TW123

Karma: 3,714

TW123 Sep 19, 2022, 12:59 AM
3 points
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on: Looking for a Roommate for EA Global in D.C., ASAP!
You might want to post in the EA global slack? You should have gotten an email with an invite (or at least I did). There are also details in that slack on some housing options.

TW123 Sep 18, 2022, 6:27 PM
11 points
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in reply to: Pablo’s comment on: Thomas Kwa’s Shortform
You’re quite right, it was left too implicit.
often people who aren’t aware of or care about forum norms
EA has grown a lot recently, so I think there are more people recently who aren’t aware of or care about the “high bar” norm. This is in part due to others explicitly saying the bar should be lower, which (as others here have noted) has a stronger effect on some than on others.
Edit: I don’t have time to do this right now, but I would be interested to plot the proportion of posts on the EA forum from people who have been on the forum for less than a year over time. I suspect that it would be trending upwards (but could be wrong). This would be a way to empirically verify part of my claim.

TW123 Sep 17, 2022, 2:50 PM
22 points
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in reply to: Thomas Kwa’s comment on: Thomas Kwa’s Shortform
I’ll add another mechanism:

I think there are many people who have very high bars for how good something should be to post on the forum. Thus the forum becomes dominated by a few people (often people who aren’t aware of or care about forum norms) who have much lower bars to posting.
What links here?
- EA forum content might be declining in quality. Here are some possible mechanisms. by Thomas Kwa (Sep 24, 2022, 10:24 PM; 130 points)

TW123 Sep 15, 2022, 11:57 PM
3 points
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on: Key takeaways from Famine, Affluence, and Morality
I really like the illustrations! It’s not too common to see illustrations on the forum and these are great.

TW123 Sep 7, 2022, 11:28 PM
12 points
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in reply to: HjalmarWijk’s comment on: 13 background claims about EA
I agree with most of what you are saying.

However, the post seemed less self-aware to me than you are implying. My impression from interacting with undergraduates especially, many of whom read this forum, is that “these cool people believe this” is often read as “you should believe this.” (Edit: by this paragraph I don’t mean that this post is trying to say this, rather that it doesn’t seem aware of how it could play into that dynamic.)

Thus I think it’s always good practice for these sorts of posts to remind readers of the sort of thing that I commented, especially when using terms like “influential leaders” and “background claims.” Not because it invalidates the information value of the post, but because not including it risks contributing to a real problem.

I didn’t personally feel the post did that, hence my comment.

In addition, I do wish it were more specific about particularly which people it’s referring to, rather than some amorphous and ill-defined group.

TW123 Sep 7, 2022, 1:54 PM
8 points
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in reply to: Stefan_Schubert’s comment on: 13 background claims about EA
I agree that all else equal, it’s highly useful to know what people at hubs are thinking, because they might have great ideas, influence funding, etc.
However, I think a charitable interpretation of that comment is that it is referring to the fact that we are not perfect reasoners, and inevitably may start to agree with people we think are cool and/or have money to give us. So in some ways, it might be good to have people not even be exposed to the ideas, to allow their own uncorrelated ideas to run their course in whatever place they are. Their uncorrelated ideas are likely to be worse, but if there are enough people like this, then new and better ideas may be allowed to develop that otherwise wouldn’t have been.

TW123 Sep 7, 2022, 1:43 PM
11 points
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in reply to: Akash’s comment on: 13 background claims about EA
I appreciated the part where you asked people to evaluate organizations by themselves. But it was in the context of “there are organizations that aren’t very good, but people don’t want to say they are failing,” which to me implies that a good way to do this is to get people “in the know” to tell you if they are the failing ones or not. It implies there is some sort of secret consensus on what is failing and what isn’t, and if not for the fact that people are afraid to voice their views you could clearly know which were “failing.” This could be partially true! But it is not how I would motivate the essential idea of thinking for yourself.
The reason to think for yourself here is because lots of people are likely to be wrong, many people disagree, and the best thing we can do here is have more people exercising their own judgement. Not because unfortunately some people don’t want to voice some of their opinions publicly.
I am not sure what you mean by “EA strategy”. You mention funding, and I think it is fair to say that a lot of funding decisions are shaped by Berkeley ideas (but this is less clear to me regarding FTX regrantors). But I argue the following have many “Berkeley” assumptions baked in: (1), (2), (3 - the idea that the most important conversations are conversations between EAs is baked into this), (4 - the idea that there exists some kind of secret consensus, the idea that this sort of thing is nearly always fat tail distributed is uncontroversial), (5 - “many” does a lot of work here, but I think most of the organizations you’re talking about are in the area), (8- the idea that AI safety specific mentors are the best way to start getting into AI safety, not, say, ML mentors), (10 - leaving out published papers, arxiv).
I’m not saying that all of these ideas are wrong, just that they actually aren’t accepted by some outside that community.

TW123 Sep 7, 2022, 5:47 AM
103 points
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on: 13 background claims about EA
This post is mostly making claims about what a very, very small group of people in a very, very small community in Berkeley think. When throwing around words like “influential leaders” or saying that the claims “often guide EA decision-making” it is easy to forget that.
The term “background claims” might imply that these are simply facts. But many are not: they are facts about opinions, specifically the opinions of “influential leaders”
Do not take these opinions as fact. Take none for granted. Interrogate them all.
“Influential leaders” are just people. Like you and I, they are biased. Like you and I, they are wrong (in correlated ways!). If we take these ideas as background, and any are wrong, we are destined to all be wrong in the same way.
If you can, don’t take ideas on background. Ask that they be on the record, with reasoning and attribution given, and evaluate them for yourself.

TW123 Sep 4, 2022, 3:06 AM
8 points
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on: EA is about maximization, and maximization is perilous
And I’m nervous about what I perceive as dynamics in some circles where people seem to “show off” how little moderation they accept—how self-sacrificing, “weird,” extreme, etc. they’re willing to be in the pursuit of EA goals.
There is an episode in the life of the Buddha where he believes that it would be best for him to eat very little. He does so and:
When I wanted to touch the skin of my belly I felt my backbone, and when I wanted to touch my backbone I felt the skin of my belly; in fact the skin of my belly stuck to my backbone because of eating so little
But it does not work for him:
And yet by means of this severe, harsh practice I had achieved no special knowledge and insight beyond the capacity of human beings and worthy of the noble ones: might there in fact be another path to awakening? Then it occurred to me that I remembered that when I was sitting in the cool shade of a rose apple tree while my Sakyan father was engaged in work, I had spent time having attained the joy and happiness of the first absorption, which is accompanied by thinking and examining, and is born of seclusion: might this in fact be the path to awakening?
He concludes:
’It occurred to me that it would not be easy to achieve this happiness with a body that had become so extremely emaciated, so I thought I should take some solid food, some rice gruel. Then I took solid food, some rice gruel. Now at that time there were five monks with me, who thought: “The ascetic Gotama [the Buddha] will inform us of any Truth he achieves.” But after I had taken some solid food, some rice gruel, those five monks lost their enthusiasm for me and left, thinking: “The ascetic Gotama is one for excess. He has given up the struggle and reverted to a life of excess.”
While it’s not common in my experience for EAs to intentionally deprive themselves of food (at least not nowadays), they do sometimes tend to deprive themselves of time for things other than impact. Perhaps they shouldn’t.
And be wary of being one of those monks.
(From The Dialogue with Prince Bodhi)

TW123 Sep 3, 2022, 7:08 PM
7 points
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in reply to: Max_Daniel’s comment on: EA is about maximization, and maximization is perilous
Thanks for the background on esoteric morality!
Yes, I perhaps should have been more clear that “Government House” was not Sidgwick’s term, but a somewhat derogatory term levied against him.

TW123 Sep 3, 2022, 3:57 AM
71 points
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on: EA is about maximization, and maximization is perilous
Thank you for writing this. For a while, I have been thinking of writing a post with many similar themes and maybe I still will at some point. But this post fills a large hole.
As is obligatory for me, I must mention Derek Parfit, who tends to have already well-described many ideas that resurface later.
In Reasons and Persons, Part 1 (especially Chapter 17), Derek Parfit argues that good utilitiarians should self-efface their utilitarianism. This is because people tend to have motivated reasoning, and tend to be wrong. Under utilitarianism, it is possible to justify nearly anything, provided your epistemics are reasonably bad (your epistemics would have to be very bad to justify murder under deontological theories that prohibit murder; you would have to claim that something was not in fact murder at all). Parfit suggests adopting whatever moral system seems to be most likely to produce the highest utility for that person in the long run (perhaps some theory somewhat like virtue ethics). This wasn’t an original idea, and Mill said similar things.
One way to self-efface your utilitiarianism would be to say “yeah, I know, it makes sense under utilitarianism for me to keep my promises” (or whatever it may be). Parfit suggests that may not be enough, because deep down you still believe in utilitarianism; it will come creeping through (if not in you, in some proportion of people who self-efface this way). He says that you may instead need to forget that you ever believed in utilitarianism, even if you think it’s correct. You need to believe a lie, and perhaps even convince everyone else of this lie.
He also draws an interesting caveat: what if the generally agreed upon virtues or rules are no longer those with the highest expected utility? If nobody believed in utilitarianism, why would they ever be changed? He responds:
This suggests that the most that could be true is that C [consequentialism] is partly self-effacing. It might be better if most people caused themselves to believe some other theory, by some process of self-deception that, to succeed, must also be forgotten. But, as a precaution, a few people should continue to believe C, and should keep convincing evidence about this self-deception. These people need not live in Government House, or have any other special status. If things went well, the few would do nothing. But if the moral theory believed by most did become disastrous, the few could then produce their evidence. When most people learnt that their moral beliefs were the result of self-deception, this would undermine these beliefs, and prevent the disaster.
This wasn’t an original idea either; Parfit here is making a reference to Sidgwick’s “Government House utilitarianism,” which seemed to suggest only people in power should believe utilitarianism but not spread it. Parfit passingly suggests the utilitarians don’t need to be the most powerful ones (and indeed Sidgwick’s assertion may have been motivated by his own high position).
Sometimes I think that this is the purpose of EA. To attempt to be the “few people” to believe consequentialism in a world where commonsense morality really does need to change due to a rapidly changing world. But we should help shift commonsense morality in a better direction, not spread utilitarianism.
Maybe utilitarianism is an info hazard not worth spreading. If something is worth spreading, I suspect it’s virtues.
Which virtues? Some have suggestions.
What links here?
- How Useful is Utilitarianism? by Richard Y Chappell🔸 (Sep 8, 2022, 12:01 AM; 18 points)

TW123 Aug 27, 2022, 6:36 PM
3 points
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on: Seeking Student Submissions: Edit Your Source Code Contest
Cool! This is highly related to the concept of the Transformative Experience. The author of that book suggests, for instance, that having a child is a bit like “editing your own source code” (though she doesn’t use those words). Might be a useful thing to look into for people writing for this.

TW123 Aug 19, 2022, 10:58 PM
4 points
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in reply to: Utilop’s comment on: Announcing the Introduction to ML Safety Course
I have another post planned in a few weeks, in which I will probably include something like this. If you haven’t already seen, we made a post about the ML safety component of the course here (though this doesn’t answer the question about a formal program). We are already going to be running a version of it in the fall at some universities, but if anyone else is interested imminently in running it, please DM me here!

TW123 Aug 16, 2022, 5:48 AM
8 points
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in reply to: Jack R’s comment on: Yale EA got an office. How did it go?
There was a fridge and the snacks were laid out very nicely (though I don’t have any pictures, maybe somebody else can share). I personally thought that our room was a pretty nice space, though the hallway/entryway was weird and kind of depressing. The biggest thing that made it nice for me was the view:

TW123 Aug 15, 2022, 7:12 PM
2 points
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in reply to: plex’s comment on: List of AI safety courses and resources
Oh, thanks, missed that form in the sheet. Might be worth updating this forum post with the form because it currently says:
Please let us know if you notice anything that we’re missing or that we need to update by commenting below. We’ll update the sheet in response to comments.

TW123 Aug 14, 2022, 6:19 PM
2 points
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on: List of AI safety courses and resources
I think the Introduction to ML Safety course would be a good addition!

TW123 Aug 11, 2022, 9:15 PM
5 points
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in reply to: Earthling’s comment on: Let’s not glorify people for how they look.
Yes you’re right, I edited the phrasing to be more what I meant.

TW123 Aug 11, 2022, 3:38 PM
19 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Let’s not glorify people for how they look.
People will always notice how other people look, and people will always try to look attractive if they can pull it off. That much is unavoidable and I don’t think it makes much sense to try to fight it. As you point out, some of the statements you mentioned are jokes.

That being said, I think EA leaders who find themselves targets of this sort of veneration ought to express outward annoyance towards it, in a way that feels serious rather than jocular. Every movement has the tendency to idolize some small cadre of leaders; and in this movement, especially, we need to avoid that as much as possible. Prominent EAs frequently say that this isn’t “their movement” and that they don’t set all the directions, presumably to discourage people from thinking too much of them. As public figures, they should say the same thing about their looks.

Declaring things publicly can draw too much attention to it, so I’m not sure that’s the best strategy. Rather, it likely makes sense for their annoyance to be declared privately in response to specific instances of this problem. Maybe this is already happening; I’m not sure.

TW123 Aug 11, 2022, 7:08 AM
33 points
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on: Against longtermism
I’m quite happy that you are thinking critically about what you are reading! I don’t think you wrote a perfect criticism (see below), but the act of taking the time to write a criticism and posting it to a public venue is not an easy step. EA always needs people who are willing and eager to probe its ethical foundations. Below I’m going to address some of your specific points, mostly in a critical way. I do this not because I think your criticism is bad (though I do disagree with a lot of it), but because I think it can be quite useful to engage with newer people who take the time to write reasonably good reactions to something they’ve read. Hopefully, what I say below is somewhat useful for understanding the reasons for longtermism and what I see as some flaws in your argument. I would love for you to reply with any critiques of my response.
This has been quoted several times, even though it’s an absurd argument on its face. Imagine the world where Cleopatra skipped dessert. How does this cure cancer?
It doesn’t, and that’s not Parfit’s point. Parfit’s point is that if one were to employ a discount rate, Cleopatra’s dessert would matter more than nearly anything today. Since (he claims) this is clearly wrong, there is something clearly wrong with a discount rate.
Most of the 80000 hours article attempts to persuade the reader that longtermism is morally good, by explaining the reasons that we should consider future people. But the part about how we are able to benefit future people is very short.
Well yes, but that’s because it’s in the other pages linked there. Mostly, this has to do with thinking about whether existential risks exist soon, and whether there is anything we can do about them. That isn’t really in the scope of that article but I agree the article doesn’t show it.
The world is a complex system, and trying to affect the far future state of a complex system is a fool’s errand.
That isn’t entirely true. There are some things that routinely affect the far future of complex systems. For instance, complex systems can collapse, and if you can get them to collapse, you can pretty easily affect its far future. If it’s about to collapse due to an extremely rare event, then preventing that collapse can affect its far future state.
Let’s look at a few major breakpoints and see whether longtermism was a significant factor.
Obviously, it wasn’t. But of course it wasn’t! There wasn’t even longtermism at all, so it wasn’t a significant factor in anyone’s decisions. Maybe you are trying to say “people can make long term changes without being motivated by longtermism.” But that doesn’t say anything about whether longtermism might make them better at creating long term changes than they otherwise would be.
We can achieve longtermism without longtermism
I generally agree with this and so do many others. For instance see here and here. However, I think it’s possible that this may not be true at some time in the future. I personally would like to have longtermism around, in case there is really something where it matters, mostly because I think it is roughly correct as a theory of value. Some people may even think this is already the case. I don’t want to speak for anyone, but my sense is that people who work on suffering risk are generally considering longtermism but don’t care as much about existential risk.
The main point is that intervening for long term reasons is not productive, because we cannot assume that interventions are positive. Historically, interventions based on “let’s think long term”, instead of solving an immediate problem, have tended to be negative or negligible in effect.
First, I agree that interventions may be negative, and I think most longtermists would also strongly agree with this. In terms of whether historical “long term” interventions have been negative, you’ve asserted it but you haven’t really shown it. I would be very interested in research on this; I’m not aware of any. If this were true, I do think that would be a knock against longtermism as a theory of action (though not decisive, and not against longtermism as a theory of value). Though it maybe could still be argued that we live at “the hinge of history” where longtermism is especially useful.
I made some distinguishment between theory of value and theory of action. A theory of value (or axiology) is a theory about what states of the world are most good. For instance, it might say that a world with more happiness, or more justice, is better than a world with less. A theory of action is a theory about what you should do; for instance, that we should take whichever action produces the maximum expected happiness. Greaves and MacAskill make the case for longtermism as both. But it’s possible you could imagine longtermism as a theory of value but not a theory of action.
For instance, you write:
Some blood may be shed and lives may be lost, but the expected value is strongly positive.
Various philosophers, such as Parfit himself, have suggested that for this reason, many utilitarians should actually “self-efface” their morality. In other words, they should perhaps start to believe that killing large numbers of people is bad, even if it increases utility, because they might simply be wrong about the utility calculation, or might delude themselves into thinking what they already wanted to do produces a lot of utility. I gave some more resources/quotes here.
Thanks for writing!

Cover story on EA in Time magazine

TW123Aug 10, 2022, 3:26 PM

94 points

19 comments1 min readEA link

(time.com)

TW123

We can achieve longtermism without longtermism

Cover story on EA in Time magazine