How will this change affect university groups currently supported by Open Philanthropy that are neither under the banner of AI safety nor EA? The category on my mind is university forecasting clubs, but I’d also be keen to get a better sense of this for e.g. biosecurity clubs, rationality clubs, etc.
Saul Munn
Karma: 665
[epistemic status: i’ve spent about 5-20 hours thinking by myself and talking with rai about my thoughts below. however, i spent fairly little time actually writing this, so the literal text below might not map to my views as well as other comments of mine.]
IMO, Sentinel is one of the most impactful uses of marginal forecasting money.
some specific things i like about the team & the org thus far:
nuno’s blog is absolutely fantastic — deeply excellent, there are few that i’d recommend higher
rai is responsive (both in terms of time and in terms of feedback) and extremely well-calibrated across a variety of interpersonal domains
samotsvety is, far and away, the best forecasting team in the world
sentinel’s weekly newsletter is my ~only news source
why would i seek anything but takes from the best forecasters in the world?
i think i’d be willing to pay at least $5/week for this, though i expect many folks in the EA community would be happy to pay 5x-10x that. their blog is currently free (!!)
i’d recommend skimming whatever their latest newsletter was to get a sense of the content/scope/etc
linch’s piece sums up my thoughts around strategy pretty well
i have the highest crux-uncertainty and -elasticity around the following, in (extremely rough) order of impact on my thought process:
do i have higher-order philosophical commitments that swamp whatever Sentinel does? (for ex: short timelines, animal suffering, etc)
will Sentinel be able to successfully scale up?
conditional on Sentinel successfully forecasting a relevant GCR, will Sentinel successfully prevent or mitigate the GCR?
will Sentinel be able to successfully forecast a relevant GCR?
how likely are the category of GCRs that sentinel might mitigate to actually come about? (vs no GCRS or GCRS that are totally unpredictable/unmitigateable)
Sentinel Funding Memo — Mitigating GCRs with Forecasting & Emergency Response
i’ll add $250, with exactly the same commentary as austin :)
to the extent that others are also interested in contributing to the prize pool, you might consider making a manifund page. if you’re not sure how to do this or just want help getting started, let me (or austin/rachel) know!
also, you might adjust the “prize pool” amount at the top of the metaculus page — it currently reads “$0.”
thanks for making this post/question!
@NunoSempere seems like you might like this.
epistemic status: extremely quickly written thoughts, haven’t thought these through deeply, these are mostly vibes. i spent 10 minutes writing this out. i do not cite sources.
seems like non-human animals are suffering much more than humans, both in quantity of beings suffering & extent of suffering per being
it might be that non-human animals are less morally valuable than humans — i think i buy into this to some extent, but, like, you’d have to buy into this to a ridiculously extreme extent to think that humans are suffering more than non-human animals in aggregate
seems like animal welfare has been pretty tractable — in-particular, e.g. shrimp or insect welfare, where magnitudinal differences
it seems like there’s currently substantially more of a global focus (in terms of $ for sure, but also in terms of general vibes) on global health than on animal welfare, even holding suffering between the two groups constant
i generally feel pretty cautious about expanding into new(er) causes, for epistemic modesty reasons (for both empirical & moral uncertainty reasons)
this is particularly true for the sub-cause-areas within animal welfare that seem most promising, like shrimp & insect welfare as well as wild animal welfare
this is what’s preventing me from moving the dial ~all the way to the right
some things this question doesn’t take into acct:
within each of these areas, how is the $100mm being spent?
how would other funders react to this? would e.g. some other funder pull out of [cause] because $100mm just appeared?
etc — though i don’t think that these questions are particularly relevant to the debate
some cruxes around which i have the most uncertainty:
extent to which there continue to be tractable interventions in AW (compared to GH)
extent to which i believe that non-human lives have moral significance
probably some others that i’m not thinking of
i’d be curious to see the results of e.g. focus groups on this — i’m just now realizing how awful of a name “lab grown meat” is, re: the connotations.
There has been a lot of discussion of this, some studies were done on different names
could you link to a few of the discussions & studies?
works! thx
thanks for the response!
looks like the link in the footnotes is private. maybe there’s a public version you could share?
re: the rest — makes sense. 1%-5% doesn’t seem crazy to me, i think i would’ve “made up” 0.5%-2%, and these aren’t way off.
It looks to me that forecasting was 1 − 5% of the Democrats dropping Biden from their ticket.
curious where you’re getting this from?
thanks, this has cleared things up quite a bit for me. i edited my comment to reflect it!
cosigned, generally.
most strongly, i agree with:
(1), (3), (4)
i also somewhat agree with:
(2), (7), (8), (9)
[the rest of this comment is a bit emotional, a bit of a rant/ramble. i don’t necessarily reflectively endorse the below, but i think it pretty accurately captures my state of mind while writing.]
but man, people can be mean. twitter is a pretty low bar, and although the discourse on twitter isn’t exactly enjoyable, my impression of the EA forum has also gone down over the last few days. most of the comments that critique my/rachel’s/austin’s decisions (and many of the ones supporting our decisions!) have made me quite sad/anxious/ashamed in ways i don’t endorse — and (most) have done ~nothing to reduce the likelihood that i invite speakers who the commenters consider racist to the next manifest.
i’m a little confused about the goals of a lot of the folks who’re commenting. like, their (your?) marginal 20 minutes would be WAY more effective by… idk,hopping on a call with meor something?[1]there have been a few comments that are really great, both some that are in support of our decisions & some that are against them — austin highlighted a few that i had in mind, like Isa’s and huw’s. and, a few folks have reached out independently to offer their emotional support, which is really kind of them. these are the things that make me agree with (8): i don’t think that, in many communities, folks who might disagree with me on the object level would offer their emotional support for me on the meta-level.
i’m grateful to the folks who’re disagreeing (& agreeing) with me constructively
; to everyone else… idk, man, at least hold off on commenting until you’ve given me a call or let me buy you a coffee or something.[june23-2024 — see edit above]- ^
and i would explicitly encourage you, dear reader, to do so! please! i would like to talk to you much more than i would like to read your comment on the EA forum, and way more than i’d like to read your twitter post! i would very much like to adjust my decision-making process to be better, and insofar as you think that’s good, please do so through a medium that’s much higher bandwidth!
meta
above all, thank you for writing this up. i recognize how difficult writing something like this might be, and i endorse the reflex to click “publish” anyway.
“I am releasing this post under a pseudonym, because I really don’t know how much talking about this topic with my real name and face might hurt my future interactions with the rationalist community. It might turn out to have zero effect, but I dunno maybe the Manifest people and Lightcone would kind of dislike me or something.”
i’m not sure exactly what you mean by “dislike;” i do think we disagree, but i definitely don’t think you’re an evil person or something. i would love to have you back at future manifests!
i was pretty disappointed at the quality of the journalism in the guardian hitpiece; see @Habryka ’s thread pointing out a number factual errors. there were definitely some nuggets of fair criticism, which made me even more disappointed in the guardian piece. but that also makes me even more glad that you wrote up what is (IMO) a much more coherent criticism.
…however, i think that “error-riddled guardian hitpiece” is a pretty low bar to clear. i do still think that there are some worrying/bad parts of this piece, which i think @jacobjacob gets at quite well in his comment. i won’t get at them here, but i encourage readers to read jacob’s comment before mine.
i think that there is a lot here that i could write a lot about, but i’m not currently planning to write out all of my thoughts here. this is particularly because, in my experience, it’s vastly more productive to have these sorts of dialogues over a video call or face-to-face. so:
if folks would like to talk to me IRL, i usually bounce between SF, LA, and Boston. contact me when you’re in any of those cities and i’ll buy you a coffee.
alternatively, we can talk over videocall, which you can do here. i’ve already had videocalls of a similar nature with e.g. @Catherine Low and @ChanaMessinger (among others), and intend to do so with @David Thorstad (among others). i’d also politely urge those with whom i’ve already talked to reply to this comment about their experience of chatting with me, so as to calibratedly {en,dis}courage other folks {to talk,from talking} with me.
@Mananio, i’m particularly eager to chat with you; if you feel comfortable doxxing yourself to me, i’d be delighted to meet with you, either in-person or over videocall.
i wrote this in just a couple hours. which, for me, is “quite quickly.” on priors, it seems likely that there are at least a couple points in here that i’ll change my mind about later on.
i write this as one of the co-leads of manifest, though this doesn’t (necessarily) reflect the opinions of @Austin or @Rachel Weinberg. you can read austin’s thoughts here. [edit june19-2024: you can read rachel’s thoughts here.]
what is manifest about? what ought manifest be about?
although manifest is nominally about prediction markets, it’s also about all the ideas that folks who like prediction markets are also into — betting, philosophy, mechanism design, writing, etc. i’d recommend readers look through our special guest list and come to their own opinion about manifest; we had about sixty such special guests, and i think some aggregation of all of them probably amounts to a much more accurate read of the intellectual vibe at manifest than any selected subset of guests.
and i want to note that some edge is fine (and good!) — but it’s fine & good as a byproduct of a good event-building process, not as a goal at which i’d like to intentionally aim.
i don’t want manifest to be a conference for edgelords, and i don’t want manifest to be known as such. if it is, i’ve failed.
…but i don’t think i’ve failed! my guess is that most people can attend manifest and never interact with someone who they consider racist. the average response on the feedback form was a 9⁄10, and of the negative responses, the vast majority were about long lines for the bathrooms, not about racists. this was also true of qualitative reactions i heard during the event; @Nathan Young ’s comment gets into this really well.[1]
my guess is that, on the margin, i’d have liked to have a bunch more folks at manifest who’re sorta unrelated to discussions about race. some specific people i invited and who weren’t able to make it include andy matsuschak, judea pearl, jason matheny, and many others. i don’t think we hit this balance perfectly, but i also don’t think we were off-base. i’ll touch on this more in a moment, but i wanted to make on thing really clear:
separate “attended” from “invited”
manifest is not an application-based or invite-only event. you buy a ticket, and you show up.
two exceptions to that general rule:
we sometimes subsidize particular people who we particularly want to attend by giving them a free or reduced-price ticket. for instance, i did this for tracing woodgrains (one of my favorite writers), madhu sriram (founder of fractal university), and keri warr (organized a 2 hour session of wrestling in the park, and gave a talk on anthropic’s internal prediction markets). in general, i endorse subsidizing things of which i want to see more, and this is a pretty straightforward application of that general rule.
(rarely,) we ban folks. when we do, it’s because we think they are or are likely to be in violation of our rules — mostly, these are folks who we think are likely to cause our attendees physical harm. this particular subpoint has been probably the single most difficult part of event organizing, and the part that i dislike most. it’s really draining, both on time and on energy. and it’s a totally thankless task that’s only noticed if you do it poorly.
we have a high bar for banning people from the event, and we also have a pretty high bar for giving people free tickets. the vast majority (~4/5?) of the attendees at manifest fell into the category of “bought a ticket, showed up.”
again: the vast majority of attendees simply bought a ticket and showed up.
i think that nonhuman animal suffering is an atrocious blight on humanity’s moral track record. but if the person who most strongly endorsed nonhuman animal suffering bought a ticket to manifest and showed up, i would’ve let them into the event — and for context on that statement, i’ve taken the pledge and donated ~all of my pledged funds thus far to various animal welfare organizations.
and this framework extends more broadly, to folks who hold views that you might consider abhorrent: e.g. we did not give curtis yarvin a free ticket to attend manifest, but if he had bought a ticket and showed up, i would’ve let him in. (however, yarvin didn’t buy a ticket, and didn’t attend.)
…but we’re also responsible for who buys tickets.
if we invite a bunch of edgy speakers, and then a bunch of edgelords buy tickets, we can’t reasonably claim that we’re not responsible for creating an edgy vibe.
i think that, on balance, we were like ~5% too edgy or something — but the way that i’d aim to correct this is by having the makeup of speakers more accurately represent my internal set of beliefs and interests (which happens to be like ~5% less edgy), and not by intentionally cutting our average edginess. anodynity is a really bad goal to aim for. you can see in one of our notes docs on april 22 that we explicitly wanted to invite more “warm/kind/gracious” people, and this was directly to have the speaker makeup more accurately reflect our interests.
like, c’mon — we had fifty seven speakers! look through them, and evaluate for yourself if the 8 that this article describes is an accurate representation of our speakers overall.
a few specific corrections
Lightcone [...] hosted these events at Lighthaven
this is technically true, but a bit misleading. Lightcone owns & operates the venue (Lighthaven), so by a stretched interpretation of “host,” this is true of every event that occurs at Lighthaven. but more realistically:
the LessOnline team hosted all of LessOnline, including running operations & controlling finances
the LessOnline team controlled most of the finances for Summer Camp, but the Manifest team ran most of the operations
the Manifest team controlled both the finances and the operations of Manifest proper
and, more specifically:
the LessOnline team (and not the Manifest team) had ~full authority to kick folks out of LessOnline
any of the LessOnline or Manifest teams had ~full, independent authority to kick folks out of Summer Camp
the Manifest team (and not the LessOnline team) had ~full authority to kick folks out of Manifest
i can clarify further if you’d find it helpful, but this is the gist of the split.
[…] anti-equality figure Curtis Yarvin […], and the highly controversial rationalist Michael Vassar […]
yarvin didn’t attend, and although you clarified that later on, it looks like many folks in the comment section were confused by your phrasing. also, the afterparty that yarvin organized was hosted at yarvin’s house (not at the manifest venue), and was unaffiliated with manifest. i’d appreciate if you made those points clear in each of the portions of text in your article in which you reference yarvin or his party. (if you’d like, you can also make it clear that, based on my current knowledge of his behavior, had yarvin bought a ticket and showed up to manifest, i would have let him in; but that’s up to you.)
michael vassar did not attend any of the events; i further clarify in this thread. i think your phrasing is worded in a way that seems to imply that he did attend, and i’d appreciate if you edited your article to reflect that.
Having speakers who have strong opinions on the Holocaust […]? Not so great!
uh, so, my guess is that you mean something like “it’s bad to invite speakers who think the holocaust is {fake, good, etc}.” i agree with this take, but the way that you’ve currently phrased this is pretty ambiguous in a way that seems quite unhelpful. to take an obviously hyperbolic example, i myself have pretty strong opinions on the holocaust: my grandparents survived torture & starvation in various death camps, and my opinions are, roughly, “the holocaust was (strongly) bad.”
i’d like to understand your wording better, and i’d encourage you to edit your original wording to reflect what you actually mean as well as the thing that you’re actually critiquing. e.g., did such a speaker come to manifest? what was the view that they actually endorsed? what norm do you think that violates? etc.
independently, i’d also like to know if any special guests explicitly endorsed the holocaust as being good or fake — i’d probably be a lot less interested in giving them a free ticket next time.
to repeat:
i think that there is a lot here that i could write a lot about. in my experience, it’s vastly more productive to have these sorts of dialogues over a video call or face-to-face. so:
if folks would like to talk to me IRL, i usually bounce between SF, LA, and Boston. contact me when you’re in any of those cities and i’ll buy you a coffee :)
alternatively, we can talk over videocall, which you can do here.
if you’re actually interested in improving community dynamics, talking to me (or the other organizers) IRL or over video call is probably the most effective way to do so; and i’d actively encourage it.
- ^
i do think there’s a bit of a selection effect, where those most hurt by a racist vibe would probably have not come (or would have left early, etc). again, if this prevented great folks who would otherwise have attended the event from coming, i think i’ve failed them, and i’d seek to do better for the next event.
good question, jonas; thanks for asking it!
he bought a ticket to summer camp; we refunded it ~immediately and uninvited him from the event.
after that, and before (or possibly during?) manifest, i made the decision to, conditional on his having bought a ticket, allow him to participate in the event. a few clarifications:
i made this decision, not the others on the manifest team; i bear sole responsibility/deserve blame-in-expectation if it was wrong.[1]
i made this decision under quite a lot of stress/pressure, after agonizing about it for a couple days, and with way less information than i would’ve liked; i basically didn’t know who vassar was prior to summer camp, and had like an hour or two in total to do research/talk to people/learn about his behavior/etc.
i’m quite unsure if this is a decision i reflectively endorse, and if you have information that might sway my decision about his attending future events in either direction, i’d love to hear — especially now that i actually have the time/attention to do look into it, rather than being amidst a 600-person event i’m running. feel free to reach out to me privately, if you’d prefer.
ultimately, vassar did not buy a ticket to manifest.
- ^
or, like, conditional on my decision having been a mistake, the team bears responsibility for setting up systems such that i was enabled to make this decision. but i’d disagree with that (i think that our systems for deciding who to uninvite were pretty sound, generally), and i think i deserve all of the blame to the extent that there is blame deserved.
Was Vassar a speaker or just an attendee?
neither; he did not attend manifest.
edit: see jonas’ important question below, and my response. i think they both provide pretty important context.
hey! skimmed this & thought it was great, good luck with all your plans :)
thought i’d add — you might consider posting a funding app on manifund & linking it here? gives people a quick/easy way to donate to you. (coi, i work at manifund)
(also — thanks for taking the time to write this out & share it. these sorts of announcement posts don’t just magically happen!)