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Curated and popular this week
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At the last EAG Bay Area, I gave a workshop on navigating a difficult job market, which I repeated days ago at EAG London. A few people have asked for my notes and slides, so I’ve decided to share them here.
This is the slide deck I used.
Below is a low-effort loose transcript, minus the interactive bits (you can see these on the slides in the form of reflection and discussion prompts with a timer). In my opinion, some interactive elements were rushed because I stubbornly wanted to pack too much into the session. If you’re going to re-use them, I recommend you allow for more time than I did if you can (and if you can’t, I empathise with the struggle of making difficult trade-offs due to time constraints).
One of the benefits of written communication over spoken communication is that you can be very precise and comprehensive. I’m sorry that those benefits are wasted on this post. Ideally, I’d have turned my speaker notes from the session into a more nuanced written post that would include a hundred extra points that I wanted to make and caveats that I wanted to add. Unfortunately, I’m a busy person, and I’ve come to accept that such a post will never exist. So I’m sharing this instead as a MVP that I believe can still be valuable –certainly more valuable than nothing!
Introduction
80,000 Hours’ whole thing is asking: Have you considered using your career to have an impact?
As an advisor, I now speak with lots of people who have indeed considered it and very much want it – they don't need persuading. What they need is help navigating a tough job market.
I want to use this session to spread some messages I keep repeating in these calls and create common knowledge about the job landscape.
But first, a couple of caveats:
1. Oh my, I wonder if volunteering to run this session was a terrible idea. Giving advice to one person is difficult; giving advice to many people simultaneously is impossible. You all have different skill sets, are at different points in
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Thank you to Arepo and Eli Lifland for looking over this article for errors.
I am sorry that this article is so long. Every time I thought I was done with it I ran into more issues with the model, and I wanted to be as thorough as I could. I’m not going to blame anyone for skimming parts of this article.
Note that the majority of this article was written before Eli’s updated model was released (the site was updated june 8th). His new model improves on some of my objections, but the majority still stand.
Introduction:
AI 2027 is an article written by the “AI futures team”. The primary piece is a short story penned by Scott Alexander, depicting a month by month scenario of a near-future where AI becomes superintelligent in 2027,proceeding to automate the entire economy in only a year or two and then either kills us all or does not kill us all, depending on government policies.
What makes AI 2027 different from other similar short stories is that it is presented as a forecast based on rigorous modelling and data analysis from forecasting experts. It is accompanied by five appendices of “detailed research supporting these predictions” and a codebase for simulations. They state that “hundreds” of people reviewed the text, including AI expert Yoshua Bengio, although some of these reviewers only saw bits of it.
The scenario in the short story is not the median forecast for any AI futures author, and none of the AI2027 authors actually believe that 2027 is the median year for a singularity to happen. But the argument they make is that 2027 is a plausible year, and they back it up with images of sophisticated looking modelling like the following:
This combination of compelling short story and seemingly-rigorous research may have been the secret sauce that let the article to go viral and be treated as a serious project:To quote the authors themselves:
It’s been a crazy few weeks here at the AI Futures Project. Almost a million people visited our webpage; 166,00
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Authors: Joel McGuire (analysis, drafts) and Lily Ottinger (editing)
Formosa: Fulcrum of the Future?
An invasion of Taiwan is uncomfortably likely and potentially catastrophic. We should research better ways to avoid it.
TLDR: I forecast that an invasion of Taiwan increases all the anthropogenic risks by ~1.5% (percentage points) of a catastrophe killing 10% or more of the population by 2100 (nuclear risk by 0.9%, AI + Biorisk by 0.6%). This would imply it constitutes a sizable share of the total catastrophic risk burden expected over the rest of this century by skilled and knowledgeable forecasters (8% of the total risk of 20% according to domain experts and 17% of the total risk of 9% according to superforecasters).
I think this means that we should research ways to cost-effectively decrease the likelihood that China invades Taiwan. This could mean exploring the prospect of advocating that Taiwan increase its deterrence by investing in cheap but lethal weapons platforms like mines, first-person view drones, or signaling that mobilized reserves would resist an invasion.
Disclaimer
I read about and forecast on topics related to conflict as a hobby (4th out of 3,909 on the Metaculus Ukraine conflict forecasting competition, 73 out of 42,326 in general on Metaculus), but I claim no expertise on the topic. I probably spent something like ~40 hours on this over the course of a few months.
Some of the numbers I use may be slightly outdated, but this is one of those things that if I kept fiddling with it I'd never publish it.
Acknowledgements: I heartily thank Lily Ottinger, Jeremy Garrison, Maggie Moss and my sister for providing valuable feedback on previous drafts.
Part 0: Background
The Chinese Civil War (1927–1949) ended with the victorious communists establishing the People's Republic of China (PRC) on the mainland. The defeated Kuomintang (KMT[1]) retreated to Taiwan in 1949 and formed the Republic of China (ROC). A dictatorship during the cold war, T
Moral Particularism and Moral Generalism are two contrasting approaches to ethics that can be examined in the context of the drowning child thought experiment and effective altruism.
Moral Particularism suggests that moral judgments should be made on a case-by-case basis, considering the specific details and context of each situation. It emphasizes the importance of individual circumstances, relationships, and the unique features of moral dilemmas. According to Moral Particularism, there are no fixed rules or principles that can be universally applied to determine right or wrong.
In the drowning child thought experiment, Moral Particularism would argue that the morally correct action depends on various factors such as how you are feeling that day, whether the child is known to you, and the potential risks involved. The particularist approach would not rely on a predetermined moral rule, such as "one should always save a drowning child," but would instead encourage a nuanced evaluation of the specific situation before deciding on the morally appropriate course of action.
On the other hand, Moral Generalism posits that moral judgments should be guided by general principles or rules that can be applied universally across different situations. It emphasizes the importance of consistency and seeks to establish a set of ethical guidelines that can provide clear and objective answers to moral dilemmas.
In the drowning child thought experiment, Moral Generalism would likely argue that saving the child is a moral obligation, regardless of the specific circumstances. It would uphold a general principle that places a high value on human life and promotes the duty to rescue those in immediate danger, even at personal cost.
Effective altruism is an ethical framework that combines elements of both Moral Particularism and Moral Generalism. It aims to maximize the overall well-being and reduce suffering in the world through rational and evidence-based decision-making. Effective altruists often employ consequentialist reasoning, where the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcomes.
Within effective altruism, there is recognition that Moral Generalism alone may not provide sufficient guidance to address complex moral problems. While general principles are valuable, they are often insufficient for capturing the full complexity of real-world situations. Effective altruists acknowledge the importance of context and specific circumstances in decision-making, aligning with the core tenets of Moral Particularism.
In the context of the drowning child thought experiment, effective altruism would encourage individuals to consider both the general principle of saving lives and the specific details of the situation. It would call for an evaluation of the potential impact of saving the child, considering factors such as the resources required, the opportunity costs involved, and the effectiveness of alternative actions. Effective altruism seeks to maximize overall positive outcomes and may prioritize actions that have the greatest potential to save lives or alleviate suffering, even if they deviate from strict general principles.
In 2023, self-identitying Effective Altruists are and have been overwhelmingly men. Drawing inspiration from the works of feminist thinkers, we can explore an approach to household labor or housework by Effective Altruists that challenges gender disparities and promotes equality. One influential feminist thinker is Bell Hooks, Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea College before her death. She is best known for her writings on race, feminism, and class, known for her exploration of intersectional feminism and the need for transformative relationships. In particular here, "The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love," which emphasizes the importance of men taking responsibility for their share of domestic labor.
Informed by Hooks' ideas, let's consider a couple comprising an effective altruist (EA) man and a partner who may not identify as an EA. In their pursuit of a more equitable distribution of housework, they, the couple implements a decision auction system to allocate household tasks. They begin by jointly identifying the various housework responsibilities, inspired by hooks' call to challenge gender norms and dismantle patriarchy. These tasks may include cleaning, cooking, childcare, financial management, and other necessary duties that may not otherwise be priorities for the EA.
In the decision auction, both partners, regardless of their gender or ideological affiliation, participate actively. They submit bids, influenced by hooks' emphasis on transformative relationships and the need for shared responsibility, indicating the amount they are willing to contribute to avoid undertaking specific tasks.
By synthesising hooks' ideas with this auction mechanism, the couple can consciously works towards creating a more balanced dynamic in their household. The person who submits the lowest bid for a particular task takes on the responsibility, aligning with hooks' vision of men actively engaging in domestic labor and nurturing transformative relationships.
In this way, the decision auction method, influenced by the ideas of bell hooks and other feminist thinkers, becomes a tangible expression of their ideals and contributes to the ongoing pursuit of gender equality and transformative relationships.