Epistemic status: Speculation from two decently informed advocates armed with anecdata.
Note on process: After having some version of this conversation several times and saying, “we should probably write about this publicly,” we took the less heroic route: we recorded one of our conversations, fed the transcript into an LLM, and then substantially revised the structure, substance, and framing ourselves. We will not be sharing the transcript, as it is in...
TLDR: Take the population ethics quiz here: https://mdickens.me/pop-ethics/
Population ethics is an oft-overlooked subfield within ethics. Many people hold views that they don't realize contradict each other, or that have strange implications that they wouldn't endorse if they thought about it more.
Not just that—population ethics is a BIG DEAL. A lot of ethical decisions hinge on how you think about changes in future populations....
Headline finding: I audited 17 AI Safety Talent programmes. Zero of 17 have published any comparison group, rejected-applicant follow-up, matched control or randomisation. Not one. Every programme that mentions a counterfactual does it by asking participants to self-report.
Background
At least $70 million...
Maybe what humans need more than more advice is advice on how to actually apply advice — that is, better ways to bridge the gap between hearing it and living it?
So not just a list of steps or clever tips, but skills and mindsets for truly absorbing what we read, hear, discuss, and turning that into action. Which I feel might mean shifting from passively waiting for something to "click" to actively digging for what someone is trying to convey and figuring out how it could work for us, just as it worked for them.
Of course, not all advice will fit us, and that's fine. We can't expect to apply all advice we get, not even all advice that really resonates. Often, the greatest act of kindness we can do for ourselves isn't working to make ourselves more perfect, but understanding and accepting our imperfection and limitations.
However, realistically, I think the bigger reason we ignore most advice isn't that it's not for us — it's that we rarely pause to ask ourselves how it might look in practise or remind ourselves to follow through. That we waste the immense potential for transformation and for acquiring new habits and behaviours that's already out there.