Yonatan Cale

• Yonatan Cale 31 Jan 2023 23:42 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Fol­low-Up Sur­vey: Ma­jor Lay­offs at Tech Gi­ants [re­cruit­ing sup­port]

  Hey, just pointing out that a few collections of “candidates looking for EA jobs” already exist, and there’s an advantage in having them centralized (so for example each org only needs to look in one collection, and each candidate needs to sign up only in one place)

  What I am not saying:

  I am not saying “dump this project because someone else is already doing it” (totally not! I really don’t believe in that argument).

  I am saying:

  If you didn’t consider that lists like this exist and you’re opening a new list by accident and you see no advantage to your one, then probably use one of the existing ones.

  A lazy list-of-lists that I’m aware of (sorry for not including all links, I’m vaguely expecting that this list-of-lists exists somewhere and someone might link to it)

  • 80k have a longtermist census (and my guess is that orgs use this a lot since in many ways 80k are a hiring center in EA)

  • HIP are setting up something that looks promising to me

  • There’s a post for “who wants to be hired”

  • The forum profile has an option for “seeking work”

  • CEA probably has some system that takes in the info from swapcard, where people sometimes mark “looking for work”

  • (maybe more, that’s what I have on the top of my mind)

• Yonatan Cale 30 Jan 2023 21:35 UTC

  5 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Karma over­rates some top­ics; re­sult­ing is­sues and po­ten­tial solutions

  May I upvote this post, or would that be counter productive? 🫣

• Yonatan Cale 29 Jan 2023 21:38 UTC

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Soft­ware engineering

  

  Tweet

  Google’s model

• Yonatan Cale 29 Jan 2023 19:30 UTC

  15 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: EA novel pub­lished on Amazon

  (Hey, maybe you’d like to make your link clickable, by editing your post, marking the text-to-become-a-link, and then:

  

  )

• Yonatan Cale 29 Jan 2023 18:43 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Why are we not talk­ing more about the metacrisis per­spec­tive on ex­is­ten­tial risk?

  Hey, do I understand correctly that you’re pointing out a problem like “there are lots of problems that will eventually lead to x-risk” + “that’s bad” + “these problems somewhat feed into each other” ?

  If so, speaking only for myself and not for the entire community or anything like that:

  1. I agree

  2. I personally think that AI risks will simply arrive earlier. If I change my mind and think AI risks will arrive after some of the other risks, I’ll probably change what I’m working on.

  Again, I speak only for myself.

  (I’ll also go over some of your materials, I’m happy to hear someone made a serious review of it, I’m interested)

• Yonatan Cale 28 Jan 2023 16:56 UTC

  5 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Sum­mit on Ex­is­ten­tial Se­cu­rity 2023

  Maybe a good time to experiment with a Swapcard alternative, if you have any other option lined up

• Yonatan Cale 28 Jan 2023 10:04 UTC

  9 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: So­cial im­pact of the dona­tions of the 10 rich­est peo­ple in the world—very shal­low analysis

  I think Bill Gates’ donations are probably very high impact, not zero.

  Example source:

  Against Against Billionaire Philanthropy /​ Scott Alexander

  Nobody knows exactly how many lives the Gates Foundation has saved. The Guardian says it’s some appreciable fraction of the 122 million lives saved in general from progress fighting infectious diseases over the last few decades. This article says Gates has saved seven million people through his vaccination campaign alone, provided another seven million with antiretroviral treatment (usually life-saving), “tested and treated” twelve million people for tuberculosis (often fatal, but there’s a big difference between testing and treatment), and been responsible for a big part of the seven million lives saved from malaria. I expect these numbers are inflated, but even by conservative estimates the Gates Foundation may have saved ten million people.

  In your sheet, you seem to count it as zero (without any formula, it’s hard coded zero)

  

• Yonatan Cale 26 Jan 2023 12:26 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Yonatan Cale’s comment on: Is Hemp worth more at­ten­tion?

  Hey, someone just told me what Hemp is, and, hmm, maybe there already are people growing and selling it

  I’m going to leave my original comment as-is, as a funny nonsense thing I said online

• Yonatan Cale 26 Jan 2023 9:17 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Is Hemp worth more at­ten­tion?

  Hey, I don’t know, but I’ll share how I’d start investigating such a question, hoping that would help.

  I’m not a professional who does such analyses (so maybe others will correct me), I’m replying as someone from the community trying to be welcoming.

  So,

  ---

  One way I’d look at this question is “how much benefit would I get from investing an extra $1 in Hemp”. This is going to split into two sub questions: “how much benefit do I get” and “how much does it cost”:

  First sub question: What is the main benefit (the most important bullet point).

  For example, is carbon capture the main benefit, or the vitamins? My prior is: It would be very surprising if the “amount” of benefit I got from each of the bullet points was roughtly the same; usually there’s an 80-20 situation where 80% of the benefit come from one of the bullet points. (For example: at least 80% of the benefit of growing a banana is for food, even if it does a bit for carbon capture and even if banana fields do look cool). So with Hemp, instead of considering 10 different benefits, I’d try to pick the top one.

  The next sub question could be “how much does it cost to grow more Hemp (plus do whatever’s needed to get that main benefit, such as produce the plastics, I assume that costs money too)”

  And then we have a rough guess at cost effectiveness. If it seems in the vague area of “well maybe, it doesn’t look 1000x less effective than an alternative”, then that might be a hint to look some more.

  ---

  Another very different question I’d ask is “if Hemp is so good, why doesn’t anyone grow it, sell it, and make lots of money?” (for more on this way of thinking, see Inadequate Equilibria)

• Yonatan Cale 25 Jan 2023 23:14 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Yonatan Cale’s comment on: 80,000 Hours ca­reer re­view: In­for­ma­tion se­cu­rity in high-im­pact areas

  Also, I hypothesise EA needs more “head of security” people who can do everything from “explain to the CEO that the cost of stealing all of our intellectual property right now is around $100k” to “decide on useful policies and help the employees not be too annoyed by them”, including “here are tradeoffs we can chose to make, and here are clever ways we can get extra security at very low cost”. Another non trivial task is “hire people who actually understand security”.

  Do you have opinions on whether I’m right here?

  If so, it might be worth thinking about how to get more such people. Seems hard

• Yonatan Cale 25 Jan 2023 23:08 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: 80,000 Hours ca­reer re­view: In­for­ma­tion se­cu­rity in high-im­pact areas

  Ohh great post! Some thoughts [the subtext is “I’m excited you’re writing about this”]

  I agreee, Infosec is under rated in EA

  Specifically in orgs that have dual-use information on their computers.

  More specifically, I’m in favor of air gapped networks for orgs that have strong AI capabilities. I’m aware this is a “big ask” and that nobody would take it seriously today. But if we’d have more infosec professionals who could help set up very secure networks, that would probably help, I guess.

  Common misconception: “information security” is a single profession

  Sometimes people want to “get into working on information security” but this seems (if I may exaggerate to make a point) like asking “how to get into working on computers”. It’s a big field!

  I think the post does a good job in distinguishing some of the sub-domains, I’d like to add to it:

  • Building information security systems VS using information security systems

    • Naive example: Are you writing code for a new anti virus product or are you making sure the anti virus that your org bought is set up correctly?

    • (I think EA mainly needs the second option)

  • Attacking vs defending

    • (I think EA needs the latter, and I’d caution against “practicing attacking for years as preparation for defending” which I think people sometimes do. Not certainly a mistake, but not something I’d do by mistake)

  • Deciding what the org’s policy will be vs implementing a policy that you can’t change

    • For example, are you trying to convince the CEO that people in the org should not install chrome extensions except from a specific white list, or are you trying to get the 100 employees to install a “chrome extension blocker” (or whatever) on their computers and get it done in a week?

    • (I think, though uncertain, that EA needs both)

  University degree?

  This post has a heading “how to enter [tech profession X]” and has a sub-heading of “entering with a degree”. Is this a recommendation for people to get a degree? Is this just noting that if someone already has a degree then they might have an easier time? I don’t know if your post might be (unintentionally?) nudging people to persue a degree, maybe

  (My background, anyone cares)

  I spent 6+ years of my career doing information security, mostly as a software developer, including in the IDF and in 2 infosec startups.

• Yonatan Cale 25 Jan 2023 23:01 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Damin Curtis’s comment on: Why peo­ple want to work on AI safety (but don’t)

  If you want to become a professional software developer (I’m not sure if that’s what you’re aiming at or not), I have thoughts on how to do it effectively, here.

• Yonatan Cale 25 Jan 2023 22:45 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: JP Addison’s comment on: (In­cor­rectly) Overem­pha­siz­ing Effec­tive Careers

  Yeah I have no idea if 75% is the correct constant. I mainly read this as “definitely not 100% and also not 99%”

  [not a philosopher]

• Yonatan Cale 24 Jan 2023 19:15 UTC

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: (In­cor­rectly) Overem­pha­siz­ing Effec­tive Careers

  (never spoke about this with anyone, but) I think about this like the classic balance between utilitarianism and deontology, “Go three-quarters of the way from deontology to utilitarianism and then stop”.

  I mean: Yeah, having a high impact is important, but don’t throw out “enjoying life” and other things that might not be easily quantifiable. We’re only humans, if we try to forcefully give one consideration 1000x the weight of another, it totally might mess up our judgement in some bad way.

  [this doesn’t feel so well phrased, hopefully it still makes some sense. If not, I’ll elaborate]

• Yonatan Cale 24 Jan 2023 18:32 UTC

  12 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Why peo­ple want to work on AI safety (but don’t)

  For me, the main blockers were:

  1. Impostor syndrome: Such smart people working on this, am I going to be able to contribute anything beyond them?

  2. Personal fit: There’s stuff that I know how to do well and researching-a-vague-topic is not one of them

• Yonatan Cale 19 Jan 2023 11:31 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: dan.pandori’s comment on: EA Fo­rum fea­ture sug­ges­tion thread

  Upvoted since you explained why you don’t like my idea, and I like that! :)

• Yonatan Cale 19 Jan 2023 11:29 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: dan.pandori’s comment on: EA Fo­rum fea­ture sug­ges­tion thread

  Hey (:

  To be clear, my feature suggestion is something like a popup reading “you downvoted this, consider explaining why” as opposed to “in order to downvote this, you MUST explain why”.

  The pain point I’m trying to solve is “I don’t know why people down vote my comments sometimes and it makes me sad and confused”. Maybe my specific proposed solution isn’t good; my pain point remains, though

  I also acknowledge that “explaining why I downvoted” can lead into arguing-on-the-internet which could be negative in a way that I want to avoid (and I don’t want to drag people into).

• Yonatan Cale 18 Jan 2023 12:42 UTC

  15 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Job Op­por­tu­ni­ties at Altru­is­tic Careers

  Hey! I’d like to quietly advertise a Job Post Template that I wrote.

  TL;DR: If you have positions open, I think you’re much more likely to get applicants if you mention things like salary, local-or-remote, part-or-full-time, without sending people to external links.

  The post collects many such things that candidates care about and puts them in the same place.

  For myself reading your post (giving my perspective as a single “user” of your post), I know many people who might fit your role as data analysts, but I know so little about the position that I have no idea if sending this post to them would be valuable or not.

  I write this with the intention of helping and being useful, I might be wrong about everything, feel free to ignore.

  Good luck! I hope your org goes really well

• Yonatan Cale 18 Jan 2023 12:30 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Yonatan Cale’s comment on: Can GPT-3 pro­duce new ideas? Par­tially au­tomat­ing Robin Han­son and others

  I also started reading “The Elephant in the Brain” following this post :)

• Yonatan Cale 18 Jan 2023 12:29 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Can GPT-3 pro­duce new ideas? Par­tially au­tomat­ing Robin Han­son and others

  I expected 5% of the answers to be newish and useful, which I’d interpret as “yeah it could be mildly useful to ask for such insights and spend the time to scan through them. not crazy-low nor crazy-high productivity”.

  In practice, this one was new and maybe useful for me:

  If you’ve never had a disagreement with a family member, you’re not expressing your thoughts and feelings openly.

  (I remembered it as “if you’ve never had a fight”, funny to quote it now and see my memory wasn’t accurate)