Doing my master’s in applied mathematics, where my research is on theoretical Machine Learning. I’m very interested in AI from theoretical and interdisciplinary points of view: psychology, ethics, safety.
Guy Raveh
Karma: 1,306
Aardvark
Pros:
Appears first on any list or registry, and piques curiosity—may help in expanding the community
Cute but weird animal name may attract both biologists and nerds in general
Sounds a bit like “Harvard”, so won’t be hard to associate with it in memory
Fun to let people try to say “Harvard Aardvark” repeatedly
Cons:
Not immediately related to effectiveness or altruism. But all the astronomy names aren’t either.
Edit: this comment is about 60% serious. Also I think amusing names are a good and underexplored direction.
Looks great! Thanks for making and posting it.
I think this is exactly the sort of resource I need to get further into AI safety.
So the vetting will be done by humans? Is this sustainable in the long term? E.g. how quickly does the number of submissions grow?
I am wary of arguments that we need to do other difficult to do things like improving transit before we can build housing...
I’m not exactly sure if that’s what I mean or not. What I mean is that if you build housing with no infrastructure (like kindergartens or clinics or schools etc), maybe people won’t actually come to live there. You have to some way make sure to offer actually valuable essential goods and not bad ones.
I think maybe the impact of interventions in rich countries should be mainly measured in how much they improve their ability to help the rest of the world in a stable manner.
Upvoted for highlighting this vision, but I think much more attention should be given to differentiating when restrictions on supply aren’t necessary and when they are.
For example, restrictions on destroying natural areas for housing may be very important to keep, both inside cities and outside them.
Another example is that building densely may cause problems if not accompanied by planning of the whole region.
No, it’s a new nation of AIs. It very quickly convinced all of the world’s countries to recognize it, and they’re not afraid of humans so they let everyone in without a visa 😉
Blind-assess job applications… I think a few organizations like Rethink Priorities are already doing this.
I think RP are already implementing many of the ideas on the list, actually. E.g. paying for time-consuming parts of the hiring process.
Not really EA-related, but your research sounds really interesting (I’m a musician) and I’d love to hear more about it :)
Is it possible to subscribe to a sequence?
If not, I’m suggesting this feature :)
It’s no fault of EA to not understand the distinction well
I don’t know about EA, but I’m from another country with a different political map, so I’m trying to approximate US politics and don’t really dinstinguish between “liberals”, “progressives”, “leftists” etc.
In my country (Israel) we mostly think in terms of “left” and “right”, and economic liberalism is farily new.
Can confirm this is the main reason for my downvote.
When I said valuable, I meant “it tells us what conservatives may respond and how to address them, so it has value for us.”
Not “I agree with it or think it’s reasonable.”
Edit: to illustrate, the exact quote you gave is one I originally considered quoting myself, followed by a facepalm emoji. But now I know people might think what it says, and I didn’t before.
It informs you on how to approach conservatives.
My primary concern isn’t that articles paint EA as good—it’s rather that they paint EA as what it actually is.
As for the particular article—I’m not exactly sure it’s untruthful in its depiction of EA—seems to me like the bad parts are the reactions to EA ideas. I also think it’s valuable as a conservative criticism in a sea of liberal ones—it’s relevant for how to expand the movement to a less represented audience.
I would say this as “fundamental beliefs and principles, any of which if you disagree with, you’ll be widely frowned upon”.
Leaving this comment for people who got here and have no idea what ‘tabling’ is. From one of the linked posts:
Tabling - setting up a table in a high-traffic area and advertising your group, usually with big posters, and free food/books/swag—what you do at club fairs without it being a club fair.
Upvoted for explicitly laying these out, though I don’t necessarily endorse all of them myself (example: for #15 I agree with the “there are many problems” vibe, but still think we should aspire to act through institutions).
On the one hand I’m really against this being a part how we evaluate interventions for currently living people.
On the other hand I’m not exactly sure why, and the idea definitely follows from the current models of the movement. So it’s a discussion very much worth having. (Hence, upvoted)
A note on counting: comment karma and upvote number are not really the same thing. Even in the absence of downvotes or strong votes, some people have a small vote power equal to 2.