Would removing the “crap” have been sufficient to make it polite? I like to be direct.
toonalfrink
Karma: 843
I can’t look inside your head, but if the mere thought of something makes you suffer, it probably means it reminds you of something that you are trying to ignore, i.e. trauma.
Assuming that this is indeed the case, I would further speculate that you are ignoring this memory or unpalatable insight because you subconsciously expect that thinking of it would disturb you to the point of getting in the way of whatever you would prefer to be doing, like idk, whatever your daily pursuits are.
The solution then, given these assumptions, would be to set aside some time (a week or two) to sit on a pillow and have nothing to do. This tends to bring unresolved trauma to the forefront by itself, simply because there is finally space for it.
Unfortunately you always find that there is more stuff to deal with, so this kind of spiritual work is a lifelong process (of getting progressively happier). I wholeheartedly recommend it.
(lots of downvotes, so where are all the comments?)
I want to reward you for bringing up the topic of power dynamics in EA. Those exist, like in any community, but especially in EA there seems to be a strong current of denying the fact that EA’s are constrained by their selfish incentives like everyone else. It requires heroism to go against that current.
But by just insinuating and not delivering any concrete evidence or constructive suggestions for change, you haven’t really done your homework. I advise you to withdraw this post, cut out half the narrative crap, add some evidence and a model, make a recommendation, then repost it.
What does “cancelling” mean, concretely? I don’t imagine the websites will be closed down. What will we lose?
I’ve been trying to figure out why cancel culture is so powerful. If only ~7% of people identify as pro social justice, why are social media platforms so freely bending to their will? Surely it’s not out of the goodness of their hearts, what is the commercial motive? I don’t buy the idea that it is simply a marketing stunt. Afaict a pro-SJ stance does not make a company look much more favorable at this point.
But then I found this:
For context, Facebook is the social media company that has been most reluctant to be political, and apparently this is really making them bleed financially.
Why are marketing people so willing to go out of their way to do “the right thing” instead of the profitable thing? Is this something cultural? Some more digging showed that the NAACP and the ADL are leading this charge of boycotting Facebook, but I don’t know what to make of that.
Re exercise: I worry that putting myself in a catabolic state (by exercising particularly hard) I temporarily increase my risk. Also by being at the gym around sweaty strangers. Is this worry justified?
I like this model but I think a more interesting example can be made with different variables.
Imagine x and y are actually both good things. You could then claim that a common pattern is for people to be pushing back and forth between x and y. But meanwhile, we may not be at the Frontier at all if you add z. So let’s work on z instead!
In that sense, maybe we are never truly at the frontier, all variables considered.
Related to this line of thinking: affordance widths
If you take this model a step further, it suggests working on whatever the most tractable problem is that others are spending resources on, regardless of its impact, because that will maximally free up energy for other causes.
Sounds like something someone should simulate to see if this effect is strong enough to take into account.
[Our] research group is investigating the most promising giving opportunities among mental health interventions in lower and middle-income countries.
Any reason why you’re focusing on interventions that target mental health directly and explicitly, instead of any intervention that might increase happiness indirectly (like bednets)?
Can we come up with a list of existing pieces of art that come close to this? I don’t expect good ideas to come from first principles, but there might be some type of art out there that is non-cringy and conveys elements of EA thinking properly.
I’ll start with Schindler’s list, and especially this scene, where the protagonist breaks down while calculating just how many more lives he could have saved if he had sold his car, his jewelry, etc.
Okay, you’ve convinced me that a US based EA organisation should consider raising their wages to attract top talent.
This data does make me doubt the wisdom of basing non-local activities in the US, but that is another matter.
It does provide clarity, and I can imagine that there are unfortunate cases where those entry level salaries aren’t enough.
As I said elsewhere in this thread, I think this problem would be best resolved simply by asking how much an applicant needs, instead of raising wages accross the board. The latter would cause all kinds of problems. It would worsen the already latent center/periphery divide in EA by increasing inequality, it would make it harder for new organisations to compete, it would reduce the net amount of people that we can employ, etc etc.
But I could be wrong, and I sense that some of my thoughts might be ideologically tainted. If you feel the urge to point me at some econ 101, please do.
30 was just an arbitrary number. Is London still hard to live in for 60? Mind that the suggestion is to raise salaries from 75k to 100k. I can’t imagine many cases where 75k is prohibitive, except for those that feel a need to be competitive with their peers from industry (which, fwiw, is not something I outright disapprove of)
We should probably operationalize this argument with actual data instead of reasoning from availability.
Given the numbers that we have in mind, these examples are all very specific to the US.
Medical expenses don’t get much past $2k per year in most European countries. The only place where cost of living is prohibitively high past a ~$30k income, is San Francisco.
I’m not arguing against the idea that some people exist that should be given the $150k that is needed to unlock their talents. I’m arguing that this group of people might be very small, and concentrated in your bubble.
I think that’s the crux of the argument. If a majority of senior people needed $150k to get by, I’d agree that that should be the wage you offer. If these people make up just 1% of the population (which seems true to me), offering $150k to everyone else is just going to cause a lot of subtle cultural damage.
a lot of resentment would emerge
To the extent that this would cause resentment, I’d interpret that as a perception of a higher counterfactual, which means that the execution wasn’t done well.
It’s unclear to me what you mean with privilege. I’m trying to imagine a situation where making 75k is not enough for a low-privilege person, but I can’t think of any. AFAIK 75k is an extremely high wage. I know a CEO of a bank that makes that.
Don’t advertise the wage on the ad. Ask candidates how much they need to be satisfied, then give them that amount or the amount that they are economically worth to you, whichever is lower. Discourage employees from disclosing how much they make.
In preventing wage dissatisfaction, I think it’s better to look at perceived counterfactuals. This can come from being used to a certain wage, or a certain counterfactual wage being very obvious to you. Or it can come from your peers making a certain wage.
You seem to assume something like “people don’t like to accept a wage that is lower than they can get”. I suggest replacing that with “people don’t like to accept a wage that is lower than they feel they can get”.
I know some people that are deliberately keeping their income frozen at 15k so they won’t get used to more. They reason that if they did, not only would they be psychologically attached to that wage, to a lesser extent so would their peers. In some sense they are keeping up a healthy cultural environment where it’s possible to make little and still be satisfied.
I’ve heard of some organisations that don’t have a fixed wage for a job, but a maximum. They ask their applicants “how much would you need to be satisfied”, and that’s how much they get. I’d expect that this practice, combined with a culture that doesn’t overly discuss income or flaunt wealth, would be the best way to keep everyone satisfied, compete with industry, and still keep the average wage low.
I sometimes think about seeking funding outside of EA to increase the amount of available EA funding.
But I never made serious work of it. I have no idea what is available, or where to look. Governments? Foundations? With which ones does an Xrisk project have a chance? What’s a good strategy for applying to them?
I’d be very happy if someone dived into this.
I think your title could be a bit more informative.
Holden’s writing seems to follow a hype cycle on the idea of transparency. i.e. first you apply a fresh new idea too radically, you run into it’s drawbacks, then you regress to a healthy moderate application of it.
As someone who has felt some of the drawbacks of being outside this “inner ring”, I wouldn’t complain about the transparency per se. Lack of engagement, maybe, but that turned out to be me.
I’m still waiting for concrete suggestions. I also think your project would be more fruitful if you interviewed these people in person and published the result.