Wil Perkins

• Wil Perkins 13 Dec 2023 15:38 UTC

  8 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Lukas_Gloor’s comment on: Non­lin­ear’s Ev­i­dence: De­bunk­ing False and Mislead­ing Claims

  Yeah these criticisms are fair, my comment was made hastily and in poor taste. I’ve deleted it.

• Wil Perkins 13 Dec 2023 15:30 UTC

  4 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: DavidNash’s comment on: Non­lin­ear’s Ev­i­dence: De­bunk­ing False and Mislead­ing Claims

  Thanks for the clarification! I probably should’ve read in more depth before commenting, I was just viscerally shocked by seeing all of these social-media style pictures so prominent in the beginning of the post.

• Wil Perkins 13 Dec 2023 14:48 UTC

  0 points

  2 ∶ 3

  on: Non­lin­ear’s Ev­i­dence: De­bunk­ing False and Mislead­ing Claims

  Deleting this comment after some fair criticism.

• Wil Perkins 6 Jul 2023 11:31 UTC

  5 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: AMA: We’re the Fo­rum team (and we’re hiring). Ask us any­thing!

  How do you feel retrospectively about the change to lower community engagement on the EA forum? Do you have any numbers about activity/​engagement since then?

• Wil Perkins 31 Mar 2023 12:53 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Vasco Grilo’s comment on: Paus­ing AI Devel­op­ments Isn’t Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down by Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Thanks! It’s okay. This is a very touchy subject and I wrote a strongly opinionated piece so I’m not surprised. I appreciate it.

• Wil Perkins 30 Mar 2023 20:42 UTC

  4 points

  5 ∶ 11

  on: Paus­ing AI Devel­op­ments Isn’t Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down by Eliezer Yudkowsky

  I’m going to go against the grain here, and explain how I truly feel about this sort of AI safety messaging.

  As others have pointed out, fearmongering on this scale is absolutely insane to those who don’t have a high probability of doom. Worse, Elizier is calling for literal nuclear strikes and great power war to stop a threat that isn’t even provably real! Most AI researchers do not share his views, neither do I.

  I want to publicly state that pushing this maximized narrative about AI x risk will lead to terrorist actions against GPU clusters or individuals involved in AI. These types of acts follow from the intense beliefs of those who agree with Elizier, and have a doomsday cult style of thought.

  Not only will that sort of behavior discredit AI safety and potentially EA entirely, it could hand the future to other actors or cause governments to lock down AI for themselves, making outcomes far worse.

• Wil Perkins 30 Mar 2023 20:34 UTC

  8 points

  2 ∶ 39

  in reply to: lilly’s comment on: Paus­ing AI Devel­op­ments Isn’t Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down by Eliezer Yudkowsky

  I strongly disagree with sharing this outside rationalist/​EA circles, especially if people don’t know much about AI safety or x risk. I think this could drastically shift someone’s opinion on Effective Altruism if they’re new to the idea.

• Wil Perkins 8 Mar 2023 23:06 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Jeffrey Kursonis’s comment on: EA needs Life-Veter­ans and “Less Smart” people

  Hey man, I respect that. Clearly people like your post so keep it up, just my personal preference.

  Like I said I absolutely agree with your points here.

• Wil Perkins 8 Mar 2023 18:06 UTC

  10 points

  9 ∶ 11

  on: EA needs Life-Veter­ans and “Less Smart” people

  Strongly agree with the premise but not a fan of your writing style here. If you could define “smart” and “wise” better, and maybe rely less on personal anecdotes, I think this post might be more persuasive overall.

• Wil Perkins 26 Feb 2023 11:20 UTC

  2 points

  7 ∶ 3

  in reply to: Ivy Mazzola’s comment on: Con­sider not sleep­ing around within the community

  Thanks for the thought our response! I suppose the main difference is that we have very diverging ideas of what the EA community is and what it will/​should become.

  I’ve been on the fringe of EA for years, just learning about concepts and donating but never been part of the tighter group so to speak. I see EA as a question—how do we do the most good with the resources available?

  Poly is definitely something historically related to the early movement, but I guess I just disagree that the trade off of reputation and attacks over sexual harassment issues etc are positive because of vague notions of fun.

  Also—if the EA community creates massive burnout maybe we should change the way we approach our communications and epistemics instead of accepting that and saying we’ll cope by having casual sex. That doesn’t seem like a good road to go down especially long term.

  Then again I don’t have short AI timelines.

• Wil Perkins 25 Feb 2023 1:11 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 10

  in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: kel­ler_scholl’s Shortform

  I’m concerned that less than 90% of the AI safety community would agree. I have heard some disturbing anecdotes.

• Wil Perkins 25 Feb 2023 1:04 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Ret­ro­spec­tive: CEA’s Fall ’22 Univer­sity Group Ac­cel­er­a­tor Pro­gram (UGAP)

  Thanks for posting this retrospective! I’m curious about the quiz after fellowships—is that available anywhere?

• Wil Perkins 25 Feb 2023 0:47 UTC

  −3 points

  1 ∶ 5

  in reply to: Linch’s comment on: An­nounc­ing the Launch of the In­sect Institute

  True…. But as soon as the wrong group catches wind of this, it could turn into a powerful meme to demonize this sort of thinking.

  In the spirit of weirdness points, it may be better not to be too blatant about the fringe of animal welfare arguments until public consensus has shifted farther. Perhaps I’m being too pessimistic, full disclosure I do not find insect welfare a compelling line of reasoning.

• Wil Perkins 25 Feb 2023 0:19 UTC

  −3 points

  2 ∶ 6

  on: An­nounc­ing the Launch of the In­sect Institute

  I hate to be a pessimist, but have you thought about branding this differently? I’d argue a less open approach with some sort of acronym that has a little obfuscate would be better.

  It’s literally a meme among many anti intellectual circles to say “I will not eat the bugs”—the idea being technical/​liberal/​Silicon Valley folks want to force normal people to eat bugs. Obviously this type of thinking is hyperbolic and ridiculous, but I worry that naming this org the Insect Institute creates a needlessly large attack surface for animal welfare, and by extension EA.

  https://​​amp.knowyourmeme.com/​​memes/​​i-will-not-eat-the-bugs

• Wil Perkins 24 Feb 2023 21:41 UTC

  −3 points

  1 ∶ 0

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• Wil Perkins 24 Feb 2023 18:58 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: Who is Un­com­fortable Cri­tiquing Who, Around EA?

  Thanks for clarifying. :) Sorry to derail.

• Wil Perkins 24 Feb 2023 18:56 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: “EA is very open to some kinds of cri­tique and very not open to oth­ers” and “Why do crit­i­cal EAs have to use pseudonyms?”

  Hah, fair point. I guess I just am hoping to drive more discussion about this type of thing on the forum and it is definitely frustrating to see how broken up conversations are.

  I am also pushing to promote things quicker and not get delayed in drafting forever. I did that for a while and basically never posted anything—I wish more people would be willing to post things on the community side that aren’t extremely high quality and polished.

• Wil Perkins 24 Feb 2023 18:50 UTC

  30 points

  14 ∶ 1

  in reply to: justsaying’s comment on: Con­sent Isn’t Always Enough

  Thanks for your input! From my perspective as one of the people talking about “establishing norms,” I can definitely do better to add nuance here.

  As others have mentioned the issue is the blended lines between the professional roles and personal community is tough to navigate. I generally am in favor of classical liberal approaches to personal morality, but I do think that, as Jeff points out, these sorts of things can be other people’s business in a professional setting.

  Imagine you rely on an EA grant for your job/​livelihood, or work at an EA organization. You work extremely hard but don’t manage to get you grant renewed or get fired. Then you find out that someone else in a similar role slept with a grantmaker or a grantmaker’s friend, and won the grant over you.

  How would that make you feel? Would you still feel it isn’t your business?

• Wil Perkins 24 Feb 2023 18:25 UTC

  6 points

  1 ∶ 1

  on: “EA is very open to some kinds of cri­tique and very not open to oth­ers” and “Why do crit­i­cal EAs have to use pseudonyms?”

  Just a note, but if you’re trying to facilitate object-level discussion it might be better not to drop this right as Ozzie dropped a very similar post? https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​posts/​​hAHNtAYLidmSJK7bs/​​who-is-uncomfortable-critiquing-who-around-ea

• Wil Perkins 24 Feb 2023 16:29 UTC

  35 points

  24 ∶ 10

  on: Con­sent Isn’t Always Enough

  Thanks for pointing out the nuance here, and I strongly agree with your points. These sorts of issues are as you said extremely corrosive, and make it difficult for outsiders not to have a frustrated and bitter view of the elite in EA.

  Also as has been pointing out, this type of casual disregard of any sort of restriction on relationships disproportionately drives away women, since so many people in powerful positions in EA are men.

  Finally, the optics are awful. I don’t have a strong stance on wokeism per se, but if we get more and more scandals like the TIME article I worry about EAs ability to grow and convince large decision makers. Reputation matters.