I helped re-start the UBC EA club in 2022. I’m interested in global health and development and animal welfare.
Lauren Maria
To clarify, I felt uneasy because I believed that attending an expensive event (which would cost myself over $3000 to attend coming from Canada) was hard to justify when I could donate that money instead. I had just read “Doing Good Better” and thought the idea that the CEA would spend money to host such an event, as well as even fund college students to attend, was counter to everything I had just read. It seemed obvious that, based on EA principles, the better idea would be to donate all of the money spent hosting that event. I believe, at minimum, this is an optics issue. As I said, I have since been somewhat convinced that EAG can be useful so people who may have never met, can share ideas and collaborate to “make the world a better place”. I’m still not fully convinced of this though.
With that said, it makes almost no sense to me, if that was their goal, why someone like you would not have been accepted to attend. From what you said above, you embody everything that EA should represent (in my view)- your commitment to animal welfare and advocacy, and to maximizing your own wealth for the good, is commendable and should be celebrated.
When this post was first shared among the EA community I am part of, I assumed you were rejected as a speaker at EAG. To learn that you were rejected as a participant, is incredibly baffling, when I know first hand of someone being accepted after only learning about EA a month prior.
From the little I understand, they seem to accept attendees who are fit two categories (but I’m happy to get corrected on this if someone with more knowledge can clarify):
1) Young, ambitious college students
2) Mentors who can work with these college students
I can tell you are very busy Constance, but I would like to invite you to speak to the EA group I help run at the University of British Columbia (over zoom of course). Please let me know if you are interested and have the time.
- 25 Sep 2022 3:19 UTC; 4 points) 's comment on Open EA Global by (
I don’t think this assessment is true (see quote below), since Scott’s entire post was about opening up EAG to anyone (it seems odd that he would be hyper critical about how much time she spent on an application if this is what he believes).
I’d be surprised if Scott Alexander would have included Constance’s comment in his post if he’d realised that she’d not spent any time on the applications that were rejected (obviously because she didn’t realise she was meant to!)
Maybe banning factory farming would be more successful if we were to take an approach similar to The Paris Agreement. So we would basically need countries to a) agree this is a serious issue that needs resolution b) take individual approaches to slowly reducing their contributions to factory farming (regardless of whether or not factory farming “occurs” within their country). I know there are some EAs with their hands in the UN now, so one can only hope they make this a priority.
Do the “upvote” and “downvote” features as well as “agree” and “disagree” for comments contribute to a groupthink mentality?
I have been actively using the forum for only a few days (though I have been familiar with it for a while) and I can’t help but feel it has the same dog-pile, group think mentality as other social media platforms such as twitter (which I now avoid for this very reason).
People are
a) more likely to comment what they think the status quo will agree with because there are clear incentives to do so and
b) unlikely to say what they really think because they might get downvoted to oblivion (is that really necessary)?
I also think this sort of platform may be even worse than twitter because you can upvote and downvote without actually having to say why, or attach your name to doing so. It makes it so you can “disagree” with people without actually substantiating why you disagree.
It seems like this platform would be just as good if you could only upvote and downvote the actual post itself, rather than comments too. Is it really so difficult to just respond to someone and say why you disagree, rather than just hitting a button that requires no mental work or justification at all?
EDIT: Someone shared that you can hide the karma scores of comments by clicking the eye on the bottom right
Thanks, that’s a helpful response and gives me some reason to believe that the “upvote” function is useful, despite the negative consequence of group-think.
I wonder if it would be possible to have a feature like this, where things can get upvoted, and thus moved up on the list of comments displayed, without the number of upvotes being there. While it would still be obvious that comments at the top are the most popular, I still think our monkey brains would be less likely to register it as “oh, this is something I should like”.
Do you think the “downvote” is useful?
That said, I think there should be a general norm of explaining a downvote if you’re downvoting something which doesn’t already have one attached, so people don’t just get downvoted with no idea why. I think EA does better about this than most places but is not perfect.
Yes I agree.
Thank you!
What do imagine “anti-AI backlash” would look like? Comparing it to BLM also seems a bit odd to me, especially by you saying that BLM “stigmatized some previously accepted behaviors and values”. What behaviours and values were stigmatized by BLM? and what behaviours and values do you see as having the potential to be stigmatized with regards to AI?
Thanks, that’s helpful.
I don’t think the arguments are fallacious if you look at how strong longtermism is defined:
Positively influencing the future is not just a moral priority but the moral priority of our time.
See general discussion hereand in depth discussion here
Perhaps they should have made that distinction since not all EAs take the strong longtermist view—including MacAskill himself who doesn’t seem certain.
I agree- the EA community claims to be “open to criticism” but having someone comment that a post is foolish on a first time poster’s well articulated and argued post is quite frankly really disappointing.
In addition, the poster is a professional and has valuable knowledge regardless of how you feel about the merits of their argument.
I’m a university student and run an EA group at my university. I really wish the community would be more open to professionals like this poster who aren’t affiliated with an EA organization, but can contribute different perspectives that aren’t as common within the community.
Thanks for sharing this- it’s very inspiring but also difficult to read because it’s not realistic for many people struggling with mental health issues.
It really captures why we (I’m speaking of Canada but I’m sure this applies to many other places) have a mental health crisis. It takes years to see a psychiatrist unless you get yourself checked into the hospital and then risk being admitted to a mental health facility against your will (which is scary to say the least). To actually have a psychiatrist support you through a process like this, as well as family members and your workplace, would almost never happen here.
Thanks for posting this, Dean. Just commenting because it aligns really well with everything I am feeling too.
This statement is incredibly out of touch Eliezer. If CEO #1 and CEO #2 are in a romantic relationship, there is a clear conflict of interest here, especially when not disclosed to the public. In agreement with Anonymous, I also strongly oppose the language you’re using. I also agree with their comments regarding romantic relationships in the workplace. My general stance is 0 tolerance for workplace romance because it’s messy and there are far too many power dynamics at play.
Caroline Ellison literally says this in a blog post:
“If you abstract away the financial details there’s also a question of like, what your utility function is. Is it infinitely good to do double-or-nothing coin flips forever? Well, sort of, because your upside is unbounded and your downside is bounded at your entire net worth. But most people don’t do this, because their utility is more like a function of their log wealth or something and they really don’t want to lose all of their money. (Of course those people are lame and not EAs; this blog endorses double-or-nothing coin flips and high leverage.)”So no, I don’t think anyone can deny this.
EDIT: The tumblr has been taken down.
EDIT #2: Someone archived it: https://web.archive.org/web/20210625103706/https://worldoptimization.tumblr.com/
Also note Sam’s own blog
It looks like the tumblr was actually deleted, unfortunately. I spent quite a bit of time going through it last night because I saw screenshots of it going around.
Hi Keerthana
Thank you for sharing your experiences here. I know it isn’t easy to talk about. I would encourage people in the comments to reflect on how they approach people who are opening up about difficult experiences like this. We should want people to feel comfortable voicing these concerns, not argue when the person explicitly said this is not an argument, just my own experience. Invalidating someone is a bad look for the community and will make it less likely for others to voice similar concerns which could lead to serious issues.
As someone new to EA myself, hearing about EAG conferences left me feeling uneasy and I didn’t even know they vetted people this way. I have since been convinced by fellow EA colleagues and friends that it is beneficial due to networking possibilities. Now learning about this is once again making me feel uneasy.
I understand for conferences there are specific requirements one must meet to attend (in academia for example) but I don’t see any transparency here regarding their decision making process (which seems like a big problem).
In summary:
1) This is going to make many people feel alienated from the EA community (which might counter the benefits of networking and community building that seems to rationalize even having these conferences in the first place)
2) At this point, I don’t see a clear method for determining who should be allowed to attend these conferences (would love to hear and discuss these methods if they actually exist somewhere)