sapphire

Karma: 1,244

sapphire 13 Apr 2024 4:34 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: AnonymousTurtle’s comment on: Mediocre EAs: career paths and how do they engage with EA?
There are a lot of possible answers to where thoughts come from and which thoughts are useful. One charitable thought is some Elite EAs tried to do things which were all of: hard, extremely costly if you fuck them up, they weren’t able to achieve given the difficulty. I have definitely updated a lot toward trying things that are very crazy but at least obviously only hurt me (or people who follow my example, but those people made their own choice). Fail gracefullly. If you dont know how competent you are make sure not to mess things up for other people. There is a lot of ‘theater’ around this but most people don’t internalize what it really means.

sapphire 12 Apr 2024 7:35 UTC
17 points
5 ∶ 3
on: Mediocre EAs: career paths and how do they engage with EA?
The people who initially set up Givewell, did the research and conivnced Dustin to donate his money did a truly amazing jop. AFAICT the people who currently run Givewell are doing a good job. A large fraction of the good EA has done, in total, is largely do to their work.
But I don’t think its a good idea to frame things as their a bunch of elite EAs and the quality of their work is superb. The EA leadership has fucked up a bunch of stuff. Many ‘elite EAs’ were not part of the parts of EA that went well. Many were involved in the parts of Ea that went quite poorly.
If you are a true altruist you should really reconsider whether you even want to trust the leadership and work under their direction. Maybe you should work at a different sort of charity or get funding from ‘someone who doesn’t ultimately get their money from Givewell’. Unless you really fit in well with the ‘elite Eas’ doing that is likely to be more fun.
‘Think for yourself about how to make the world better and then do it (assuming its not insane)’ is probably both going to be better for you and better for the world.

sapphire 7 Apr 2024 8:10 UTC
15 points
8 ∶ 0
in reply to: David Mathers’s comment on: David Mathers’s Quick takes
I don’t think it makes any sense to punish people for past political or moral views they have sincerely recanted. There is some sense in which it shows bad judgement but ideology is a different domain from most. I am honestly quite invested in something like ‘moral progress’. Its a bit of a naive position to have to defend philosophically but I think most altruists are too. At least if they are being honest with themselves. Lots of people are empirically quite racist. Very few people grew up with what I would consider to be great values. If someone sincerely changes their ways Im happy to call them brother or sister. Have a party. Slaughter the uhhhhh fattest pumpkin and make vegan pumpkin pie.
However mr Hanania is stil quite racist. He may or may not still be more of a Nazi than he lets on but even his professed views are quite bad. Im not sure what the policy should be on cooperating with people with opposing value sets. Or on Hanania himself. I just wanted to say something in support of being truly welcoming to anyone who real deal rejects their past harmful ideology.

sapphire 3 Apr 2024 8:41 UTC
42 points
19 ∶ 6
in reply to: RobBensinger’s comment on: Quick Update on Leaving the Board of EV
Not to state the obvious but the ‘criticism of EA’ posts didn’t pose a real risk to the power structure. It is uhhhhh quite common for ‘criticism’ to be a lot more encouraged/tolerated when it isnt threatening.

sapphire 16 Mar 2023 4:39 UTC
−16 points
6 ∶ 11
on: Does EA get the “best” people? Hypotheses + call for discussion
EA’s meta-strategy is ‘simp for tech billionaires and AI companies’. EA systematically attracts people who enjoy this strategy. So no it does not attract the best. Maybe a version of EA with more integrity would attract the best people.

sapphire 16 Mar 2023 0:04 UTC
0 points
0 ∶ 2
in reply to: Tamsin Leake’s comment on: Just Pivot to AI: The secret is out
Im not trying to get dignity points. Im just trying to have a positive impact. At this point if AI is hard to align we all die (or worse!). I spent years trying to avoid contributing to the problem and helping when I could. But at this point its better to just hope alignment isn’t that hard (lost cause timelines) and try to steer the trajectory positively.

sapphire 15 Mar 2023 23:48 UTC
6 points
4 ∶ 1
on: Reminding myself just how awful pain can get (plus, an experiment on myself)
Ime you can induce much more torture than a tattoo relatively safely. Though all the best ‘safe’ forms of torture do cause short term damage to the skin.

sapphire 15 Mar 2023 3:36 UTC
−12 points
1 ∶ 4
on: deluks917′s Shortform
At this point, unless you are very talented and/or working at Anthropic/OpenAI/Deepmind, I dont see much reason to avoid working in AI. The timeline is already burnt. The people who burnt it, often in the name of altruism, should be ashamed. But at some point the benefits of trying to do good things with a dangerous technology outweigh the downsides of accelerating progress. Prior to ~now it was quite bad to work on AI in more or less any capacity. But the train is leaving the station anyway. Marginal impacts are now smaller than the plausible positive impact of using the tech for good. Accelerating AI was an incredibly dumb strategy but at this point might as well play to the out where alignment isn’t that hard.

sapphire 13 Mar 2023 21:35 UTC
3 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Henri Thunberg’s comment on: If EAs won’t go vegan what chance do animals have?
I mean that ‘at what income do GWWC pledgers actually start donating 10%+‘. Or more precisely ‘consider the set of GWWC pledge takers who make at least X per year, for what value X does is the mean donation at least X/10’. The value of X you get is around one million per year. Donations are of course even lower for people who didn’t take the pledge! Giving 10% when you make one million PER YEAR is not a very big ask. You will notice EAs making large, but not absurd salaries, like 100-200K give around 5%. Some EAs are extremely altruistic, but the average EA isn’t that altruistic imo.

sapphire 13 Mar 2023 11:05 UTC
2 points
4 ∶ 1
on: If EAs won’t go vegan what chance do animals have?
I agree with the thrust of the argument but I think its a little too pessimistic. A lot of EAs aren’t especially altruistic people. Tons of EAs got involved because of Xrisk. And it requires very little altruism to care about whether you and everyone you know will die. You can look at the data on EA donations and notice they aren’t that high. EAs dont donate 10% until they have a pre-tax income of around one million dollars per year!

sapphire 12 Mar 2023 10:30 UTC
−18 points
2 ∶ 7
in reply to: Ivy Mazzola’s comment on: Share the burden
I would encourage anyone reading this to remember [Qhapna] has truly horrible opinions on what is a reasonable way to treat people. He was literally one of the last rationalists defending Brent. Neither his personal behavior nor his habit of defending abusers has improved over time. I’d recommend reading something I wrote some time ago:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTGEnE4k6cFE3E_LW2_MfCXps7LbK1xoCrvpUW3PLI-c3QDHMlDKIMLP1W37DWAm2mkE4tSQ-tX8Aic/pub
Terrible judgment, a habit of feeling oppressed, and extreme arrogance is a very toxic combination.
What links here?
- Lizka's comment on Share the burden by 2ndRichter (14 Mar 2023 2:22 UTC; 39 points)

sapphire 11 Mar 2023 23:19 UTC
10 points
5 ∶ 3
in reply to: Ivy Mazzola’s comment on: How my community successfully reduced sexual misconduct
No one has a right to be a leader. If leaders mismanaged abuse situations they should be removed from positions of leadership. The point of leadership is supposed to be service.

sapphire 11 Mar 2023 22:18 UTC
−13 points
5 ∶ 9
in reply to: Lauren Maria’s comment on: Share the burden
I posted that I do not think how [Qhapna] treats people, including publicly on facebook, is remotely ok and is abusive imo.

sapphire 11 Mar 2023 20:53 UTC
−12 points
8 ∶ 4
in reply to: Amber Dawn’s comment on: Share the burden
Im in favor of just saying out loud who you think is harmful. The culture of silence is very strong. But you are allowed to say things you believe and share information available to you! Don’t share information given to you in confidence. But if you want to speak up you can.
FWIW I posted on my facebook and twitter that I think a relatively major figure behaves abusively. People are free to disagree. But I think its important to share information and analysis. Silence protects bad behaviors.

sapphire 10 Mar 2023 23:42 UTC
4 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Sarah Levin’s comment on: The Ethics of Posting: Real Names, Pseudonyms, and Burner Accounts
In my experience anonymous accounts work fine? Whats important is having the information in public. Whether the account is anonymous or not isn’t very predictive of whether effective change occurs. For example Brent was defended by CFAR, but got kicked out once anonymous accounts were posted publicly.

sapphire 10 Mar 2023 23:37 UTC
10 points
2 ∶ 0
on: Racial and gender demographics at EA Global in 2022
This is great to hear! Amazing work!

sapphire 10 Mar 2023 11:42 UTC
5 points
1 ∶ 1
on: Anthropic: Core Views on AI Safety: When, Why, What, and How
Why did Google invest three hundred million dollars? Google is a for profit company.

sapphire 10 Mar 2023 10:36 UTC
−1 points
1 ∶ 6
on: deluks917′s Shortform
If you cannot tell Duncan Sabien is an abusive person from reading his facebook posts you should probably avoid weighing in on community safety. He makes his toxicity and aggression extremely obvious. Lots of people have gotten hurt.
(Of course there is other evidence, like the fact he constantly defends bad behavior by others. He was basically the last person publicly defending Brent. But he continues to be conisdered a community leader with good judgment)

sapphire 10 Mar 2023 10:35 UTC
15 points
4 ∶ 0
in reply to: fenneko’s comment on: Abuse in LessWrong and rationalist communities in Bloomberg News
I think negative update since lots of the people with bad judgment remained in positions of power. This remains true even if some people were forced out. AFAIK Mike Valentine was forced out of CFAR for his connections to Brent, in particular greenlighting Brent meeting with a very young person alone. Though I dont have proof of this specific incident. Unsurprisingly, post-brent Anna Salomon defended included Mike Vassar.

sapphire 8 Mar 2023 11:33 UTC
43 points
15 ∶ 4
in reply to: CatGoddess’s comment on: Abuse in LessWrong and rationalist communities in Bloomberg News
With the exception of Brent, who is fully ostracized afaik, I think you seriously understate how much support these abusers still have. My model is sadly that a decent number of important rationalists and EAs just dont care that much about the sort of behavior in the article. CFAR investigated Brent and stood by him until there was public outcry! I will repost what Anna Salomon wrote a year ago, long after his misdeeds were well known. Lots of people have been updating TOWARD Vassar:
I hereby apologize for the role I played in X’s ostracism from the community, which AFAICT was both unjust and harmful to both the community and X. There’s more to say here, and I don’t yet know how to say it well. But the shortest version is that in the years leading up to my original comment X was criticizing me and many in the rationality and EA communities intensely, and, despite our alleged desire to aspire to rationality, I and I think many others did not like having our political foundations criticized/eroded, nor did I and I think various others like having the story I told myself to keep stably “doing my work” criticized/eroded. This, despite the fact that attempting to share reasoning and disagreements is in fact a furthering of our alleged goals and our alleged culture. The specific voiced accusations about X were not “but he keeps criticizing us and hurting our feelings and/or our political support” — and nevertheless I’m sure this was part of what led to me making the comment I made above (though it was not my conscious reason), and I’m sure it led to some of the rest of the ostracism he experienced as well. This isn’t the whole of the story, but it ought to have been disclosed clearly in the same way that conflicts of interest ought to be disclosed clearly. And, separately but relatedly, it is my current view that it would be all things considered much better to have X around talking to people in these communities, though this will bring friction.
There’s broader context I don’t know how to discuss well, which I’ll at least discuss poorly:
Should the aspiring rationality community, or any community, attempt to protect its adult members from misleading reasoning, allegedly manipulative conversational tactics, etc., via cautioning them not to talk to some people? My view at the time of my original (Feb 2019) comment was “yes”. My current view is more or less “heck no!”; protecting people from allegedly manipulative tactics, or allegedly misleading arguments, is good — but it should be done via sharing additional info, not via discouraging people from encountering info/conversations. The reason is that more info tends to be broadly helpful (and this is a relatively fool-resistant heuristic even if implemented by people who are deluded in various ways), and trusting who can figure out who ought to restrict their info-intake how seems like a doomed endeavor (and does not degrade gracefully with deludedness/corruption in the leadership). (Watching the CDC on covid helped drive this home for me. Belatedly noticing how much something-like-doublethink I had in my original beliefs about X and related matters also helped drive this home for me.)
Should some organizations/people within the rationality and EA communities create simplified narratives that allow many people to pull in the same direction, to feel good about each others’ donations to the same organizations, etc.? My view at the time of my original (Feb 2019) comment was “yes”; my current view is “no — and especially not via implicit or explicit pressures to restrict information-flow.” Reasons for updates same as above.
It is nevertheless the case that X has had a tendency to e.g. yell rather more than I would like. For an aspiring rationality community’s general “who is worth ever talking to?” list, this ought to matter much less than the above. Insofar as a given person is trying to create contexts where people reliably don’t yell or something, they’ll want to do whatever they want to do; but insofar as we’re creating a community-wide include/exclude list (as in e.g. this comment on whether to let X speak at SSC meetups), it is my opinion that X ought to be on the “include” list.
Thoughts/comments welcome, and probably helpful for getting to shared accurate pictures about any of what’s above.