I am a rising junior at the University of Chicago (co-president of UChicago EA and founder of Rationality Group). I am mostly interested in philosophy (particularly metaethics, formal epistemology, and decision theory), economics, and entrepreneurship.
I also have a Substack where I post about philosophy (ethics, epistemology, EA, and other stuff). Find it here: https://substack.com/@irrationalitycommunity?utm_source=user-menu.
Reach out to me via email @ dnbirnbaum@uchicago.edu
This, I think, will make EA groups much better. Everyone should sign up!
Here is a claim I made to my friend yesterday that I think is true and believe people continually underrate: given reasonable assumptions about the influx of incoming capital, getting into (ie working in/thinking about) AI/ AI Safety early has probably been better for GHD or AW than lots (maybe all, tho I haven’t crunched the numbers) of direct work in GHD and AW.
I think this could even be true for EA CB (with much less confidence). AIS groups grow a lot faster than EA groups historically do and while the groups are often not that EA aligned, the leaders (who are, in my view, often very talented) are to various degrees. This is especially true for the ones who end up working full time in AIS: they often have proto-EA dispositions and these become intensified when they work around a bunch of EAs full time (though I can see two ways in which this is not as good as normal EAs: (1) being EA for social reasons and (2) being EA in stated but not revealed preference). TBC, I think having an EA group at a school make it much more likely that the leaders of the AIS group are aligned.
I can also see worlds (though def not my mainline at the moment) where the best thing one could have done for quality adjusted EA CB is actually just supporting AIS groups.
I don’t know how we should update/ by how much, but I think a reasonable way is the following: being ahead on some big emerging issue might just be more important than what seems like the obviously important thing that nobody does for bad reasons (ie GHD or AW).
As money increases, the thing that is needed is more ideas for where to put money and more people to act on big ideas to deploy it. As a result, I think EA CB (which results in both) is likely the best place to put money into!
Whooooo!!!!
I agree with all of this. One thing missing is just joining AIS/EA before it was cool/got much more money.
The Fallacy of Similar Magnitudes
A name I came up with for a pattern that comes up often enough to deserve one. Here’s a particular instance:
Suppose you’re a longtermist who thinks the vast majority of the (net positive) moral weight is in the far future, that AI existential risk is above 1%, and that it’s reasonably tractable to reduce. Some people who hold all three premises still say things like: “AI safety has maybe two orders of magnitude more resources than animal welfare, so the marginal dollar is better spent on animal welfare.”
This is the fallacy of similar magnitudes: in this case, the application is that neglectedness comparisons only matter when the causes are within a couple orders of magnitude of each other in stakes. Under the stated premises, they aren’t: the a priori difference in expected value is way larger. Two orders of magnitude in resources doesn’t move the needle even a bit.
Note: this AW response could be ok if you have certain views about risk aversion or worldview diversification, but that’s besides the point.
I am helping co-run the Generator Residency, which enables generalist talent into AIS, and we will soon be posting lots of ideas we think generalists in AIS could work on. Be on the lookout!
Lots of people in the Bay seem to be thinking about/preparing for/making funding decisions based on the idea that lots of philanthropy will be given to AIS/EA cause areas very soon (i.e. end of year-ish). I would love for someone to write the comprehensive steel man case against this, as I think it’s probably underrated (some reasons to think they won’t give the money/it won’t be as much as some assume. Happy to comment/ speak to whoever is interested in doing this.
Post this on LW and youll prob get more offers
This is a very good post.
Lucas! How r u??
I wonder how much value there would be in a company that principally doesn’t engage in sports betting. From my understanding, lots of people that bet on these markets like betting on non-sports claims but just hate the sports market component.
The EA Forum seems super dead, which is pretty bad. I think part of the reason is that much of the Forum gets cross-posted to LessWrong, so you get EA Forum content there plus everything else (especially AI stuff) — which means there’s little reason to actually come here.
One take: don’t cross-post to LessWrong. There are real benefits to having two intellectual communities that take the same kinds of ideas seriously but develop distinct cultures, emphases, and standards around them.
Other ways to help:
Do lots of cause prio out loud — especially the parts that haven’t been written about much
If your private doc doesn’t need to be private, don’t make it private
More EA in da news: https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/2034047505336295904
And the spicy CAIS take: https://x.com/cais/status/2034389842076025164?s=46
Experts currently treat being persuaded as reasonably good evidence that something is true — their judgment is calibrated enough that when they find an argument convincing, that’s correlated with the argument actually being correct. This allows them to update readily in light of new evidence, and is a big part of how intellectual progress happens: lots of innovation and advances in basically every subject come down to experts taking sometimes weird new ideas seriously.
One worry I have about superpersuasive AI is that it could erode this. If a superpersuasive AI can convince experts of things regardless of whether those things are true, experts may cease to see themselves being persuaded as good evidence that something is true — and start treating it the way laypeople do. Laypeople are typically hesitant to take on new, truth-tracking beliefs in light of new information, and (to some degree) rationally so: the fact that someone was able to convince a layperson of something is just not very strong evidence that it is in fact true. Experts might end up in the same position — only updating rarely, and in ways that are often unrelated to the truth.
This would be quite bad. If experts lose their capacity to reliably update on genuine evidence, we could significantly slow the rate of intellectual progress (which could be very important for making AI go well!). This is, I think, an underappreciated argument for caring about AI for epistemics — curious what others think.
Some videos from Rational Animations and Rob Miles would be cool, I think.
How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?
Some posts are meant for literary beauty and some are meant for ideas. Writing ideas well takes effort, and writing ideas with AI takes basically zero effort. If your post is mainly about ideas, and the fact that it is written by an AI doesn’t make it annoying to read, I really just don’t see why you wouldn’t write basically entirely with AI.
Interesting!