Kaleem Ahmid.
Previously an Entrepreneur in Residence at EV, Community Builder at Northeastern and in Boston, a Visiting Scholar at JHU Center for Health Security, and EAGxBoston 2022 and EAGxNYC 2023 organiser.
Kaleem
Karma: 2,401
EAGxNYC 2023: Retrospective
I had a similar thought a (few) year (s) ago and emailed a couple of people to sanity check the idea—all the experts I asked seemed to think this wouldn’t be an effective thing to do (which is why I didn’t do any more work on it). I think Alex’s points are true (mostly the cost part—I think you could get high enough intensity for it to be effective).
Stuart J. Russell on “should we press pause on AI?”
(huge missed opportunity not using the lonely Pablo meme as the splash image for this post imo)
Kevin Esvelt
Joel McGuire from HLI (gave two great talks at EAGxBoston and EAGxNYC)
I’m no longer able to do this/trying to do this
I’m thinking about organising a couple of talks for Non-EAG-attending students in the Boston area, either the week before or week after EAG. I’m hoping we’d be able to get ~250 students from Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, Tufts, BU, BC (and all the other unis). I have event planning experience and would be willing to put significant time into making these good.
If you’re comming to Boston and have a talk or message you’d be excited to communicate to a bunch of students (likely ranging from no-EA experience to EAG-attendee level experience) please message me !
Hi—thanks for engaging so thoroughly with the post, and for caring about our shared interest in diversity and inclusion within EA.
I have mixed-feelings concerning your post.
lol same.
2.
yours go into the ‘Let’s narrow EA because diversity is overrated’I do want to point out that I don’t think I stated my own position on this topic anywhere. A reason for the post generally focusing more on the global approach to EA community building is because the status quo is to accept that narrowly focused community building (at top universities, and rich/influential cities like London and SFO) is valuable, and I think the case for global community building hasn’t been made as explicitly as the case for community building at top universities has been, for example.
3.
It is well-known mechanism for people previously on the margins who have succeeded into prestigious, privileged places to be against diversity. I think about Priti Patel or Rishi Sunak ; take me in, but don’t let anyone enter after me
Trying to charitably restate what I think you meant in point 1: In my post I express some doubt about my own value or belonging in the US EA community, and you’ve combined that with the aforementioned perception that I am against diversity and inclusion (because you think I support the ‘narrow’ version of community building) and suggested that this might be an example of the ‘pulling the ladder up from behind me’ phenomenon, which might generally be seen as part of many factors which affect underrepresentation in hierarchies.
How I can’t help but reading your point 1: you don’t know anything about me, or any of the work I have/haven’t done to try help ‘promote’ other EA’s from underrepresented groups over the past 5 years, but you’ve decided to try psychoanalyse me and then evoke the metaphor of me deliberately preventing others from succeeding. Whether or not this was your intention, I think other people have also interpreted your point in this way (an odhominem attack), which might explain the downvoting.
4.
I do think that fellow South Africans or people coming from low-income countries can bring insights EAs in wealthy countries can’t. Thats the reason why the UN recruits people from these countries instead of giving the job to a white, wealthy candidate from a first world country who just got their masters in development
I think this point is pointing to a point which I have maybe under-explained or poorly articulated. You are correct in the example you’re pointing out—those people would bring valuable skills and insights into UN in the context of working on local development projects. But I don’t think EA is like the UN in this case, I think EA could be explained (from a narrow EA point of view) as a movement of exceptionally wealthy and privileged people, for exceptionally wealthy and privileged people, to try and do the most good that they can. In this case, even though people from all over the world might bring unique and underrepresented perspectives to the table, the question is “how are these perspectives/experiences going to help with this specific project (of EA)?”. Specifically in the context of EA community building, if one thinks that the purpose of community building is to attract/retain/find/train the most wealthy and influential people in the world in order to solve the most pressing issues facing current and future generations, then I don’t find it convincing that we should be prioritising the ‘global EA’ model that I described in the post. That’s mainly the point I’d like decision makers in the community building space to address/clarify.
5.
This kind of argument is a pushback from a group of people who do not like to share resources, power and influenceI think you might just have a fundamental disagreement with people who think about justice and/or EA in a utilitarian way? If, from my perspective, EA is movement predicated on the acceptance that we have far too few resources to solve the worlds problems, and that we should try and allocate the resources we do have such that we produce the best outcomes for as many people (or to the highest degree) possible; then I don’t think that taking our resources and sharing them equally amongst everyone who wants some of them is the morally right thing to do, because I don’t think theres a reasonable argument for that likely producing the best outcomes.
Thanks Ollie :) - they’re also a lot of fun to work on, and its really fulfilling to see all the connections and potential impact being created at the end of the process as a result of the team’s work.
Hillary Greaves and MacAskill have postulated that that decision making in EA must be premised on two factors: (a) every option that is near-best overall is near-best for the far future; and (b) every option that is near-best overall presents significantly more benefits to far future people, than it does to near future people.[26]
Point of information: I don’t think that they’ve said that all decision making in EA should be based on axiological or deontic strong longtermism, which is specifically what that paper is about.
I’ve been doing judging for the African EA forum post competition, and its been really irritating/sad to see how uncharitable (and keen to be harsh) more experienced EAs have been towards the posts of first-time posters or people who write in a non-rationalist way. Come on people....
If you think a post is bad or could easily be improved, just point out how. Don’t strong downvote and deride the author?
I agree that an improved title would help make this post make more sense. The author is trying to point out that addressing environmental factors which propagate malaria (which the author should describe somewhere) would improve the effectiveness of existing structural (bed nets) and medical (vaccines and chemo prevention) interventions. But the existing title makes it seem like the environmental and vaccine models are in tensions, whereas they aren’t mutually exclusive.
Given that AI-generated content is allowed on the forum, according to the forum guide, and that there is nothing prohibiting users from using LLMs from editing their work: I don’t think this comment (and specifically the use of the word ‘blatant’ here) is kind/helpful.
This post seems to imply that populism is in opposition (or at least strong tension) with democracy—but from my definitional understanding and reading of common sources like wikipedia, I would argue that populism is extremely compatible with democracy. Yes, typical characteristics of most democracies, such as minority rights and institutional checks on power, are often undermined by populist leaders, but it seems like the thing you’re warning against in your post is actually dictatorship or authoritarianism?
What do you mean here? Can you elaborate ?
Hi MvK—just wanted to make one clarification and point out some problems I see with your comment:
Clarification: When I point to conferences in the UK and US, I’m thinking specifically of EAGs (rather than EAGxs or retreats). These happen in the ‘power centres’ of the EA community, and people who can choose to attend EAGs are generally the most highly engaged or influential EAs in the community.Most EA conferences are already in places other than the US or UK (these are the ~10 EAGxs that happen every year). In this way, we technically already do the most affordable thing whilst trying to have global representation at EAGs (which have historically always been in the US or UK). If we were to have an EAG in e.g. India, we’d spend way more on travel expenses flying US, UK, and EU attendees to the conference.
So I think the underlying assumption you meant to point out is something like “assuming that we need to have a globally representative pool of attendees at every conference in the US or UK (i.e. EAGs)”.
Of course, we could not do this, but I think this makes things worse, not better, when it comes to making the global EA community feel inclusive. It’d lead to the majority of senior/experienced/influential EAs only to attend US and UK conferences, whilst other conferences would only attract local EAs, and there’d be less knowledge transfer and fewer opportunities for those outside of the major EA hubs in the US and UK
An Elephant in the Community Building room
Me too
(I’m contracting for CEA’s events team to work on EAGxNYC)
I like this idea—It’d be nice to hear from a wider range of people in the community, and away to give more people a platform—which would be good for defusing fame in the community.
We’re doing a non-blinded version of this for EAGxNYC—I think ~30% of applicants were people who we wouldn’t have thought to ask to present—which is good I think. BUT it is riskier or more costly as an event organiser to select them (you don’t know if they’re good speakers, you have to vet them and their work before deciding etc).
Looking for non-fiction book recommendations: what’ve you enjoyed reading recently ?