I’m an artist, writer, and human being.
To be a little more precise: I make video games, edit Wikipedia, and write here and on LessWrong!
Yitz
Karma: 403
This would have to be a separate project from my proposed direct Wikipedia editing, but I’d be very much in support of this (I see the efforts as being complementary)
could lead to disincentive to post more controversial ideas there though
Do we know how much impact Sam Bankman-Fried‘s personal philosophy is going to have on FTX’s grant-making choices? This is a lot of financial power for a single organization to have, so I expect the makeup of the core team to have an outsized effect on the rest of the movement.
Unfortunately I missed the application deadline, but I look forward to hearing great things from those who will attend!
I share your concerns; what would you recommend doing about it though? One initiative that may come in handy here is the increased focus on getting “regular people” to do grantmaking work, which at least helps spread resources around somewhat. Not sure there’s anything we can do to stop the general bad incentives of acting for the sake of money rather than altruism. For that, we just need to hope most members of the community have strong virtues, which tbh I think we’re pretty good about.
Thinking about what I’d do if I was a grantmaker that others wouldn’t do (inspired by https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AvwgADnkdxynknYRR/issues-with-centralised-grantmaking). One course of action I’d strongly consider is to reach out to my non-EA friends—most of whom are fairly poor, are artists/game developers whose ideas/philosophies I consider high value, and who live around the world—and fund them to do independent research/work on EA cause areas instead of the minimum-wage day jobs many of them currently have. I’d expect some of them to be interested (though some would decline), and they’d likely be coming from a very different angle than most people in this space. This may not be the most efficient use of money, but making use of my peculiar/unique network of friends is something only I can do, and may be of value.
Posted on my shortform, but thought it’s worth putting here as well, given that I was inspired by this post to write it:
Thinking about what I’d do if I was a grantmaker that others wouldn’t do. One course of action I’d strongly consider is to reach out to my non-EA friends—most of whom are fairly poor, are artists/game developers whose ideas/philosophies I consider high value, and who live around the world—and fund them to do independent research/work on EA cause areas instead of the minimum-wage day jobs many of them currently have. I’d expect some of them to be interested (though some would decline), and they’d likely be coming from a very different angle than most people in this space. This may not be the most efficient use of money, but making use of my peculiar/unique network of friends is something only I can do, and may be of value.
I think I would actually be for this, as long as the resolution criteria can be made clear, and at least in the beginning it can only be for people who already have a large online presence .
One potential issue is if the resolution criteria is worded the wrong way, perhaps something like “there will be at least one news article which mentions negative allegations against person X,” it may encourage unethical people to try to purposely spread false negative allegations in order to game the market. The resolution criteria would therefore have to be very carefully thought about so that sort of thing doesn’t happen.
+1 here as well, frugality option would be an amazing thing to normalize, especially if we can get it going as a thing beyond the world of EA (which may be possible if we get some good reporting on it).
Very strongly agree with you here. I also agree that the positives tend to outweigh the negatives, and I hope that this leads to more careful, but not less giving.
Quick note that I misread “refuges” as “refugees,” and got really confused. In case anyone else made the same mistake, this post is talking about bunkers, not immigrants ;)
I need to book plane tickets for EAGx Prague before they get prohibitively expensive, but I’ve never done this before and haven’t been able to get myself to actually go through the process for some reason. Any advice for what to do when you get “stuck” on something that you know will be pretty easy once you actually do it?
This is hilarious; I was literally thinking yesterday that we should be reaching out to the Orthodox/Modern Orthodox Jewish community, and was going to write a post on that today! Happy to know this already exists :)
May I ask what your long-term plans are?
Please do! I’d absolutely love to read that :)
As a singular data point, I’ll submit that until reading this article, I was under the impression that the Orthogonality thesis is the main reason why researchers are concerned.
[Question] Best person to contact for quick media opportunity?
I’m curious on what exactly you see your opinions as differing here. Is it just how much to trust inside vs outside view, or something else?
Thanks for the excellent analysis! It’s notable that if your theory is correct, it wasn’t a single person here making an irrational decision, but two different entire command structures being so blinded by emotional thinking that nobody thought to even suggest that Cuba wouldn’t change anything in terms of defensive/offensive capabilities.
I think even “technically flawed” critiques could actually be very useful, because developing arguments against that which are more easily accessible will probably be helpful in the future. (disclaimer I’m currently on a sleeping med making me feel slightly loopy, so apologies if the above doesn’t make sense)