I’ve mostly lived in Oxford and London, and these claims fit with my experience of the hubs there as well. I’ve perhaps experienced Oxford as having a little less focus on AI than #2 indicates.
While I agree the claims should be interrogated and that the ‘influential leaders’ are very fallible, I think the only way to interrogate them properly is to be able to publicly acknowledge that these are indeed background assumptions held by a lot of the people with power/influence in the community. I don’t see this post as stating ‘these are background claims which you should hold without interrogation’ but rather ‘these are in fact largely treated as background claims within the EA communities at the core hubs in the Bay, London and Oxford etc.’. This seems very important for people not in these hubs to know, so they can accurately decide e.g. whether they are interested in participating more in the the movement, whether to follow the advice coming from these places, or what frames to use when applying for funding. Ideally I’d like to see a much longer list of background assumptions like this, because I think there are many more that are difficult to spot if you have not been in a hub.
I’ve mostly lived in Oxford and London, and these claims fit with my experience of the hubs there as well. I’ve perhaps experienced Oxford as having a little less focus on AI than #2 indicates.
While I agree the claims should be interrogated and that the ‘influential leaders’ are very fallible, I think the only way to interrogate them properly is to be able to publicly acknowledge that these are indeed background assumptions held by a lot of the people with power/influence in the community. I don’t see this post as stating ‘these are background claims which you should hold without interrogation’ but rather ‘these are in fact largely treated as background claims within the EA communities at the core hubs in the Bay, London and Oxford etc.’. This seems very important for people not in these hubs to know, so they can accurately decide e.g. whether they are interested in participating more in the the movement, whether to follow the advice coming from these places, or what frames to use when applying for funding. Ideally I’d like to see a much longer list of background assumptions like this, because I think there are many more that are difficult to spot if you have not been in a hub.