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147
BLUF:
* To determine whether AI is ‘improving exponentially’, ‘hitting the wall’, or any other claim which involves a quantity or magnitude (e.g. ‘This model was a big leap/small increment’). We need a good y-axis: an interval scale of AI capability which means +1 unit always represents the same degree of ‘how much better’, in the same way +1 degree Celsius is always the same amount of ‘how much hotter’.
* Yet there is no good y-axis for AI capability. All our...
My guess is that few EAs care emotionally about cost effectiveness and that they care emotionally about helping others a lot. Given limited resources, that means they have to be cost effective. Imagine a mother with a limited supply of food to share between her children. She’s doesn’t care emotionally about rationing food, but she’ll pay a lot of attention to how best to do rationing.
I do think there are things in the vicinity of careful reasoning/thinking clearly/having accurate beliefs that are core to many EAs identities. I think those can be developed naturally to some extent, and don’t seem like complete prerequisites to being an EA