Hi! I work on the EA Global team and I post a lot of my thoughts on Twitter :)
frances_lorenz
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But you see how they provide approximately no additional evidence, right? Because photos provide no account for how long someone was away or not away, etc. Basically, in both Alice/Chloe’s world and your world, these photos can exist. One of them is just Alice sitting on a beach chair? And to the second point, I don’t believe the claim was that the environment was materially poor (please tell me if I’m wrong).
I think this comment will be frustrating for you and is not high quality. Feel free to disagree, I’m including it because I think it’s possible many people (or at least some?) will feel wary of this post early on and it might not be clear why. In my opinion, including a photo section was surprising and came across as near completely misunderstanding the nature of Ben’s post. It is going to make it a bit hard to read any further with even consideration (edit: for me personally, but I’ll just take a break and come back or something). Basically, without any claim on what happened, I don’t think anyone suspects “isolated or poor environment” to mean, “absence of group photos in which [claimed] isolated person is at a really pretty pool or beach doing pool yoga.” And if someone is psychologically distressed, whether you believe this to be a misunderstanding or maliciously exaggerated, it feels like a really icky move to start posting pictures that add no substance, even with faces blurred, with the caption “s’mores”, etc.
What a fantastic post, thank you so so much for writing this.
1. I don’t often get to hear from people in EA who deeply committed to one path to impact and have long-term experience with it. It’s incredibly valuable to hear from someone who has built up so much context around the path and can describe it in different phases, rather than the shorter stints I more often hear about (which are valuable in their own way of course, but more common).2. Yeah, I’ve been involved since 2019-ish and never considered earning-to-give, yet distinctly noticed and remember the tonal shift against it that seemed to crop up out of no where (partly because I wasn’t consciously following EtG advice at all, so when ideas around it reached me I was like, oh vibe is negative now?). Like felt distinctly negatively valenced rather than just a neutral “we no longer recommend this,” idk. I imagine this did feel like suddenly being “turned on,” and I appreciate you bringing attention to that experience. I’m pretty sad to hear that.
THANK YOU thank you for all the money you and your wife have given.
Hey Jonny, thanks so much for pointing that out, that’s my bad!! I’ve replaced the link with hopefully a more helpful resource :D
Oh that’s totally okay, thanks for clarifying!! And good to get more feedback because I was/am still trying to collect info on how accessible this is
this is really good to know, thank you!! I’m thinking we hit more of a ‘familiar with some technical concepts/lingo’ accessibility level rather than being accessible to people who truly have no/little familiarity with the field/concepts.
Curious if that seems right or not (maybe some aspects of this post are just broadly confusing). I was hoping this could be accessible to anyone so will have to try and hit that mark better in the future.
Luke, thank you for always being so kind :)) I very much appreciate you sharing your thoughts!!
“sometimes people exclude short-term actions because it’s not ‘longtermist enough’”
That’s a really good point on how we see longtermism being pursued in practice. I would love to investigate whether others are feeling this way. I have certainly felt it myself in AI Safety. There’s some vague sense that current-day concerns (like algorithmic bias) are not really AI Safety research. Although I’ve talked to some who think addressing these issues first is key in building towards alignment. I’m not even totally sure where this sense comes from, other than that fairness research is really not talked about much at all in safety spaces.Glad you brought this up as it’s definitely important to field/community building.
Do you think that’s a factor of: how many places you could apply for longtermist vs. other cause area funding? How high the bar is for longtermist ideas vs. others? Something else?
Thank you, I really appreciate the breadth of this list, it gives me a much stronger picture of the various ways a longtermist worldview is being promoted.
Yeah, absolutely! Happy to go through posts offering career advice, how one might implement the advice, if there are any other perspectives to consider, etc.
I would really encourage having a low-bar for sending people our way, very happy to talk to anyone! But generally, we offer coaching to those trying to get into the AI Safety field (ex. undergrads looking for research positions, software engineers or research scientists looking for work in the field, independent researchers or community-builders interested in applying for funding). Also happy to talk people through AI Safety career-related decisions (ex. whether or not to go to graduate school, choosing between positions, etc.)
This is great advice :) Already mentioned below; however, for people in similar positions, please do consider booking a coaching call with AI Safety Support: https://www.aisafetysupport.org/. We have experience helping people navigate the AI Safety field and can also connect you to others.
Good idea :) thank you!
Yeah, I don’t necessarily mind an informal tone. But the reality is, I read [edit: a bit of] the appendix doc and I’m thinking, “I would really not want to be managed by this team and would be very stressed if my friends were being managed by them. For an organisation, this is really dysfunctional.” And not in an, “understandably risky experiment gone wrong” kind of way, which some people are thinking about this as, but in a, “systematically questionable judgement as a manager” way. Although there may be good spin-off convos around, “how risky orgs should be” and stuff. And maybe the point of this post isn’t to say, “nonlinear did a reasonably sufficient job managing employees and can expect to do so in the future” but rather, “I feel slandered and lied about and I want to share my perspective.”