Builds web apps (eg viewpoints.xyz) and makes forecasts. Currently I have spare capacity.
Nathan Young
Karma: 17,331
Alexander Hamilton
I would want to see a big database of the exact wording of the statement that I could look up or at least some large random sample.
Paul Christiano
Nixon
Napoleon
Kissinger
Einstein
Von Neumann
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Yeah I have long thought this.
Though sometimes it is true, eg if someone makes an insigntful comment and then I write it up, it really is reasonable to say thanks to them for making but that errors are my own.
Bird flu is probably fine right now. Let’s not cry wolf.
I’ve been looking into H5N1 bird flu and built this dashboard (https://birdflurisk.com)
To me the indicators suggest it’s likely gonna be fine. You can see the forecasts are pretty low and even if these resolve positive it probably won’t be a big deal to humans (see note in a sec)
I think it’s worth becoming well calibrated on risk ie only crying wolf when there is a wolf and right now I see no wolf, so as a community we improve our calibration by saying “bird flu will almost certainly be fine”
That said, it probably will involve farms full of chickens being tortured to death if they catch the disease. This is tragic. I suggest it requires a different comms strategy though.
Also there may be inflation with the political ramifications of that.
Let me know what would make the dashboard more useful to you.
I like this, and have been trying a similar visual approach using squiggle. I agree that LLM estimation using squiggle seems tractable and that it could help turn many text outputs into quantifiable/comparable numerical outputs.
I am interested in creating a space to compare/rank these outputs. @Ozzie Gooen do you see squiggle hub as the space for this?
I find it very funny that such a huge donation basically happened by accident. Surreal stuff.
I have made many markets about important people, whether they will do crimes, whether things were crimes, whether there will be conflict, whether things will replicate or are accurate.
In at least 3 cases from people telling me it was extremely costly to this person or that person emotively or with blaming.
I think that feels like a failure of the community in some sense, or maybe a reduction in ambition.
Ok so where to donate? I don’t have a good systematic take in either the animal space or the AI space unfortunately, but here’s a shot:
I think I am happy to take this as the point I am trying to make. I don’t see a robust systematic take on where to donate in animals and AI.
Isn’t it reasonable to expect the EA community to synthesise one of these, rather than each of us having to do our own?
I don’t quite know what this means, but probably no.
Holding powerful people accountable.
Reposted from a twitter thread.
I have made a number of prediction markets holding powerful people accountable[1]. Powerful people (and their friends) really can exert a lot of pressure with an angry email or dm (n = 2-5). If you are powerful, please consider how big your muscles are before you give pushbackI have quite thick skin, but I don’t know whether such people are going around dming everyone like this. Likewise, this is a flaw I sometimes have and I have learned to be very light tough on pushback to non-friends.
Strangely, the kinds of people (or their friends) who message me are often close enough to pay lip service to “good epistemic practices”.
It really isn’t very fun to hold powerful people accountable. I get little thanks for it and burn valuable relationship capital. If you are powerful you probably have to be a bit more careful than you think. Perhaps make this clear to your allies also.
I can’t deny I take some pleasure from it, it feels good to be a martyr, but I think it performs a good social function also. But many who criticise would, I think, say they are open to criticism or accountability. Seemingly however, only on their own terms.
Again. I likely have this flaw too. I’ve had at least one anon feedback that I pushed back too hard against criticism. It’s easy to do, and I do not want to behave like that.
- ^
I do not necessarily not endorse having created all these markets. In general I think the markets I create are good, but some I am unsure of.
- ^
I note that in some sense I have lost trust that the EA community gives me a clear prioritisation of where to donate.
Some clearer statements:
I still think GiveWell does great work
I still generally respect the funding decisions of Open Philanthropy
I still think this forum has a higher standard than most place
It is hard to know exactly how high impact animal welfare funding opportunities interact with x-risk ones
I don’t know what the general consensus on the most impactful x-risk funding opportunities are
I don’t really know what orgs do all-considered work on this topic. I guess the LTFF?
I am more confused/inattentive and this community is covering a larger set of possible choices so it’s harder to track what consensus is
Oppenheimer