Will Bradshaw

• Will Bradshaw 28 Mar 2024 14:43 UTC

  6 points

  3 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Forumite’s comment on: An­nounce­ment on the fu­ture of Wytham Abbey

  I also thought the Oakland venue was a very good choice, and was glad the events team chose it again in 2024.

• Will Bradshaw 16 Mar 2024 11:09 UTC

  55 points

  24 ∶ 1

  in reply to: John Salter’s comment on: Un­flat­ter­ing as­pects of Effec­tive Altruism

  No self-interested person is ever going to point this out because it pisses off the mods and CEA, who ultimately decide whose voices can be heard—collectively, they can quietly ban anyone from the forum /​ EAG without any evidence, oversight, or due process.

  I’ve heard the claim that the EA Forum is too expensive, repeatedly, on the EA Forum, from diverse users including yourself. If CEA is trying to suppress this claim, they’re doing a very bad job of it, and I think it’s just silly to claim that making that first claim is liable to get you banned.

Com­par­ing sam­pling strate­gies for early de­tec­tion of stealth biothreats

• Will Bradshaw 5 Jan 2024 17:10 UTC

  29 points

  28 ∶ 0

  in reply to: lake.apted@gmail.com’s comment on: Prac­ti­cally A Book Re­view: Ap­pendix to “Non­lin­ear’s Ev­i­dence: De­bunk­ing False and Mislead­ing Claims”

  By supporting Ozy’s post, Rafael agrees that anyone who reads all the words previously written on the issue belongs to an elite group. The definition of ‘elite’ is ‘a select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society’.

  I think it’s fairly clear that the use of “elite” in that paragraph was a joke.

• Will Bradshaw 5 Jan 2024 0:12 UTC

  9 points

  3 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Rebecca’s comment on: Prac­ti­cally A Book Re­view: Ap­pendix to “Non­lin­ear’s Ev­i­dence: De­bunk­ing False and Mislead­ing Claims”

  “How many people die in road accidents” doesn’t tell you much about the badness of speeding without the denominator—which in the US is approximately everybody approximately all the time.

• Will Bradshaw 21 Dec 2023 16:05 UTC

  11 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Jason’s comment on: Effec­tive Asper­sions: How the Non­lin­ear In­ves­ti­ga­tion Went Wrong

  This is an excellent comment.

• Will Bradshaw 20 Dec 2023 13:05 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

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Air Sam­pling for Early Pathogen Detection

• Will Bradshaw 8 Dec 2023 14:51 UTC

  26 points

  11 ∶ 0

  in reply to: KnightSaladin’s comment on: EA thoughts from Is­rael-Ha­mas war

  Whatever Hamas’ plan was, what actually happened included gunning down hundreds of helpless civilians at a music festival and massive, brutal sexual violence against large numbers of women.

  This isn’t hard. Hamas’ Oct 7 attacks were a brutal massacre of innocent civilian life. It’s possible to acknowledge that at the same time as strongly condemning Israel’s conduct, either in the current war specifically or in their history with Palestinians in general.

• Will Bradshaw 6 Dec 2023 23:31 UTC

  34 points

  36 ∶ 34

  in reply to: Ofer’s comment on: EA thoughts from Is­rael-Ha­mas war

  I downvoted this comment, even though I’m pretty sympathetic to many of the factual claims it contains: in particular, I don’t believe that Israeli civilian or military leadership are doing everything they can to avoid civilian casualties. Nevertheless, this comment feels quite out-of-place and vaguely inappropriate to me, given the framing and emotional tone of the OP, which feels much more about explaining one person’s feelings and thought processes than an actual attempt to make a strong argument for a specific position.

  I also think it’s needlessly hostile, in a place where compassion and acknowledgement of uncertainty seem particularly important. Calling someone’s views “propaganda talking points” seems like a bad way to start any productive dialogue.

• Will Bradshaw 30 Nov 2023 16:02 UTC

  12 points

  4 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Yarrow B.’s comment on: EA is good, actually

  The stated reason is the same as Nick’s: since the FTX collapse he’s been reused from too much board business for staying on the board to make sense:

  Since last November, I’ve been recused from the board on all matters associated with FTX and related topics, which has ended up being a large proportion of board business. (This is because the recusal affected not just decisions that were directly related to the collapse of FTX, but also many other decisions for which the way EV UK has been affected by the collapse of FTX was important context.) I know I initially said that I’d wait for there to be more capacity, but trustee recruitment has moved more slowly than I’d anticipated, and with the ongoing recusal I didn’t expect to add much capacity for the foreseeable future, so it felt like a natural time to step down.

• Will Bradshaw 7 Nov 2023 12:15 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: DavidNash’s comment on: What’s the jus­tifi­ca­tion for EA be­ing so elitist?

  TIL!

  I think this strengthens my confidence in my original comment re: nearly all EA roles being paid under market rate.

• Will Bradshaw 7 Nov 2023 1:57 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: calebp’s comment on: What’s the jus­tifi­ca­tion for EA be­ing so elitist?

  Yeah, I agree this is a real and hard case.

  Similarly, I think there are roles where the only readily available benchmarks are in academia or the nonprofit sector—in these cases we can assume that those benchmarks are too low, but we don’t know by how much, so determining fair compensation is hard. Community building plausibly falls into this bucket.

• Will Bradshaw 6 Nov 2023 18:02 UTC

  5 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Stan Pinsent’s comment on: What’s the jus­tifi­ca­tion for EA be­ing so elitist?

  Interesting. Are there any examples of EA jobs which are more poorly-paid than their private-sector counterparts?

  I think this is the great majority of EA jobs that aren’t in operations.

  In our case (as an EA-adjacent biosecurity org), it’s simultaneously the case that (a) most of our staff are well-paid relative to academic and nonprofit benchmarks, and (b) most of our staff could make much more money working in the private sector. Several of our best (and best-compensated) performers took dramatic pay cuts to work for us. I think this is the norm for EA-adjacent organizations, and is roughly the correct norm to be pursuing.

  In discussions of EA compensation, it’s very common to equivocate between “EA jobs are well-paid relative to nonprofit/​academic benchmarks”, “EA jobs are well-paid relative to the average person” and “EA-jobs are well-paid relative to for-profit benchmarks”. I think only the last of these is actually cause for concern, and is quite rarely true.

  That said, I have seen EA operations roles (primarily at EV orgs) that I think were significantly overpaid, so I’m not going to claim this never happens.

• Will Bradshaw 2 Nov 2023 11:36 UTC

  4 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Peter Wildeford’s comment on: An­nounc­ing EA Global plans for 2024

  I’m also curious about this. Boston is convenient to me as a Cambridge resident, but I’d guess that holding an event in DC would be more valuable.

• Will Bradshaw 2 Nov 2023 11:34 UTC

  5 points

  3 ∶ 0

  in reply to: ElliotJDavies’s comment on: An­nounc­ing EA Global plans for 2024

  I don’t think I agree that CEA shouldn’t be doing cause specific events, and I think that given how the past couple of Bay Area EAGs went this is a pretty natural decision.

  But it does seem pretty regrettable that there’ll be no cause-general EAG in the Americas next year.

• Will Bradshaw 9 Oct 2023 12:30 UTC

  40 points

  12 ∶ 5

  in reply to: Will Bradshaw’s comment on: Shar­ing In­for­ma­tion About Nonlinear

  Another two weeks later, and with no response or acknowledgement from Nonlinear (or even a statement about when they plan to give a response), I’m personally updating moderately towards the view that Nonlinear’s communications around the initial release of this post were more about FUD/​DARVO than honesty. I’ve also updated further towards the position that it was right for Ben to post when he did, and that delaying would have been playing into the hands of bad actors. These remain defeasible positions, but I’m not holding my breath.

• Will Bradshaw 21 Sep 2023 12:04 UTC

  23 points

  11 ∶ 3

  in reply to: Jeff Kaufman’s comment on: Shar­ing In­for­ma­tion About Nonlinear

  I think there are practical reasons why it might take longer to prepare a comprehensive public response than the private response they were envisaging for Ben + Lightcone. That said, I also think that there are a lot of non-comprehensive responses that would have taken less time to write while still supporting their version of events, and I think it’s reasonable to update against Nonlinear in their absence.

• Will Bradshaw 20 Sep 2023 13:07 UTC

  95 points

  30 ∶ 2

  on: Shar­ing In­for­ma­tion About Nonlinear

  We’re coming up on two weeks now since this post was published, with no substantive response from Nonlinear (other than this). I think it would be good to get an explicit timeline from Nonlinear on when we can expect to see their promised response. It’s reasonable to ask for folks to reserve judgement for a short time, but not indefinitely. @Kat Woods @Emerson Spartz

• Will Bradshaw 11 Sep 2023 12:19 UTC

  38 points

  21 ∶ 0

  in reply to: chloe’s comment on: Shar­ing In­for­ma­tion About Nonlinear

  I hope this doesn’t seem heartless, but: Given the degree of contested narratives in this affair, can someone not-anonymous with access to Chloe confirm that this account speaks for her?

  (i think it probably does, to be clear, but also think it’s worth checking)