Currently working on aisafety.berlin and a matching tool.
ex-director of EA Germany, EA Berlin and EAGxBerlin 2022
Happy to connect, message me with your ideas, proposals, feedback, connections or just random thoughts!
Manuel Allgaier
Karma: 1,480
Anecdotally, I heard similar stories from DMT (consumed in the form of Ayahuasca specifically), but only from multiple high dosages over the course of several days.
Curious if there’s any evidence that vaping a micro dosage is also riskier than people might think. Most psychedelics seem very low risk on micro dosage level, I’d guess DMT is similar?
Not recommending anyone should take DMT, obviously, I hope you’ll find a non-hallucinogenic, safe and legal version.
The last pre-party (by humans) - AI Safety Musical Pre-Party
invoke our common humanity, instead of our disparate diets
I really like this approach. I could see a lot of omnivores get behind “demanding better standards” too, and happily spend a (tiny) bit more money on groceries, knowing that this significantly increases welfare.
TLDR: Reach more people by sharing on TED’s YouTube channel?
Great work, much appreciated!
Side note: Looks like TED did not (yet?) share your talk on their YouTube channel as well, although the talk took place in April already. Not sure why, maybe it’s a business decision, maybe they share only a fraction of TED talks on their YouTube, maybe it’s something else.
For reach, it seems pretty important to share it on YouTube as well? Does anyone have insights in TED’s YouTube channel policy, and ideas whether we can do anything to get it shared there?
Until then, some random YouTuber with <100 followers uploaded it here:
Related question: How often do you run a public open hiring round and end up hiring someone already on your radar, who would have been part of your closed hiring round as well?
Not saying this is always bad, the public hiring round might still have been worthwhile in expectation, I’m just curious how often these things happen. Probably various a lot between roles & orgs.
I also wonder whether we could do some kind of standardized test once a year on things that EA orgs uniquely care about, like reasoning transparency or understanding of EA, and then various EA orgs could use that for their hiring.
If requires some initial coordination & investment, but after that it could save both orgs and applicants quite some time and money.
Strongly upvoted, thanks!
I’ve heard this many times, and I feel like some orgs might indeed overdo it with work tests. I’d be curious how much more info recruiters get from 4-8h work test, compared to 1-2h + a (short) interview, and maybe allowing people to submit an existing work sample or so.
With that many views (800k as of now), it might be worth looking into starting non-English sister channels as well.
Youtube science channel Kurzgesagt, for example, has a very large German and Spanish channel as well (2m subscribers each, ~10% of the 24m of the English channel). We (aisafety.berlin) would be happy to help with German, if you ever want to prioritize that, though Spanish, Hindi, and maybe Mandarin seem more important.
>800k views as of now (4 days in), very impressive!
Side note: I appreciate that you actually sought out critiques with your bounty offer and took the time to respond and elaborate on your thinking here, thanks!
AI Futures Forum (Bluedot Impact & aisafety.berlin collab)
Great work!
Have you considered translating it in other major languages, especially those with large existing EA communities like German, French or Spanish, or EA potential?
A draft translation could be made with AI, and then EA communicators with high context (such as the EA Germany / EA Spain & LatAm organizers) could give feedback and adapt it to culture-specific norms. Once everyone is happy, small flag icons could link to the translation.
Advantages:
- The non-English EA content & communities would be a lot more accessible, and we might counterfactually reach more non-English speakers (e.g. older people who could be donors, senior policy-makers, …)
- Non-English versions would be better. Even orgs like EA Germany who seem to have spent significant time updating their website don’t have the capacity to build someone as professional as CEA does (for comparison, here’s the German website: https://effektiveraltruismus.de/)
- Generally, more connections between the English & non-English versions, so everyone can find what they’re looking for easily. Currently, effectivealtruism.org does not seem to the German version at all, and on the German website (effektiveraltruismus.de), the English flag icon at the top right does not link effectivealtruism.org either.
Costs:
- Mainly time costs by EA communicators (CEA, EA Germany, …). Any other costs I missed?
Note that I’m not saying that the EA Germany website is a duplicate, it’s not, just the “intro to EA” part could maybe be better connected.
If at some point you’re seriously considering downsizing the EA forum team or even shutting it down, maybe consider running a (simple) crowdfunding campaign for the EA forum among users, both to get funding and to get a better sense of how much users value having a value-aligned forum (optimizing for quality, usefulness & user happiness) instead of only a subreddit.
My sense is that quite a lot of users value it quite a lot (just based on how much time people seem to spend on the forum), but I don’t have data on it.
Agree!
To add to your point: Some EAs have told me in private that they struggle with various forms of online addiction (mostly Youtube, Facebook, but also Reddit, Linkedin etc), and it’s hard for them to find a balance between getting the content they want but not spending too much time on it.
I feel like the EA forum makes it a lot easier for users to find that balance compared to reddit etc, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that counterfactually leads to many more hours spent on important EA work.
It’s hard to measure that as most people are hesitant to comment about this publicly or don’t have a good sense of how much time they ‘waste’ on Reddit etc. If anyone here wants more data, an anonymous poll or mini survey could help.
Yep, he occasionally shared memes in that group but left it a while ago.
Thanks for sharing your story when we met in Berlin and writing this up! I saved it to read later.
This made me think of an EA friend of mine, who spent a year after high school doing voluntary military service in Switzerland before embarking on his altruist (later EA) career. IIRC he found it helpful to learn discipline and grit early on in his career. I feel like focus, discipline and grit might be underrated skills in our current time of abundant distractions, and the military might be one of the best places to learn this. Other jobs in a high stress environment with supportive colleagues might also work, such as top management consulting firms, or multi-day silent meditation retreats like Vipassana. Not sure how well each translates to better focus at (EA) jobs.
Curious if you have any thoughts on this!
I’d love to read high quality critiques of this, especially the suggested timeline and likelihood. If you know any, please share!
AI 2027: What Superintelligence Looks Like (Linkpost)
I feel like mainstream people like EA until they understand the implications and are faced with their first trade-off for whom to help. To keep them engaged, maybe the new CEA could skip the prioritization part and just focus on making people feel better about their first choice.
Promising results! I forwarded it to psychedelics researcher who could maybe help with advocacy.
If you want to support this, consider taking a moment to consider whether you, or anyone you know, might be able to contribute. The post says donors, entrepreneurs and advocates are most needed.
Maybe a video of patients sharing their experience might also help make this cause more appealing to a wider range of donors and advocates.