ 0
on: How are resources in EA allocated across issues?
I would suggest that part of the difference between funding and people for global health is the huge non-EA workforce that is already working on the things EAs want to optimize for—so replaceability is very high, and marginal value low, unless we think value alignment is particularly critical.

The same can’t be said about AI risk, biosecurity, and other areas where the EA perspective about what to focus on differs from the perspective of most other people working in the area. (Not to mention EA meta / prioritization, where non-EAs working on it is effectively impossible.)

Davidmanheim 25 Jul 2023 20:20 UTC
32 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: ASB’s comment on: Questions about OP grant to Helena
...coming back to this discussion 6 months later, having had nothing to do with any of this except as an observer, I’m incredibly happy with their recent work. Given that, I think that in retrospect, their work basically fully justifies the grant. (To be clear: a failure does not refute a claim of value based on hits-based giving, at best if functions as weak evidence—but success does strongly justify the claim.)

Davidmanheim 29 Dec 2021 7:57 UTC
32 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: CarlaZoeC’s comment on: Democratising Risk—or how EA deals with critics
Just noting that I strongly endorse both this format for responding to questions, and the specific responses.

Davidmanheim 25 Jan 2023 18:39 UTC
31 points
14 ∶ 1
on: Doing EA Better: Preamble, Summary, and Introduction
Minor complaint / disagreement:
Norms must be enforced consistently, applying to senior EAs just as much as newcomers.
I think this is unreasonable, in the other direction. Newcomers (and outsiders) can and should be reminded or informed about norm violations the first time or times they screw up, and it should certainly take more than one time before there is any censure. Senior EAs should get far less flexibility and understanding. And I’m not blameless—there are at least two times that can recall I was rebuked for things privately, and I think it was good, and plausibly should have been more stringent and/or public; I have little excuse.

This is especially unfortunate because the level of discourse we aspire to, in my view, needs to be even better than what is already normal here. And many of the things that improvement entails are the points being made in this post! (And that’s true even though the current norms are far better than what is seen elsewhere—the failures that the current post suggests correcting are already fairly egregious compared to my current expectations.) So I, at least, can say I hope to be held to a higher standard, and am happy to be told if and when I am failing to do so.

Davidmanheim 28 Dec 2021 21:41 UTC
31 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: John G. Halstead’s comment on: Democratising Risk—or how EA deals with critics
As I said in a different but related context earlier this week, “If a small, non-representative group disagrees with the majority of humans, we should wonder why, and given base rates and the outside view, worry about failure modes that have affected similar small groups in the past.”