New Guy

• New Guy 10 Jun 2026 18:39 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Ex­pe­rience of a ‘gen­er­al­ist’ tran­si­tion­ing into AI safety in 2026

  I feel like it’s a circular problem. The hiring pipelines within EA are heavily optimized towards “traditional” hires—fresh grads of elite universities and people jumping from one EA org to another. Recruiting experienced professionals from the outside world requires a significantly different approach. In organizations comprised primarily of traditional hires, few people can even see that problem, much less solve it.

  I don’t think the EA community at large really understands just how insulated this ecosystem is.

• New Guy 15 Aug 2025 16:30 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: The rel­a­tive range heuristic

  This doesn’t make any sense to me at all. There’s a ton of hidden assumptions there that are glossed over, e.g.

  Larger animals might have more capacity for suffering, but intuitively they might have 10x more or 100x more at most. Meanwhile, small animals are 1000x or 10000x more numerous than large animals. So the scale advantage of small animals is more important, and thus we should prioritize small animals.

  This implicitly assumes that whatever resources we have will (a) help the same percentage of global population, no matter which animals we select and (b) reduce their suffering by the same percentage.
  
  > Higher-frequency information is valuable, but a quarterly survey is 4x more expensive than an annual survey, and its information is probably not 4x more valuable. So the cost advantage of less frequent surveys is more important, and thus we should fund the survey annually rather than quarterly.

  This assumes that the value of the information from the survey is only slightly higher than its cost. Let’s imagine that the cost to conduct the survey is $10k and the information gained is worth $1M. In that case doing the survey quarterly (+$30k) would only need to increase the value of the information gained by 3% to break even

• New Guy 25 Apr 2025 15:40 UTC

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: Ozzie Gooen’s Shortform

  I’ve just ran into this, so excuse a bit of grave digging. As someone who has entered the EA community with prior career experience I disagree with your premise

  “It’s very awkward to go from “manager of a small team” to “intern,” but that can be necessary if you want to learn a new domain, for instance.”

  To me this kind of situation just shouldn’t happen. It’s not a question of status, it’s a question of inefficiency. If I have managerial experience and the organization I’d be joining can only offer me the exact same job they’d be offering to a fresh grad, then they are simply wasting my potential. I’d be better off at a place which can appreciate what I bring and the organization would be better off with someone who has a fresher mind and less tempting alternatives.

  IMO the problem is not with the fact that people are unwilling to take a step down. The problem is with EA orgs unwilling or unable to leverage the transferrable skills of experienced professionals, forcing them into entry-level positions instead.

• New Guy 20 Oct 2024 14:56 UTC

  3 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Sarah Reed’s comment on: Bad Omens in Cur­rent Com­mu­nity Building

  While the post and this comment are now both ancient, I feel compelled to at least leave a short note here after reading them.

  My background is in many ways similar to Sarah’s and I’ve came into the contact with the EA community about half a year ago. Unfortunately, 2.5 years later, most of the points raised here resonate heavily with my experiences. Especially the hive mentality, heavy focus on students (with little efforts towards professionals) and overemphasis on AI safety (or more generally—highly-specialized cause areas overshadowing the overall philosophy).

  I don’t know what the solutions are but the problem seems to be still present.