Milan_Griffes

Giv­ing more won’t make you hap­pier

EA jobs provide scarce non-mon­e­tary goods

[Question] Why is the EA Ho­tel hav­ing trou­ble fundrais­ing?

• Milan_Griffes 27 Feb 2019 0:23 UTC

  32 points

  in reply to: Max_Daniel's comment on: After one year of ap­ply­ing for EA jobs: It is re­ally, re­ally hard to get hired by an EA organisation

  +1 to not­ing that the cur­rent re­cruit­ment con­figu­ra­tion strongly fa­vors elite (& highly priv­ileged) ap­pli­cants.

• Milan_Griffes 9 Apr 2019 5:21 UTC

  31 points

  on: Long Term Fu­ture Fund: April 2019 grant decisions

  CFAR:

  I’ve got­ten a sense that the staff isn’t in­ter­ested in in­creas­ing the num­ber of in­tro work­shops, that the in­tro work­shops don’t feel par­tic­u­larly ex­cit­ing for the staff, and that most staff are less in­ter­ested in im­prov­ing the in­tro work­shops than other parts of CFAR. This makes it less likely that those work­shops will main­tain their qual­ity and im­pact, and I cur­rently think that those work­shops are likely one of the best ways for CFAR to have a large im­pact.

  ...

  CFAR is strug­gling to at­tract top tal­ent, par­tially be­cause some of the best staff left, and par­tially due to a gen­eral sense of a lack of for­ward mo­men­tum for the or­ga­ni­za­tion. This is a bad sign, be­cause I think CFAR in par­tic­u­lar benefits from hav­ing highly tal­ented in­di­vi­d­u­als teach at their work­shops and serve as a con­crete ex­am­ple of the skills they’re try­ing to teach.

  Why a large, un­re­stricted grant to CFAR, given these con­cerns? Would a smaller grant cat­alyze changes such that the or­ga­ni­za­tion be­comes cash-flow pos­i­tive?

  By the next grant round, I plan to have spent more time learn­ing and think­ing about CFAR’s tra­jec­tory and fu­ture, and to have a more con­fi­dent opinion about what the cor­rect fund­ing level for CFAR is.

  What is go­ing to hap­pen be­tween now & then that will help you learn enough to have a higher-cre­dence view about CFAR?

  Seems like a large, un­re­stricted grant per­mits fur­ther “busi­ness-as-usual” op­er­a­tions. Are “busi­ness-as-usual” op­er­a­tions the best state for driv­ing your learn­ing as a grant-maker?

[Link] Open Phil’s 2019 progress & plans update

Altru­is­tic ac­tion is dispassionate

• Milan_Griffes 10 Apr 2019 15:14 UTC

  24 points

  in reply to: Ben_Kuhn's comment on: Long Term Fu­ture Fund: April 2019 grant decisions

  +1

  I think it’s great that the Fund is trend­ing to­wards more trans­parency & a broader set of grantees (cf. Novem­ber 2018 grant re­port, cf. July 2018 con­cerns about the Fund).

  And I re­ally ap­pre­ci­ate the level of care & at­ten­tion that Oli is putting to­wards this thread. I’ve found the dis­cus­sion re­ally helpful.

If slow-take­off AGI is some­what likely, don’t give now

• Milan_Griffes 4 Aug 2018 1:10 UTC

  20 points

  in reply to: TaraMacAulay's comment on: Lev­er­age Re­search: re­view­ing the ba­sic facts

  I don’t think that Lev­er­age, Paradigm or re­lated pro­jects are good use of EA time or money

  Found this sur­pris­ing given the pos­i­tive valence of the rest of the com­ment. Could you ex­pand a lit­tle on why you don’t think Lev­er­age et al. are a good use of time/​money?

[Question] Should EA grant­mak­ing be sub­ject to in­de­pen­dent au­dit?

[Question] Who is work­ing on find­ing “Cause X”?

What we talk about when we talk about life satisfaction

• Milan_Griffes 26 Feb 2019 6:52 UTC

  18 points

  on: After one year of ap­ply­ing for EA jobs: It is re­ally, re­ally hard to get hired by an EA organisation

  Dis­cus­sion be­tween 80k & Peter Hur­ford in the com­ments here seems rele­vant.

• Milan_Griffes 17 Apr 2019 23:49 UTC

  17 points

  on: Le­gal psychedelic re­treats launch­ing in Jamaica

  For ad­di­tional back­ground, here’s a short (& lossy) ar­gu­ment for psychedelics as Cause X:

  • Al­most ev­ery­one in EA holds ei­ther a longter­mist view or a per­son-af­fect­ing view

  • If you hold a longter­mist view & you’re a con­se­quen­tial­ist (as far as I know, most longter­mists are con­se­quen­tial­ist), con­se­quen­tial­ist clue­less­ness seems like a ma­jor the­o­ret­i­cal problem

    • Ba­si­cally, try­ing to as­sess out­comes oc­cur­ring 10,000+ years in the fu­ture breaks the con­se­quen­tial­ism al­gorithm (be­cause we have no visi­bil­ity into these out­comes)

    • Given this the­o­ret­i­cal prob­lem, longter­mist cause pri­ori­ti­za­tion should in­clude “how ro­bust to clue­less­ness is this?” as a ma­jor factor

    • Some x-risk in­ter­ven­tions seem pretty ro­bust to cluelessness

    • Also ro­bust: in­ter­ven­tions that in­crease the set of well-in­ten­tioned + ca­pa­ble people

      • CFAR & Paradigm Academy are aimed at this

      • The psychedelic ex­pe­rience also seems like a plau­si­ble lever on in­creas­ing ca­pa­bil­ity (via re­duc­ing nega­tive self-talk & other men­tal blocks) and im­prov­ing in­ten­tions (via ego dis­solu­tion chang­ing one’s meta­phys­i­cal as­sump­tions)

    • Ergo: un­der a longter­mist view, psychedelic in­ter­ven­tions are plau­si­bly in the same bal­l­park of effec­tive­ness as x-risk in­ter­ven­tions & other in­ter­ven­tions that in­crease the set of well-in­ten­tioned + ca­pa­ble people

  • If you hold a per­son-af­fect­ing view, men­tal health seems like a cause area on par with global poverty (see Michael Plant’s cause pro­file on men­tal health)

    • Psychedelics are show­ing a ton of promise as treat­ment for a bat­tery of chronic men­tal health is­sues (in­clud­ing anx­iety, de­pres­sion, OCD, and ad­dic­tive di­s­or­ders in­clud­ing smok­ing & al­co­holism)

    • Ergo: un­der a per­son-af­fect­ing view, psychedelic in­ter­ven­tions are plau­si­bly in the same bal­l­park of effec­tive­ness as global poverty interventions

  If there’s suffi­cient in­ter­est, I’ll take the time to make the above ar­gu­ment more rigor­ous.

  [Dis­clo­sure: I’m helping out At­man Re­treat as an ad­vi­sor; views are my own]

• Milan_Griffes 17 Apr 2019 21:55 UTC

  17 points

  on: The Tur­ing Test pod­cast is back with Bryan Ca­plan!

  Just want to plug that this in­ter­view is amaz­ing: liter­ally any ar­bi­trar­ily-se­lected 20-minute slice is full of great con­tent & Ca­plan-isms.

• Milan_Griffes 10 Apr 2019 15:54 UTC

  17 points

  in reply to: Ben_Kuhn's comment on: Long Term Fu­ture Fund: April 2019 grant decisions

  Re­lat­edly, is Oli get­ting com­pen­sated for the work he’s putting in to the Longterm Fu­ture Fund?

  Seems good to move to­wards a regime wherein:

  • The norm is to write up de­tailed, pub­lic grant reports

  • Com­mu­nity mem­bers ask a bunch of ques­tions about the grant decisions

  • The norm is that a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the grant-mak­ing staff fields all of these ques­tions, and is com­pen­sated for do­ing so

• Milan_Griffes 9 Apr 2019 17:24 UTC

  17 points

  in reply to: Habryka's comment on: Long Term Fu­ture Fund: April 2019 grant decisions

  Thanks for the care & at­ten­tion you’re putting to­wards all of these replies!

  I do think that at our cur­rent grant vol­ume, we should in­vest more re­sources into build­ing in­fras­truc­ture for vet­ting grant ap­pli­ca­tions.

  Strong +1.

[Question] Is Modern Mone­tary The­ory a good idea?

• Milan_Griffes 9 Apr 2019 0:47 UTC

  15 points

  on: Long Term Fu­ture Fund: April 2019 grant decisions

  Over­all, I think it’s likely that staff at highly valuable EA orgs will con­tinue burn­ing out, and I don’t cur­rently see it as an achiev­able tar­get to not have this hap­pen (though I am in fa­vor of peo­ple peo­ple work­ing on solv­ing the prob­lem).

  Very cu­ri­ous to read more about your view on this at some point (per­haps would be best as a stan­dalone post).

  From my pre­sent van­tage, if it’s likely that staff at EA orgs will con­tinue burn­ing out in a non­stochas­tic way, work­ing to ad­dress that seems in­cred­ibly lev­er­aged.

  Broadly, poor men­tal health & burnout seem quite tractable. See:

  • Michael Plant’s men­tal health cause profile

  • Eliz­a­beth Van Nos­trand on burnout

  And per­haps there are tractable things that can be changed about the or­ga­ni­za­tional & so­cial cul­tures in which em­ploy­ees of these orgs ex­ist in.