Was community director of EA Netherlands, had to quit due to long covid
I have a background in philosophy,risk analysis, and moral psychology. I also did some x-risk research.
SiebeRozendal
Karma: 2,558
Ah, I wasn’t aware that that wasn’t the conventional definition. Thanks for the correction.
Still, I think it’s important to somehow manage both sets of people and we can probably do better, though my idea is quite random.
Well, yes, but I was thinking about what to do with sociopaths that are already in the community. If your policy is “we kick out every sociopath we identify”, no sociopath is going to identify themselves to you. I’m not advocating for attracting new sociopaths.
Mind you, I’m assuming here that there are plenty of sociopaths that aren’t that bad, and want to do good, but suffer from the disability of not being able to care emotionally for others. I think it would be good if we could at least keep them out of powerful positions.
This was a pretty uninformed thought of how to deal with sociopaths, but it does feel like a problem worth someone thinking more deeply about.
Here’s another question I have:
is SBF a sociopath, and should the community have a specific strategy for dealing with sociopaths?
(I think yes. Something like 1% of the population of sociopathic, and I think EA’s utilitarianism attracts sociopaths at a higher level than population baseline. Many sociopaths don’t inherently want to do evil, especially not those attracted to EA. If sociopaths could somehow receive integrity guidance and be excluded from powerful positions, this would limit risk from other sociopaths.)
Random idea:
Maybe we should—after this question of investigation or not has been discussed in more detail—organize community-wide vote on whether there should be an investigation or not?
Thanks Rob! Fixed it.
I have not been very closely connected to the EA community the last couple of years, but based on communications, I was expecting:
an independent and broad investigation
reflections by key players that “approved” and collaborated with SBF on EA endeavors, such as Will MacAskill, Nick Beckstead, and 80K.
For example, Will posted in his Quick Takes 9 months ago:
I had originally planned to get out a backwards-looking post early in the year, and I had been holding off on talking about other things until that was published. That post has been repeatedly delayed, and I’m not sure when it’ll be able to come out. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TeBBvwQH7KFwLT7w5/william_macaskill-s-shortform?commentId=yxK8NCxrZQBjAxpCL
It now turns out that this has changed into podcasts, which is better than nothing, but doesn’t give room to conversation or accountability.
I think 80K has been most open in reflecting on their mistakes and taking responsibility.
I was also implicitly expecting:
a broader conversation in the community (on the Forum and/or at conferences) where everyone could ask questions and some kind of plan of improvement would be made
It is disappointing that too little had happened, and it feels kind of like a relationship where a bad thing happened, where the immediate fallout was addressed, but then never quite aired out. I think it would be very healthy for the community to take these steps and reflect on & learn from the SBF affair as well as the mismanaged aftermath, and then hopefully we can all move forward.
I would like to know what the disagree votes* mean here.
*At the time of this comment, it’s 7 Agree − 7 Disagree
I hope you are correct! As an outsider, I find it very hard to judge without standardized non-gameable benchmarks for agents.
I hope you are correct. I find it very hard to judge without standardized, non-gameable benchmarks for agents.
I hope you are correct. As an outsider, I find it very hard to judge without standardized, non-gameable benchmarks for agents.
Thanks, will do!
I really like this post, but I think the concept of buckets is a mistake. It implies that a cause has a discrete impact and “scores zero” on the other 2 dimensions, while in reality some causes might do well on 2 dimensions (or at least non-zero).
I also think over time, the community has moved more towards doing vs. donating, which has brought in a lot of practical constraints. For individuals this could be:
“what am I good at?”
“what motivates me?”
“what will my family think of me?”
And also for the community:
“which causes can we convince outsiders to go into?”
“which spread in causes do we need to not look too weird and demonstrate that our principles work?”
It can be difficult to separate these from the more universal moral and epistemic considerations, once someone is in a committed career path.
If anyone has good suggestions of what I could email to relevant MEPs (just Zvi’s post?) that would be net-positive (e.g. low risk of bad regulation), I’d be happy to hear them.
Sorry I don’t follow—not sure whom you refer to by “they” and “their”
Ah yes, that’s a great summary I hadn’t read yet. Link: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KXHMCH7wCxrvKsJyn/openai-facts-from-a-weekend?commentId=eFuasCwaKJr2YiScY
And it looks like likely that phrase actually meant “not required”!
Thanks for re-sharing! Unfortunately, these make it quite unclear how much they’ve given to EA. (I assume it’s a large chunk of ‘GCR Capacity Building’
No they didn’t, and it looks like we aren’t going to see the investigation, unless somebody leaks it. But it looks to me that it had something to do with his pattern of manipulative behavior, and allegedly he lied to other board members that McCauley wanted Toner fired (this was stated in the NY Times article on Murati, I think), which sounds like the proximate cause to me.
But if such behavior came up during the investigation, I’m confused how the investigators could NOT conclude there was good reason for his firing (maybe they’re not so independent?) or why the board didn’t say something like “Mr. Altman was attempting to get a board member fired by providing false information” (too risky for libel?). Maybe he lied to Sutskever or Brockman, and they didn’t want to corroborate it? Questions, questions..
Thanks for making the list Remmelt!
Not sure how important this one is, but Air Canada recently had to comply to a refund policy made up by its own chatbot.
Also worth reading:
this article by the NY Times
OpenAI’s press release](https://openai.com/blog/review-completed-altman-brockman-to-continue-to-lead-openai) where they summarize the report of the investigation, which contains very little information. Here’s their conclusion:
WilmerHale found the prior Board implemented its decision on an abridged timeframe, without advance notice to key stakeholders, and without a full inquiry or an opportunity for Mr. Altman to address the prior Board’s concerns. WilmerHale found that the prior Board acted within its broad discretion to terminate Mr. Altman, but also found that his conduct did not mandate removal.
Sam Altman seems to have won the battle and gained a very strong grip on OpenAI, but his reputation has taken a large hit.
Thanks
Maybe quite some people don’t like random ideas being shared on the Forum?