Will Bradshaw

• Will Bradshaw 19 May 2022 16:18 UTC

  80 points

  in reply to: MatthewDahlhausen’s comment on: Some po­ten­tial les­sons from Car­rick’s Con­gres­sional bid

  It’s very much not obvious to me that EAs should generally prefer progressive democratic candidates in general, or Salinas in particular.

  Speaking personally, I am generally not excited about Democratic progressives gaining more power in the party relative to centrists, and I’m pretty confident I’m not alone here in that^[1].

  I also think it’s false to claim that Salinas’s platform as linked gives much reason to think she will be a force for good on global poverty, animal welfare, or meaningful voting reform. (I’d obviously change my mind on this if there are other Salinas quotes that pertain more directly to these issues.)

  There are also various parts of her platform that make me think there’s a decent chance that her time in office will turn out to be bad for the world by my lights (not just relative to Carrick). I obviously don’t expect everyone here to agree with me on that, and I’m certainly not confident about it, but I also don’t want broad claims that progressives are better by EA values to stand uncontested, because I personally don’t think that’s true.

  1. ^

     To be clear, I think this is very contestable within an EA framework, and am not trying to claim that my political preferences here are necessarily implied by EA.

• Will Bradshaw 16 May 2022 0:33 UTC

  13 points

  in reply to: Aaron Gertler’s comment on: Bad Omens in Cur­rent Com­mu­nity Building

  I keep going back and forth on this.

  My first reaction was “this is just basic best practice for any people-/​relationship-focused role, obviously community builders should have CRMs”.

  Then I realised none of the leaders of the student group I was most active in had CRMs (to my knowledge) and I would have been maybe a bit creeped out if they had, which updated me in the other direction.

  Then I thought about it more and realised that group was very far in the direction of “friends with a common interest hang out”, and that for student groups that were less like that I’m still basically pro CRMs. This feels obviously true for “advocacy” groups (anything explicitly religious or political, but also e.g. environmentalist groups, sustainability groups, help-your-local-community groups, anything do-goody). But I think I’d be in favour of even relatively neutral groups (e.g. student science club, student orchestras, etc) doing this.

  Given how hard it is to keep any student group alive across multiple generations of leadership, not having a CRM is starting to seem very foolhardy to me.

• Will Bradshaw 14 May 2022 15:19 UTC

  4 points

  on: Against “longter­mist” as an identity

  I feel like many (most?) of the “-ist”-like descriptors that apply to me are dependent on empirical/​refutable claims. For example, I’m also an atheist—but that view would potentially be quite easy to disprove with the right evidence.

  Indeed, I think it’s just very common for people who hold a certain empirical view to be called an X-ist. Maybe that’s somewhat bad for their epistemics, but I think this piece goes too far in suggesting that I have to think something is “for-sure-correct” before “-ist” descriptors apply.

  Separately, I think identifying as a rationalist and effective altruist is good for my epistemics. Part of being a good EA is having careful epistemics, updating based on evidence, being impartially compassionate, etc. Part of being a rationalist is to be aware of and willing to correct for my cognitive biases. When someone challenges me on one of these points, my professed identity gives me a strong incentive to behave well that I wouldn’t otherwise have. (To be fair, I’m less sure this applies to “longtermist”, which I think has much less pro-epistemic baggage than EA.)

• Will Bradshaw 13 May 2022 19:59 UTC

  27 points

  in reply to: Rob Mitchell’s comment on: Bad Omens in Cur­rent Com­mu­nity Building

  Occasionally, apparent coldness to immediate suffering: I’ve only seen this a bit, but even one example could be enough to put someone off for good.

  I would really like to ban the term “rounding error”.

• Will Bradshaw 2 May 2022 11:23 UTC

  14 points

  in reply to: Max Clarke’s comment on: Notes From a Pledger

  1. Strong messaging to the effect of “we need talent” gives the impression that there are enough jobs that if you are reasonably skilled, you can get a job.

  2. Strong messaging to the effect of “we need founders”, or “just apply for funding” gives the impression that you will get funding.

  I’m a bit confused, because this doesn’t seem to match the scenario described in the OP that you quoted. My summary of that scenario would be:

  1. An EA org paid the OP to work for them as a contractor;

  2. The org then invited them to apply for an open position for a similar role;

  3. They didn’t get the position (presumably because the org found another candidate they thought would be better?).

  I have a lot of sympathy for the OP in this scenario, and expect it was a very painful and disheartening experience. I definitely cringe a bit when I read it. But it doesn’t seem to me like anyone did anything wrong here—it just seems like the kind of unfortunate-but-unavoidable situation that comes up all the time in the workplace. But you’re saying this is “harmful” and that orgs need to “do a lot better”, which suggests that you disagree?

• Will Bradshaw 1 May 2022 13:22 UTC

  9 points

  in reply to: Max Clarke’s comment on: Notes From a Pledger

  I really hope that orgs can do a lot better on this, because I think this and similar things are pretty harmful.

  Can you elaborate on what part of this you think is harmful, and what would be better?

An­nounc­ing the Nu­cleic Acid Ob­ser­va­tory pro­ject for early de­tec­tion of catas­trophic biothreats

• Will Bradshaw 29 Apr 2022 15:54 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Owen Cotton-Barratt’s comment on: Against im­mor­tal­ity?

  Thanks, Owen! I do feel quite conflicted about my feelings here, appreciate your engagement. :)

  I do claim that it’s good to have articulations of things like this even if the case is reasonably well known

  Yeah, I agree with this—ultimately it’s on those of us more on the pro-immortality side to make the case more strongly, and having solid articulations of both sides is valuable. Also flagging that this...

  Would I eventually like to move to a post-death world? Probably, but I’m not certain. For one thing I think quite likely the concept of “death” will not carve reality at its joins so cleanly in the future.

  ...seems roughly right to me.

• Will Bradshaw 29 Apr 2022 14:07 UTC

  15 points

  on: In­creas­ing De­mand­ing­ness in EA

  (This has not applied evenly. People who were already planning to make EA central to their career are generally experiencing EA as less demanding: pay in EA organizations has gone up, there is less stress around fundraising, and there is less of a focus on frugality or other forms of personal sacrifice. In some cases these changes mean that if someone does decide to shift their career it is less of a sacrifice than it would’ve been, though that does depend on how the field you enter is funded.)

  Thanks, I found this discussion of in what ways EA is now more vs less demanding quite clarifying. I appreciate the point that for some people EA is much less demanding than it used to be, while for others it’s much more so.

• Will Bradshaw 29 Apr 2022 14:05 UTC

  20 points

  on: Against im­mor­tal­ity?

  I felt quite frustrated by this post, because the preponderance of EA discourse is already quite sceptical of anti-ageing interventions (as you can tell by the fact that no major EA funder is putting significant resources into it). I would in fact claim that the amount of time and ink spent within EA in discussing reasons not to support anti-ageing interventions significantly exceeds that spent on the pro side.

  So this post is repeating well-covered arguments, and strengthening the perception that “EAs don’t do longevity”, while claiming to be promoting an under-represented point of view.

• Will Bradshaw 25 Apr 2022 14:36 UTC

  17 points

  on: In­tro­duc­ing Canopy Retreats

  This seems very promising—thank you for taking this on for the community!

  I would personally find it helpful if you could elaborate a bit on what you mean by a “retreat” here, and give a few examples of types of events that would or wouldn’t fall within your remit. In my experience there are several quite different types of event that are sometimes called “retreats”, so it would be helpful to get more information on which of these you are excited about running, and why.

• Will Bradshaw 14 Apr 2022 19:23 UTC

  13 points

  on: How should peo­ple spend money to be more pro­duc­tive?

  The suggestions in the comments on this post might be a helpful starting point, though they generally don’t dig into the evidential basis for each suggestion.

• Will Bradshaw 13 Apr 2022 23:04 UTC

  26 points

  in reply to: freedomandutility’s comment on: Free-spend­ing EA might be a big prob­lem for op­tics and epistemics

  I think this happened because the flow of money into EA has made the obligations to optimise cost-efficiency and to think counterfactually seem a lot weaker to many EAs. I don’t think the obligations are any weaker than they were—we should just have a slightly lower cost effectiveness bar for funding things than before.

  To me, the most important issue that this (and other comments here) raises is that, as a community, we don’t yet have a good model of how an altruist who (rationally/​altruistically) places a very high value on their time should actually act. Or, for that matter, how they shouldn’t.

• Will Bradshaw 13 Apr 2022 11:17 UTC

  22 points

  on: More Dol­lars Than Cents

  It manifests as paying CEO-grade salaries for entry level positions in charities.

  I’m pretty concerned about the cultural effects of all the money pouring into EA (especially with regard to grifters/​vultures), but this is a point I’ve seen made a couple of times that I think is (currently) misguided.

  Most nonprofit workers are absurdly underpaid, in ways that pretty clearly bottleneck the effectiveness of those organisations. That doesn’t make for a very good reference class.

  While they pay better than other nonprofits, most EA nonprofits still pay significantly below market rate. Their employees are still generally taking a financial hit to work for them, albeit a smaller one than they would working for a traditional nonprofit (or going to grad school).

  When lots of prominent EA nonprofits start paying at or above market rates for talent, then I think we should consider worrying about harmfully inflated salaries. Until then, I’m quite happy for EA orgs to reduce the financial cost of doing the most good with one’s career.

• Will Bradshaw 25 Feb 2022 1:08 UTC

  75 points

  in reply to: Marianne’s comment on: An­nounc­ing Alvea—An EA COVID Vac­cine Project

  At present, it is basically impossible to advance any drug to market without extensive animal testing – certainly in the US, and I think everywhere else as well. The same applies to many other classes of biomedical intervention. A norm of EAs not doing animal testing basically blocks them from biomedical science and biotechnology; among other things, this would largely prevent them from making progress across large swathes of technical biosecurity.

  This seems bad – the moral cost of failing to avert biocatastrophe, in my view, hugely outweigh the moral costs of animal testing. At the same time, speaking as a biologist who has spent a lot of time around (and on occasion conducting) animal testing, I do think that mainstream scientific culture around animal testing is deeply problematic, leading to large amounts of unnecessary suffering and a cavalier disregard for the welfare of sentient beings (not to mention a lot of pretty blatantly motivated argumentation). I don’t want EAs to fall into that mindset, and the reactions to this comment (and their karma totals) somewhat concern me.

  I wouldn’t support a norm of EAs not doing animal testing. But I think I would support a norm of EAs approaching animal testing with much more solemnity, transparency, gratitude and regret than is normal in the life sciences. We need to remember at all times that we are dealing with living, feeling beings, who didn’t & couldn’t consent to be treated as we treat them, and who should be cared for and remembered. And we need to make sure we utilise animal testing as little as we can get away with, and make what testing we do use as painless as possible.

  Finally, while I don’t know everyone on the Alvea team personally, those I do know have a strong track record of deeply believing in, and living out, EA values around impartial concern for all sentient beings. I expect that if I had detailed knowledge of their animal testing decisions, I would believe they were necessary and the right thing to do. As an early test case on EAs in animal testing, I think it would be worth the Alvea team responding to this and developing a transparent policy around animal testing – but as a way to set a good example, not because I think there is reason to be suspicious of their decisions or motives.

• Will Bradshaw 18 Feb 2022 10:59 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: Yonatan Cale’s comment on: Hiring EA Developers

  Yeah, if we’re talking a shortish paragraph given to candidates who ask for it, I think that’s fine. I think I’d be fine with that as a norm.

• Will Bradshaw 15 Feb 2022 16:05 UTC

  12 points

  on: Hiring EA Developers

  As someone who’s been reading & thinking about hiring a lot lately, I agree with quite a few things here. For example, I agree that providing a clear understanding of when to apply, emphasising mentorship & culture, tackling the remote-work issue head on, and being as straight with candidates as possible about the role, organisation, and application process, all seem good.

  However, there are also things that feel like mistakes, some of them quite significant. (I’m open to being persuaded I’m wrong about most of these, especially since this could represent a significant improvement in my group’s hiring practices.)

  As a community, I think it would be better if we’d give applicants some kind of feedback.

  As I’ve written elsewhere recently, giving thorough feedback to candidates is very expensive, and frequently isn’t the best use of current staff’s time. I’m in favour of at least giving some feedback, but I’m currently weakly opposed to any strong cultural expectation of in-depth feedback.

  I recommend asking for ONLY a CV, without even filling in a form. I think that would be attractive, and good for us as a community, since it will give the developers more time to do useful things, including applying to more EA orgs.

  I agree that it’s often a good idea to skip the cover letter, which mainly tests rhetorical ability rather than ability to do the job. I also agree that application forms should be kept reasonably short. But only asking for a CV doesn’t seem great to me, for two reasons. Firstly, CVs are typically very hard to blind well for unbiased application review. Secondly, there’s a variety of other critical info I need about candidates, and a Google Form or similar is typically the most efficient way (for both us and the candidates) to get that information^[1].

  Insofar as a longer application form allows for less reliance on interviewing, I think adding more stuff to the application form will often be a good trade-off.

  My current-best recommendation (from a startup that is really good at hiring) is to ask the candidate what they prefer.

  This currently seems like quite a bad idea to me, for two important reasons.

  Firstly, some assessment methods are straight-up better at predicting job performance than others, and we have evidence of which ones those are – we shouldn’t let candidates choose worse ones. EA orgs don’t put a lot of emphasis on take-home tasks because we enjoy them, we do it because they are better than the alternative for the thing we are trying to do^[2].

  Secondly, comparability of assessment is critical to comparing candidates fairly. Letting different candidates choose different assessment methods seems like it would make that impossible.

  I am a strong proponent of paying applicants for their time, and otherwise being respectful of their time and needs. But I think we should use the assessment methods we have evidence for, and take a lot of care to make sure we assess every candidate as identically as possible, not allow applicants to pick and choose.

  1. ^

     I could potentially be persuaded that a two-step process, with an initial very short application form followed by a longer one for credible applicants, could be a decent workaround.

  2. ^

     (And because a lot of us are copying OpenPhil.)

• Will Bradshaw 13 Feb 2022 19:28 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: Vaidehi Agarwalla’s comment on: If you’re af­ter a job in the US: the H-1B Lot­tery is in six weeks

  Furthermore, the process by which a nonprofit is designated a “research nonprofit” is kind of arcane (for example, it’s independent of how the IRS classifies the org in their 501(c)(3) designation). If the org you’re applying to hasn’t successfully sponsored cap-exempt H-1Bs in the past, expect additional delays while their lawyers argue with USCIS about it.

• Will Bradshaw 11 Feb 2022 8:58 UTC

  18 points

  on: Is Com­bat­ting Ageism The Most Po­ten­tially Im­pact­ful Form of So­cial Ac­tivism?

  All the violent-state-oppression stuff applies to every law equally; I don’t think it gives a special reason to focus on laws affecting teenagers. Are you trying to convince us to become anarchists, or that the treatment of teenagers in rich countries is particularly unjust even within a statist framework? If the latter, I think it would be more productive to focus on the evidence you think shows that people’s beliefs around teenagers’ capacity are false; just linking your book doesn’t do much.

  Even accepting the broader framing and the claim that teenagers are treated unjustly, you don’t make any case that this is competitive with other top causes. Even if we’re focusing on societal justice within rich countries (which I don’t think is good cause prioritisation), would-be immigrants seem more oppressed than teenagers to me.

  (FWIW, I’m basically opposed to compulsory schooling after age 12, think teenagers should be given many more rights than they are, and tentatively think that parents should have substantially less power to override their children’s wishes on various things.)

• Will Bradshaw 9 Feb 2022 18:58 UTC

  4 points

  on: Ap­ply for Pro­fes­sional Coaching

  How is this different from just applying to those coaches directly?