Will Bradshaw

Karma: 8,364

Will Bradshaw Jan 13, 2023, 6:40 PM
12 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: wANIEL’s comment on: [Linkpost] FLI alleged to have offered funding to far right foundation
Expo possess the signed letter.

Will Bradshaw Jan 13, 2023, 5:38 PM
8 points
3 ∶ 0
in reply to: Erich_Grunewald 🔸’s comment on: [Linkpost] FLI alleged to have offered funding to far right foundation
Do you have a source for this? I wasn’t able to find anything myself with a quick search.
One source is the Expo article itself:
The only connection that Expo has been able to establish between Max Tegmark and the extreme right-wing media platform Nya Dagbladet is in the form of Tegmark’s brother, the journalist Per Shapiro, who for the past few years has been a recurring writer for Nya Dagbladet. Shapiro also runs the conspiracy theory-promoting podcast Folkets radio, whose episodes are presented on Nya Dagbladet’s website under the heading “radio reports”. Max Tegmark has, himself, appeared on his brother’s podcast. Whether this connection is significant with regards to the promise of funding from Max Tegmark and the Future of Life Institute to Nya Dagbladet is one of the questions we have been trying to put to them, but neither Max Tegmark nor his brother Per Shapiro have commented.
Shapiro told Expo that he is happy to answer questions concerning his journalism, but that he does not want to answer questions concerning whether he has been involved in contacts between Nya Dagbladet and FLI.

Will Bradshaw Jan 13, 2023, 5:37 PM
24 points
19 ∶ 0
in reply to: JWS 🔸’s comment on: [Linkpost] FLI alleged to have offered funding to far right foundation
Yeah, to be clear I also don’t think EA can just say “nothing to do with us” here, there’s clearly enough overlap and cross-pollination to be relevant. I just think this is significantly different from if this happened with, say, CEA or OpenPhil.
I think something like your modified language is about right.

Will Bradshaw Jan 13, 2023, 3:29 PM
27 points
3 ∶ 1
in reply to: timunderwood’s comment on: [Linkpost] FLI alleged to have offered funding to far right foundation
On that note, I just realised nobody has actually written the full name of the organization anywhere on this page!
For anyone who’s confused or unsure: we’re talking about the Future of Life Institute.

Will Bradshaw Jan 13, 2023, 2:42 PM
88 points
34 ∶ 1
in reply to: JWS 🔸’s comment on: [Linkpost] FLI alleged to have offered funding to far right foundation
and this seems to be another case of a major actor in our movement doing something that has massively poor consequences for the public perception of EA unless they can explain why
My only substantive disagreement with this comment (which I upvoted) is that I don’t think FLI is a major actor in EA; they’ve always kind of done their own thing, and haven’t been a core player within the EA community. I view them more as an independent actor with somewhat aligned goals.

Will Bradshaw Jan 13, 2023, 2:42 PM
21 points
6 ∶ 0
on: [Linkpost] FLI alleged to have offered funding to far right foundation
Thanks for flagging this! I agree it looks quite concerning, on several fronts.
Minor nit: I read the title as saying that FLI has claimed to have offered funding to a far-right org, whereas in fact what has happened is that someone else has claimed that FLI has done this. I think replacing “claimed” with “alleged” or similar in the title would help with this.

Will Bradshaw Jan 11, 2023, 2:34 PM
7 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: moonjurassic’s comment on: Reflections on Wytham Abbey
How much extra effort do you think those responsible should have gone to to find a non-luxurious venue, if the luxurious-looking one seemed better along most practical axes (e.g. size, location)?

Will Bradshaw Jan 3, 2023, 11:26 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: JP Addison🔸’s comment on: Suggestions for effective homelessness donations in San Francisco?
Yeah, I don’t think it’s super mean or anything. Hence why I didn’t actually downvote Michael’s comment, just disagreevoted.

Will Bradshaw Jan 3, 2023, 1:33 AM
14 points
7 ∶ 2
in reply to: MichaelDickens’s comment on: Suggestions for effective homelessness donations in San Francisco?
but I don’t think it’s an appropriate discussion topic for the EA Forum.
This sentence is what moved this comment from neutral-to-disagree to strong-disagree to me. I think it’s reasonable for folks to disagree about whether “most effective intervention within pre-specified constraints” is an EA-apt question. For various reasons, I strongly feel that we shouldn’t censure folks that try to do that thing (within reason).
If you are going to do the “well actually even the best interventions in this class aren’t effective enough to be counterfactually worthwhile” thing, I think it’s critical to do that in a tactful and constructive way, which this isn’t.

Will Bradshaw Dec 31, 2022, 4:54 PM
3 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: ishaan’s comment on: Announcing the EA Merch Store!
I appreciated this comment! I was tempted by the sticker but didn’t know the facts you raise here (and that Aaron confirms below). I’ll probably hold off now until/unless this is changed.
(That said, I wouldn’t buy it with a “go vegan!” message added.)

Will Bradshaw Dec 31, 2022, 4:14 PM
5 points
3 ∶ 0
in reply to: Richard Möhn’s comment on: Givewell, and its hiring process, needs serious reform
Also, looking into how applications are rejected: At the later stages, a phone call is a much better choice than an email, I would say.
This might be a nice thing to do, but I definitely don’t think it’s required, and I don’t think a lack of it is evidence that GiveWell’s hiring is unprofessional or in need of reform.
I don’t have all that much sympathy for a candidate who gets angry because they got a boilerplate-ish rejection email; this is widespread standard practice. Getting rejected sucks, obviously, and I have sympathy for that, but I don’t think pressuring orgs to take on burdensome practices to mitigate that is likely to be a good use of resources.

Will Bradshaw Dec 31, 2022, 3:57 PM
4 points
8 ∶ 1
in reply to: Jeff Kaufman 🔸’s comment on: StrongMinds should not be a top-rated charity (yet)
In the case of GWWC, I think one of the requirements they should have for endorsing recommendations from their trusted evaluators is that they be supported by public evaluations, and that those evaluations be current.
I think this is a good idea.

Will Bradshaw Dec 30, 2022, 4:09 PM
0 points
3 ∶ 1
on: Overall Karma vs Agreement Karma
I enjoyed the way this post was written—nice work!

Will Bradshaw Dec 30, 2022, 3:26 PM
22 points
17 ∶ 4
in reply to: Jan_Kulveit’s comment on: Announcing the EA Merch Store!
I disagree that the design of the products, or the website, are bad.
This is just my personal aesthetic opinion, of yours, but so is yours. I think your comment should have been phrased with more humility & awareness that you were just reporting your aesthetic taste. I also object to the statement about this being a “step back in EA visual culture”, which I think is just mean.
ETA: Also, I just checked the prices and they are almost all surprisingly cheap, so the second point seems wrong to me.

Will Bradshaw Dec 30, 2022, 3:19 PM
12 points
6 ∶ 3
on: Givewell, and its hiring process, needs serious reform
I’m surprised this hiring process took so long. I’ve previously applied for a job at OpenPhil (and again got to fairly late stages before being rejected) and it took much less time than this. Our organization also operates a fairly GiveWell-like hiring process, and most^[1] hiring rounds take significantly less time.
Other than that, I’m not particularly impressed/convinced by the claims made here, and (weakly) downvoted the post. I don’t think people involved in hiring should modify their processes based on this post, other than maybe increasing the weight they put on trying to make hiring proceed as quickly as possible.
1. ^
  One recent hiring round for a senior position has proven an exception to this.

Will Bradshaw Dec 30, 2022, 3:13 PM
10 points
4 ∶ 1
in reply to: Sabs’s comment on: Givewell, and its hiring process, needs serious reform
I spent quite a bit of time last year looking into the hiring processes/recommendations of various big companies, and Google was generally the one I came away most impressed/convinced by, in terms of how much I expect their hiring decisions to correlate with employee quality. I’d actually claim it’s much better than most other companies (of any size), and probably has had a positive influence on hiring as a whole through people copying their processes.
I’m not convinced it needs to take as long as it does, and that might be evidence of bloat/ dysfunction. But other than that, I don’t think Google’s hiring process is dysfunctional.

Will Bradshaw Dec 27, 2022, 1:43 PM
5 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: anonymous_ea’s comment on: Lizka’s Shortform
He has clearly worked on his actions.
I think this is probably true. I still think that systematically evading a Forum ban is worse behaviour (by which I mean, more lengthy-ban-worthy) than any of his previous transgressions.
There are other people who have done worse things without action from the mod team.
I am not personally aware of any, and am sceptical of this claim. Open to being convinced, though.

Will Bradshaw Dec 21, 2022, 11:14 PM
6 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jason’s comment on: Opinion: EA-jobs interviews are used by organizations/companies as free labor
Otherwise, the candidate will likely walk away feeling used, and may share information about the trial task with others
We generally try to be pretty clear that this is a standardised test, yeah. Including asking people not to share it with others.
I have mixed feelings about being “selective with the candidates that get asked to take a trial”—if you weight performance on the trial very highly, then trimming the number of candidates able to take a trial denies people who may have scored very well (but whose resume is middle-of-the-road) a chance to prove themselves.
I agree that this is a tradeoff—one that is made sharper by the expense of paying fairly for trial tasks (if we didn’t pay, we could have a lower bar for sending out trial tasks). I think it’s fairly common to try to address this by having multiple trial tasks / work trials of increasing length & selectivity. (Though this has its own cost, namely an unusually lengthy and gruelling application process.)

Will Bradshaw Dec 21, 2022, 10:07 PM
26 points
15 ∶ 0
in reply to: anonymous_ea’s comment on: Lizka’s Shortform
the relatively small crime of evading a previous ban
I don’t think repeatedly evading moderator bans is a “relatively small crime”. If Forum moderation is to mean anything at all, it has to be consistently enforced, and if someone just decides that moderation doesn’t apply to them, they shouldn’t be allowed to post or comment on the Forum.
Charles only got to his 6 month ban via a series of escalating minor bans, most of which I agreed with. I think he got a lot of slack in his behaviour because he sometimes provided significant value, but sometimes (with insufficient infrequency) behaved in ways that were seriously out of kilter with the goal of a healthy Forum.
I personally think the 10-year thing is kind of silly and he should just have been banned indefinitely at this point, then maybe have the ban reviewed in a little while. But it’s clear he’s been systematically violating Forum policies in a way that requires serious action.
The post on forum norms says a picture of geese all flying in formation and in one direction is the desirable state of the forum; I disagree that this is desirable.
I have no idea if this was intentional on the part of the moderators, but they aren’t all flying in the same direction. ;-)

Will Bradshaw Dec 21, 2022, 7:56 PM
10 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Larks’s comment on: Longtermism Fund: December 2022 Grants Report
Agreed, strong upvote to the OP from me. Really appreciate the transparency here.
(Disclaimer: I’m involved in one of the orgs included in these grants, but haven’t played any part in fundraising.)