SebastianSchmidt

• SebastianSchmidt 2 Jul 2023 18:25 UTC

  1 point

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  on: Why EA Com­mu­nity building

  Thanks for this. I think it could’ve been more awesome by having a stronger statement on the importance of the EA ideas, values, and mindsets. I recognize that you somewhat mention this under reasons 2 and 5 but I would’ve liked to see it stated even more strongly.

• SebastianSchmidt 2 Jul 2023 18:14 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 1

  on: How has FTX’s col­lapse af­fected pub­lic per­cep­tion of EA?

  Thanks so much for doing this. I’m very happy to see how the general public and university students seemed to be mostly unaware and unaffected by FTX. By being happy, I don’t mean to imply that we should take the situation lightly and not learn from it. I’m curious about other groups such as young professionals. However, I am somewhat shocked to see the massive drop in trust in leadership (1/​3 distrusting leaders). This is definitely a significant effect which might yield good consequences—e.g., people being more likely to develop their own views and be less inclined to defer to certain individuals.

• SebastianSchmidt 2 Jul 2023 18:01 UTC

  6 points

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  on: Third Wave Effec­tive Altruism

  Thanks for the model—I think it’s useful.
  I think it’d probably be more appropriate to say that wave 2 was x-risk (and not broad longtermism) and/​or that longtermism became x-risk. Before reading your thoughts on the possibilities for the third wave, I spent a few seconds developing my thoughts. The thoughts were:
  1. Target audience: More focus on Global South/​LMIC.
  2. Culture: Diversification and more ways of living (e.g., the proportion of Huel drinkers go down).
  3. Call-to-action: A higher level community/​set of ideas (e.g., distilling and formalizing the method of EA and/​or longtermism) and cause-specific community (AI safety, etc.).
  4. Other: EA as a label gets reduced (e.g., if CEA changes its name).

• SebastianSchmidt 29 Jun 2023 14:35 UTC

  1 point

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  on: Some tal­ent needs in AI governance

  Thanks for this! How many people did you interview for this?

• SebastianSchmidt 14 Jun 2023 13:02 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: Joey🔸’s comment on: Tips for peo­ple con­sid­er­ing start­ing new incubators

  Thanks a lot for this. I eagerly read it last year and found several valuable takeaways. Looking forward to reading the foundation handbook!
  
  Just inserting a high-level description for other readers:
  I expected that their perspective would be too rigid (e.g., overly reliant on rigorous research on average effects and generalizing too strongly), cynical (as opposed to humanistic and altruistic), and overly focused on intelligence. Fortunately, my expectations were off. In fact, they were highly nuanced (emphasizing the importance of judgment and context), considerate (e.g., devoting a full chapter to women and minorities), and deemphasized intelligence (taking a multiplicative model of success—although, to be clear, they still claim that intelligence is very important). That said, their theory of change is quite distinct from ours (e.g., innovation and creativity are emphasized substantially more than morality and doing the most good).
  
  I also appreciated their discussion of the evidence around intelligence, role models, and talent search in sports.

• SebastianSchmidt 25 May 2023 21:22 UTC

  2 points

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  on: Tips for peo­ple con­sid­er­ing start­ing new incubators

  Thanks for this! We’ll soon be vetting talent—are there any resources you’d recommend for understanding and selecting talent?

• SebastianSchmidt 15 May 2023 15:54 UTC

  1 point

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  on: Effec­tive al­tru­ism in the gar­den of ends

  Thanks for this. I’m somewhat reminded of this post on using a different motivational system than guilt.

• SebastianSchmidt 11 May 2023 9:22 UTC

  2 points

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  on: Com­mu­nity build­ing: Les­sons from ten years of fa­cil­i­ta­tion experience

  Very valuable—thank you Severin!

• SebastianSchmidt 28 Apr 2023 19:02 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Emily’s comment on: 2021 EA Men­tal Health Sur­vey Results

  Thanks so much for this reply—very informative.

  This seems relatively aligned with my perspective although the specifics of what the therapists said in relation the strong moral values matter as moral perfectionism can be self-defeating. I’d also add that it seems as if older EAs are less concerned with EA-informedness than younger. For an example of why it might be beneficial to have an EA-informed coach or therapist, I quite liked this podcast episode on 80K.

• SebastianSchmidt 16 Apr 2023 14:53 UTC

  1 point

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  on: 2021 EA Men­tal Health Sur­vey Results

  Thanks for this!
  
  Would it be possible for you to provide information on the quantity/​frequency of the following findings?
  
  1. “People find it difficult to find therapists who accept the values of Effective Altruism or whom they can trust”
  
  2. “Thoughts on whether an EA-aligned therapist is necessary: some say yes, others no; some say it’s helpful to speak with therapists who are outside of the EA community.”
  
  Also, for 2, I’m curious whether they made claims about whether it was necessary or whether it was optimal. Seems quite different and my experience tells me that some growth areas (e.g., career-related beliefs and struggles) would be optimal for having someone EA-aligned (or at least EA-informed) whereas others wouldn’t matter (e.g., ADHD).

• SebastianSchmidt 13 Apr 2023 12:52 UTC

  18 points

  4 ∶ 1

  on: Ap­ply to >30 AI safety fun­ders in one ap­pli­ca­tion with the Non­lin­ear Network

  Thanks for this. Seems important to provide more funding to folks who want to do good work!

• SebastianSchmidt 5 Apr 2023 0:11 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: MaxRa’s comment on: The Over­ton Win­dow widens: Ex­am­ples of AI risk in the media

  Might be overly short due to the recent advancements and recency bias (e.g., would be interesting to see in a few weeks) but that’s a massive sample size!

• SebastianSchmidt 1 Apr 2023 2:04 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: Gidi Kadosh’s comment on: An­nounc­ing VIVID: A new EA or­ga­ni­za­tion as­piring to scale effec­tive self-im­prove­ment & reflection

  Seems good to me. I’m still making up my mind as to whether it should be seen as its own cause area as opposed to a framing and method that can be used to enhance other cause areas.

• SebastianSchmidt 30 Mar 2023 19:14 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: Gidi Kadosh’s comment on: An­nounc­ing VIVID: A new EA or­ga­ni­za­tion as­piring to scale effec­tive self-im­prove­ment & reflection

  Thanks for your reply.
  I agree that it’s highly complex and can positively affect other cause areas and I’m happy to jam more on this. However, I also think it’s important to not assume that it’s a panacea that’s good for everything. E.g., I do worry that focusing too much on well-being could be bad for the world as one starts to act in ways that optimize for that and neglects the significance of other cause areas. But I think it’s plausibly a really big thing which is why I’m exploring. I’ve written you a dm to set up a call.

• SebastianSchmidt 30 Mar 2023 1:10 UTC

  4 points

  2 ∶ 0

  on: Coach­ing Train­ing Pro­gram Launch: build and up­skill your prac­tice with Tee Bar­nett Coach­ing Train­ing (TBCT)

  Good luck with this. Happy to have more appropriately great coaches available for people ambitiously trying to do a lot of good.

• SebastianSchmidt 24 Mar 2023 21:25 UTC

  7 points

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  on: An­nounc­ing VIVID: A new EA or­ga­ni­za­tion as­piring to scale effec­tive self-im­prove­ment & reflection

  Congrats!
  
  I’m currently exploring a new cause area profile for Impact Academy. Tentatively, I call it human development and it’s strongly related to personal development—perhaps even a synonym. I’m feeling relatively confused about it and how it relates to mental health and community building more broadly—i.e., how it relates to good done in the world. As far as I can tell, it seems as if VIVID is pursuing this. One thing I feel confused about is what outcomes/​metrics this field is attempting to optimize and the most promising strategies for accomplishing those outcomes. My current best guess is to use i) well-being (ideally both hedonic and eudaimonic) and ii) professional effectiveness (some measure of productivity). Do you have any better measurements?
  
  Obviously, this is extremely hard because (as you point out) it depends so much on the specific individual. However, I’m guessing that there are some significant broad strokes things one can say about this.

• SebastianSchmidt 8 Mar 2023 23:35 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: Deena Englander’s comment on: In­tro­duc­ing EASE, a man­aged di­rec­tory of EA Or­ga­ni­za­tion Ser­vice Providers

  Thanks.

• SebastianSchmidt 8 Mar 2023 23:34 UTC

  3 points

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  on: The EA Men­tal Health & Pro­duc­tivity Sur­vey 2023

  Thanks for this. Just submitted my response. One small miss: When you ask what interventions people are interested in towards the end you’ve omitted coaching. I assume this is a mistake because you included it in the equivalent question around what interventions they have tried already. :)
  When do you expect to publish the results? :)

• SebastianSchmidt 6 Mar 2023 1:56 UTC

  8 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Se­bas­ti­anSch­midt’s Shortform

  This is a quick and highly selective summary of Toby Ord’s PhD thesis—Beyond Action. It can be downloaded freely from his website. I primarily wrote this for my own sake but upon completion, I realized that it may be useful to others too. :)

  *****

  The thesis explores and strengthens global consequentialism and its six major forms. It attempts to address the major objections to act and rule-consequentialism and, somewhat, unifies the three major Western ethical theories.

  In chapter 3, he thoroughly assesses the different accounts of global utilitarianism but I found those aspects to be relatively useless because they didn’t enrich my thinking at a sufficiently applied level. However, it did provide value to know that global consequentialism stands up to moral rigor and may be superior to other forms of consequentialism. Furthermore, it gave me insight into how certain moral theories are perpetually developed and how significant progress is being made and made me optimistic about “solving” moral philosophy (which I’m otherwise skeptical of).

  When assessing what evaluative focal points to use (i.e., “things” that might be relevant to assess in terms of what outcomes they bring about), Ord focuses on the following:

  • Decision-procedures “what procedure should I follow when deciding what to do?”

  • Motivations and character. He proposes that we focus on these as they guide our actions (and thus are important for outcomes). I felt more drawn motivations and character and thus wrote a short section below.

  Motivations and character

  Ord proposes the following ontology for motivations (the things which guide our actions) and character:

  

  Virtue, may be thought of as the character traits that tend to give rise to good outcomes.

  Both Sidgwick and Julia Driver have spent a significant amount of time assessing virtues in terms of their consequences.

  Interestingly, Ord notes that character can have consequences via other effects than the significant acts associated with it. He mentions that having a certain character could change your subconscious reactions such as how much you blush or the facial expressions you may have in response to hearing something.

  Conclusion: A diagram of different moral theories and how global utilitarianism captures some of all of them

  

  Note, the arrows can be read roughly as “justifies” (e.g., in deontology, the rules justifies the acts) and symbols and words in gray signify that only some of the theories mention this (e.g., in virtue ethics character only justify acts in some versions).

  Similarly, a quote from Mill summarizes the complementarity and tension between ethical schools well:

  Mill (1838), p. 111

  ‘Those who adopt utility as a standard can seldom apply it truly except through the secondary principles; those who reject it, generally do no more than erect those secondary principles into first principles. It is when two or more of the secondary principles conflict, that a direct appeal to some first principle becomes necessary … for the sake of the systematic unity and coherency of ethical philosophy.’

• SebastianSchmidt 2 Mar 2023 21:19 UTC

  0 points

  0 ∶ 1

  on: Lord Martin Rees: an appreciation

  Thanks for sharing. I’ve only been vaguely familiar with Rees’ work and have been somewhat worried about largely deferring to (and recommending) a narrow and very homogenous set of people. I’m reminded of this syllabus on longtermism which includes a more diverse set of thinkers.