Making this account""

Karma: −67

Making this account"" 28 Nov 2022 4:22 UTC
13 points
6 ∶ 0
on: Should we Audit Dustin Moskovitz?
Even from an unsympathetic outside view, there needs to be some cause or at least some narrative to do something like this:
It’s been a decade since Dustin and Holden has been working in philanthropy. Open Philanthropy worked closely with thousands of people, making hard decisions. There’s a vast amount of trust built up, that is more than just money. This is accumulated evidence in their favor.
Without a reason or even narrative to do so, I think even a high quality investigation or audit will be a waste of time or a distraction. All of this is bad if there are important issues or reforms in EA.
Pointing at arbitrary people or generating fear is bad.
For Karnofsky in particular:
Holden built GiveWell and Open Phil. Those are really good. And the truth is that making those built a lot of enemies and critics.
I mean, what do you really think happened with Criminal Justice Reform?
Also, if there was some dumb investigation, it will make my name mean and I’ll have to change it.
For Moskovitz in particular:
I always saw Dustin as an abstract bag of money. This was until two weeks ago when I found out there was an EA Twitter.
I think we should investigate if he is paying someone to be this funny.

Making this account"" 27 Nov 2022 23:09 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Matthew H’s comment on: The case for actively assisting FTX clawbacks
Hi, I now found and I agree that the advice is bad, directionally.
However, I expect LT people who receive large amounts of funds, to be personally competent and responsible enough to say/write/prepare to set aside these funds. They would be looked down upon if they needed to be scolded on an online forum to navigate the moral and legal issues in the most basic way. Polite disagreement would have been adequate.
However I really think you should reconsider the way you’ve worded your sentiments. It’s fine to register an anonymous account to say something that you wouldn’t readily put your name to.
(I’m not anonymous, and this setup is intentional, but this is wildly hard to explain. )
More to the heart of the issue, unfortunately, the situation is exactly the opposite as I believe you perceive.
Outside of voting/writing on the EA forums, many parts of EA is treated with absolute contempt and seen as noxious, and this was before November and held by multiple senior EA people across all cause areas, people that you would respect.
As for one example, see Matt Yglesias.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/some-thoughts-on-the-ftx-implosion
Personally, it’s also hard not to just generally feel worse about the “EA community” as a set of social institutions distinct from the specific ideas. I always had sort of mixed feelings about this, and I gave money to GiveWell’s Top Charities Fund for years before I ever attended my first EA conference. And while I thought the conference was fine, afterward I felt more confident that I would keep donating to GiveWell than that I would ever go to another EA conference.
If two weeks ago you found the whole scene to be obnoxious and weird and suffused with an odd mix of arrogance and credulity, recent events have tended to vindicate that.
What is especially bad and broken is that many people do actually act with great conscientiousness and care online, on the EA forum and Lesswrong, but this is effectively harvested by active people who want access to the resources, power structures, that has been built up by conscientious, unrelated work.
I literally suspected this was deliberate or at least tolerated, in part because this kept the related worldviews relatively weak. However, in the wake of the FTX collapse, this situation and the weakening of MacAskill and non-AI establishment, these latent issues might result in extremely bad states for EA.
I believe large parts of online EA discourse is intellectually bankrupt and dysfunctional. I believe I can decisively articulate why. This would really depress a lot of people without a solution, so I haven’t written it up.

Making this account"" 27 Nov 2022 22:38 UTC
4 points
3 ∶ 4
in reply to: EliezerYudkowsky’s comment on: The case for actively assisting FTX clawbacks
???
What suggested action or claim warrants this emergency-like statement? I can’t find it in this post.
Overall, this contributes to the squalid character of these events, that this whole thing is essentially 16 year olds who read too much online blog posts.
As an aside, I don’t think or don’t know if FTX grantees should give back all the money, but Yudkowsky’s post about is badly argued, intellectually and morally, and it’s disappointing, and amazing really, it got the upvotes and credibility it did without the obvious counterarguments appearing.
This sort of behavior is obvious to outsiders.

Making this account"" 27 Nov 2022 22:11 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 2
in reply to: Simon Newstead’s comment on: How VCs can avoid being tricked by obvious frauds: Rohit Krishnan on Noahpinion (linkpost)
Your work and background seems valuable and impressive, and is far superior to me in VC. I would like to learn more from you.
As a comments on your statements taken in isolation:
what requires board consent, what is the past history of investor updates, what conflicts of interest exist and mechanisms to resolve them etc
It is surprising if an early-VC looked at things like board, board consent. I expect the main thing they would look at is team.
Certainly in tech, boards are usually not respected, even in later larger companies, much less a small early stage project. Are you conflating board and board control, with founder/lead team dynamics?
All things that should have, if press reports are accurate, provided ample red flags prior to an investment, even before getting into forensic accounting etc.
In my opinion, most projects would bomb this, including Apple, Facebook, etc. (modulo the claimed romantic/sexual relationships, and even then that’s not clear).
Fear of missing out on a competitive round can drive normally savvy investors to skip or discount results of the normal dd process.
I understand the most negative narratives of the VC investment in FTX (“I LOVE THIS FOUNDER”).
At the same time, it’s not clear it’s ex ante terrible. It was clear what they were investing in, and that was almost no control or visibility into the organization.
Most elite/top/successful founding teams want exactly the arrangement SBF achieved, because VC control or influence is seen as (strongly) net negative. If this is true, this cannot be a signal or red flag.

Making this account"" 27 Nov 2022 21:48 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Pat Myron’s comment on: Take part in our giant study of cognitive abilities and get a customized report of your strengths and weaknesses!
Not sure how much knowing you rotate shapes better than 99% of people is useful in real life
The study you clicked on claims to be an IQ study or even meta-IQ study. So whatever it is doing, it would be weird if it omitted Visual-Spatial ability (which I think is commonly studied). The absence of a strong claim is consistent with the authors being agnostic/open minded/uncertain of this value.
To contextualize, Visual-Spatial awareness is pretty normal in IQ tests, it would be like asking math or verbal questions on an SAT.
(I don’t know much about IQ tests in the way I know about other disciplines, I thought about all of the above for about 60 seconds and deduced some things before I typed this but I’m pretty sure I’m right).

Making this account"" 27 Nov 2022 21:44 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Pat Myron’s comment on: Take part in our giant study of cognitive abilities and get a customized report of your strengths and weaknesses!
I think this aesthetic comes from deliberate choices, to use much shorter statements and trust the audience. For example, it allows them to reflect instead of being didactic or overbearing. Your reaction is valid.

Making this account"" 27 Nov 2022 20:29 UTC
1 point
1 ∶ 1
in reply to: ben.smith’s comment on: Don’t just give well, give WELLBYs: HLI’s 2022 charity recommendation
In this other thread, see this claim.
~~This phrasing is a yellow flag to me, it’s a remarkably large effect, without contextualizing it in a specific, medical claim (e.g. so it can be retreated from).~~
The description of the therapy itself is not very promising. https://strongminds.org/our-model/
This is a coarse description. It does not suggest how such a powerful technique is reliably replicated and distributed.
Strong Minds appears to orchestrate its own evaluations, controlling data flow by local hiring contractors.

Making this account"" 26 Nov 2022 2:14 UTC
−12 points
1 ∶ 3
in reply to: Making this account""’s comment on: Don’t just give well, give WELLBYs: HLI’s 2022 charity recommendation
I started clicking on more links, and it’s No es buena mis amigas.
So there’s links to a happiness think tank, and a link to a UK government program for wellbeing.
It’s great and excellent that people are using wellbeing as metrics as part of complex interventions...which is normal and has been done for decades everywhere.
But:
1. These don’t “use this approach”. That these are used as metrics for healthcare work and other policy outcomes, is not at all sufficient evidence that we can focus on interventions solely targeted to these metrics of wellbeing.
2. Also, these links take time to get anywhere, this is not a good smell.
This isn’t dispositive, but there is a major presentation issue in how would-be authoritative content is being cited. ~~What do we think this is, AI safety?~~ There should be clearer standards of evidence and argument.

Making this account"" 26 Nov 2022 2:03 UTC
−11 points
1 ∶ 3
in reply to: WilliamKiely’s comment on: Don’t just give well, give WELLBYs: HLI’s 2022 charity recommendation
I’m pretty sure this is wrong, what they cited is wrong.
Kaiser and Oswald basically show that there’s a monotonic relationship between subjective feelings and real world outcomes, and this is robust.
First of all, monotonicity and cardinality are completely different things and this is pivotal to what HLI claims are. I’m not entirely sure they know the difference—this is bad (!).
See https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2210412119#sec-2
A second more subtle issue is that Kaiser and Oswald are based on pretty well defined, moderately severe life events in the UK and wealthy countries. As broad, nonspecific wisdom, we should have much less confidence taking this to other contexts.
I only had time to read the second article, but my guess is that I can make decisive complaints about the first too (80%).

Making this account"" 26 Nov 2022 1:29 UTC
3 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: MichaelPlant’s comment on: Don’t just give well, give WELLBYs: HLI’s 2022 charity recommendation
As described elsewhere, the approach of measuring happiness/sentiment in a cardinal way and comparing this to welfare from pivotal/tragic life events measured in years/disability, seems challenging and the parent comment’s concerns about the magnitudes seems dubious is justified.
GHD is basically built on a 70-year graveyard of very smart people essentially doing meta things that don’t work well.
Some concerns that an educated reasonable person should raise (and have been raised are)
1. this seems to have been made by assembling meta studies, without a lot of affirmative buy in by experts
2. the meaning of the numbers built on survey results seems ephemeral or at least much more complicated.
3. the claims by Stronger Minds is that they almost literally solve depression, this is dubious yet seems to follow the same framework here.
The above aren’t dispositive, but the construct of WELLBY does not at all seem easy to compare to QALYs and DALYs, and the pat response is unpromising.

Making this account"" 25 Nov 2022 23:21 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Kirsten’s comment on: Rethink Priorities’ Leadership Statement on the FTX situation
(I can’t believe I’m piling onto Kirsten with Oliver and Linch, weird).
I think the topic here is greater than financial fraud.
Some of these answers feel a lot like people who haven’t been in high agency positions with enormous responsibility and pressure.
I can think of several situations and people you would respect, who have to take special actions to shield their organization from unreasonable and disproportionate legal harm (often where they are personally uninvolved). These leaders are still good people, and try to do the best they can. Examples:
- Due to difficult and bizarre legal issues, people have to characterize a highly dysfunctional and unreasonable employee’s misconduct in a way that anticipates post-termination legal exposure
- Desperate and legally dubious manufacturing of stop-gap medical equipment in an extraordinary pandemic where major governments were grossly irresponsible—in this situation the CEO took on personal responsibility for the entire organization.
None of these dilemmas are limited to EA^[1], it’s probably the opposite.
1. ^
  Although we are learning that EA seems to actually mean to a lot of people “a place where I can build a career and get resources when things are going well, and then personally evacuate and attribute responsibility to others when there’s a problem”. This is not at all unnoticed.

Making this account"" 24 Nov 2022 2:32 UTC
3 points
4 ∶ 2
in reply to: Making this account""’s comment on: A Letter to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
Moving to this thread about catering:
As someone who isn’t vegan, declares they aren’t vegan, and thinks it’s not helpful to animal welfare that this is a norm, I think it is disgusting if SBF harvested veganism to his ends.
However, we still don’t know how substantive most of these stories are. (To be clear, SBF seems to be just trying to talk his way out of things at this point and his credibility should be zero). However, things like the “hack”, turned out to be literally the Bahamas ordering him to seize money, showed that stories are noisy.
Overall, this Twitter thread about FTX catering, then moving to EAG’s food, then moving to CEA’s conduct, is a stretch and I find it a bit performative.

Making this account"" 24 Nov 2022 2:29 UTC
8 points
1 ∶ 1
in reply to: Jonathan Mannhart’s comment on: A Letter to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
I think what you said is fair. Writing as a collaboration.
I sort of want to peel the curtain back for onlookers here, since apparently few in EA is doing this before or after.
Basically, a journalist’s role, including and maybe especially EA journalists, is basically the OG “epistemic” immune system, as rationalists would say. They are an institution, specifically supposed to ferret out problems, including subtle things like smells.
I spoke to a very respected reporter at EAG, ~~who I met for the first time ever, and within the first 60 seconds~~ and within 5 minutes he was warning me about a “broken stair”, someone I had a positive opinion of, had a history of issues. There was limited direct benefit to him for doing this and some risk. Reporters get credibility and live and die by this, it’s what they do.
Dylan Matthews gets a lot of credit for saying something like this:
Now, we know, Kelsey and Matt know, and everyone else knows, it’s a bit of a mess up that neither of them seemed to be in a position to make the statement, “Hey, SBF has a penthouse, uses a private jet. Maybe we shouldn’t let Will hang it all on the Corolla, because it might make EA and Will look stupid”. It’s non-positive, and maybe even slightly implausible they didn’t know.
Kelsey’s story, which most EAs know, relied on EA communication norms to get that level of candor, is probably partially motivated, and people in journalism know this.

Making this account"" 24 Nov 2022 1:40 UTC
5 points
5 ∶ 9
in reply to: adekcz’s comment on: A Letter to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
I don’t think anyone should expect a lot of explanations or a new policy. It is an extremely difficult environment right now and there’s nothing to say or add that can help a lot. There’s literally new articles coming out every day.
Unfortunately, Will and CEA has been pinned to this, for essentially trying to get a donor.
Matt and Kelsey are piling on a bit here and that’s unfair:
I find it easier to draw the conclusion that the threadbare, limited management of pre-2019 CEA was involved in this, if anything.

Making this account"" 23 Nov 2022 3:15 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Announcing the first issue of Asterisk
Thanks, I appreciate your perspective. I think I agree directionally but I’m not as negative (also I don’t know what Memphis design is, I’ll look it up).
Overall, I think my original comment’s tone was too negative. It looks like the parent comment retracted, probably because everyone piled on =( .
I think my intent behind my original comment was about the aesthetics and purposes/agenda of Asterisk. I’m pretty sure they want to signal depth/legitimacy, and avoid trendiness.
What is your view about Asterisk’s design, separate from the Dall-E issue?

Making this account"" 23 Nov 2022 3:05 UTC
6 points
2 ∶ 2
in reply to: Stuart Buck’s comment on: EA should blurt
I find Stuart Buck extremely impressive.
He has a lot of comments going against the grain at the time, and pointing out issues with SBF.
His contributions is focused and he’s not salesy.
It’s worth pausing and taking a look at his org, which looks like one of the most impressively advised I’ve ever seen (and low overlap with EA figures, which is healthy).

Making this account"" 22 Nov 2022 3:26 UTC
0 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: NunoSempere’s comment on: Some data on the stock of EA™ funding
Nuno Sempere is a fantastic person. His work and ideas are respected. Nuno is a contributor to goodness in the world. What a special human being he is :)
(There, to try to make amends for any startling)

Making this account"" 21 Nov 2022 23:29 UTC
0 points
3 ∶ 2
in reply to: trevor1’s comment on: Announcing the first issue of Asterisk
(This is totally piling on here, and AI assisted art and content has a big future)
It’s obvious to everyone that a lot of “2022-style” Dall-E content is gimmicky, not a substitute for illustrators, and going to age poorly.

Making this account"" 20 Nov 2022 23:40 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: david_reinstein’s comment on: Some data on the stock of EA™ funding
That “error”—I just spat out my coffee lol.
I probably got around it. Here’s what might be the Open Phil database of grants/investments, accessed today.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F7-WOHbr5bEfV-rohIoBv4wv_4CSP9AOKCYbYd4s4Ds/edit?usp=sharing
(It has 1500 entries)
Mr. Gertler?

Making this account"" 20 Nov 2022 21:28 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Habryka’s comment on: Brainstorming ways to make EA safer and more inclusive
I’m trying to get a model of what you’re saying here:
A lot of the things I talk to the CH team about are things like “this person seemed kind of salesy when I interfaced with them, and I would want someone to keep track of whether other people feel the same, and maybe watch out for some bigger pattern”.
Is the CH team (terrible initials BTW) initiating contact with you, about this low urgency, low danger work? Or are you initiating contact with them?
In either case, it’s not clear what this is saying or how it’s negative or positive.
For example, in a Bayesian model sort of sense, I don’t see how this gives information on the CH team being ineffective or effective, or the EA community being bad or good.
(To be honest, IMO keeping track of these small things seems very favorable. It seems consistent with the CH team being involved in the community. This seems like it gives depth/competence/context when there is a much more major issue. It is also seems like a class of nuanced, quiet, conscientious work that has long term benefits for everyone, but is less visible, compared to other ways of doing this work, like big splashy announcements (as negative examples think dysfunction of institutions in The Wire)).
What I’m trying to get at is that you are one of the most respected people and have good insights, so if you have a model of how things should improve, or EA institutions are low wattage or high wattage, on the CH team or otherwise, it would be good to hear.

Making this account""

For Karnofsky in particular:

For Moskovitz in particular: