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I'm skeptical about the value of slowing down leading AI labs primarily because it likely reduces the influence of the values of EAs in shaping the deployment of AGI/ASI. Anthropic is the best example of a lab with people who share these values, but I'd imagine that EAs also have more overlap with the staff at OpenAI and DeepMind than actors who would catch up because of a slowdown. And for what it's worth, the labs were founded with the stated goal of benefiting humanity before it became far more apparent that current paradigms have a high chance of resulting in AGI with the potential of granting profit/power to their human operators and investors.

As others have noted, people and powerful groups outside of this community and surrounding communities don't seem to be interested in consequentialist, impartial, altruistic priorities like creating a positive long-term future for humanity, but are instead more self-interested. Personally I'm more downside-focused, but I think it's relevant to most EAs that other parties wouldn't be as willing to dedicate a large amount of resources towards creating large amounts of happiness for others, and because of that, the reduction of influence of the values of EAs will result in a considerable loss of expected future value.

EDIT (2024-05-19): When I wrote this I had in mind Anthropic > OpenAI > DeepMind but Anthropic > DeepMind > OpenAI seems more sensible now. Unclear where to insert various governments/militaries/politicians/CEOs into this ranking.

Leopold Aschenbrenner makes some good points for "Government > Private sector" in the latest Dwarkesh podcast.

I find it odd that many people's ideas about other minds don't involve, or even contradict, the existence of some non-arbitrary function that maps a (finite) number of discrete fundamental physical entities (assuming physics is discrete) in a system to a corresponding number of minds (or some potentially quantifiable property of minds) in that same system.

I have intuitions (which could be incorrect) that "physics is all there is" and that "minds are ultimately physical," and it feels possible, in principle, to unify them somehow and relate "the amount of stuff" in both the physical and mental domains through such a function.

To me, this solution ("count all subsets of all elements within systems") proposed by Brian Tomasik appears to be among plausible non-arbitrary options, and it could also be especially ethically relevant. Solutions such as these that suggest the existence of a very large number of minds imply moral wagers, e.g. to minimize possible suffering in the kinds of minds that are implied to be most numerous (in this case, those that comprise ~half of everything in the universe), which might make them worth investigating further.

Even if physics is continuous rather than discrete, it still seems possible that there could be a mapping from continuous physics to discrete minds. (disclaimer: I don't know much physics, and I haven't thought much about how it relates to the philosophy of mind.)

This is all speculative and counterintuitive. On the other hand, common-sense intuitions developed through evolution might not accurately represent the first-person experiences, or lack thereof, of other systems. They seem to have instead evolved because they helped model complicated systems relevant to fitness by picturing them as similar to one's own mind. Common-sense intuitions aren't necessarily reliable, and counterintuitive conclusions could potentially be true.

FYI, if people want to look into what aliens might value, an interesting direction might be to think about convergent evolution. One (the only?) existing book on the topic: The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy/ Quanta magazine article. Geoffrey Miller mentioned related work in a comment a few months ago.

Is this pointless speculation? I suspect knowing about what aliens might value would be useful in understanding how to better implement Evidential Cooperation in Large Worlds (ECL) (right now, right here, on Earth) although some people may disagree with me on that.

I've also encountered thinking that this could help avoid/reduce conflicts with aliens (which may motivate work on it from various longtermist perspectives).

I guess this kind of stuff would be particularly suited for people with an evolutionary biology/related field background but it also seems like people can pick these things up quickly/use AI assistants to help out.

I was brought up in a very religious environment. After reading this comment I'm reflecting on what I'm finding off-putting about that upbringing:

  • The idea that there is a clear divide between good and evil.
  • The idea that there are unforgivable sins/heresies.
  • The idea that sexual things are bad, or are particularly bad.
  • Laying claim to humility and being the underdog even though one's group has a lot of power.
  • The idea that arguing against sacred beliefs is bad.
  • Shaming those who have sinned and demanding that they repent.
  • The idea that everything considered evil must/will be punished severely.
  • ... and more.

I find myself agreeing with much of the comparison that the comment makes.

I noticed that replies to 'Community' shortform posts aren't automatically tagged 'Community'. Maybe it's worth fixing this?

A powerful speech from the same activist: 

A while back I wrote that I agreed with the observation that some of (new wave) EA’s norms seem similar to those of the religion imposed on me and others as children. My current thinking is that there may actually be a link connecting the culture in parts of Protestantism and some of the (progressive) norms EA adopts, along with an atypical origin that probably deserves more scrutiny. The "link" part might be more apparent to people who've noticed a "god-shaped hole" in the West that makes some secular movements resemble certain parts of religions. The "origin" part might be less apparent but it's been discussed by Scott Alexander before. So, this theory isn't all that original.

Essentially: Puritans, as one of four major cultures originating from the UK, exert huge founder effects on America, which both influences parts of itself as well as other countries for better or worse → Protestant culture gradually changed to be more socially judgmental in some ways etc. → More recently, people increasingly reject the existence of a God but keep elements of the culture of that religion → EA now draws heavily from nth generation ex-Protestants/Protestant-adjacents who also tend to be more active in trying to change society (other people's actions) and approach it with some of the same inherited attitudes

That is one causal chain but a tree might show more causes and effects. For example, the Puritan founder effects probably also influenced modern academia (in part, spearheaded by a few institutions in New England) which again, EA heavily draws from. Other secular institutions might also be influenced by osmosis, and produce downstream effects.

It seems difficult to believe these attitudes just disappeared without affecting other movements, culture, and society. The Puritan legacy also seems to have a track record of being quite influential.

Curated and popular this week
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This is a linkpost for a paper I wrote recently, “Endogenous Growth and Excess Variety”, along with a summary. Two schools in growth theory Roughly speaking: In Romer’s (1990) growth model, output per person is interpreted as an economy’s level of “technology”, and the economic growth rate—the growth rate of “real GDP” per person—is proportional to the amount of R&D being done. As Jones (1995) pointed out, populations have grown greatly over the last century, and the proportion of people doing research (and the proportion of GDP spent on research) has grown even more quickly, yet the economic growth rate has not risen. Growth theorists have mainly taken two approaches to reconciling [research] population growth with constant economic growth. “Semi-endogenous” growth models (introduced by Jones (1995)) posit that, as the technological frontier advances, further advances get more difficult. Growth in the number of researchers, and ultimately (if research is not automated) population growth, is therefore necessary to sustain economic growth. “Second-wave endogenous” (I’ll write “SWE”) growth models posit instead that technology grows exponentially with a constant or with a growing population. The idea is that process efficiency—the quantity of a given good producible with given labor and/or capital inputs—grows exponentially with constant research effort, as in a first-wave endogenous model; but when population grows, we develop more goods, leaving research effort per good fixed. (We do this, in the model, because each innovator needs a monopoly on his or her invention in order to compensate for the costs of developing it.) Improvements in process efficiency are called “vertical innovations” and increases in good variety are called “horizontal innovations”. Variety is desirable, so the one-off increase in variety produced by an increase to the population size increases real GDP, but it does not increase the growth rate. Likewise exponential population growth raise
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TLDR When we look across all jobs globally, many of us in the EA community occupy positions that would rank in the 99.9th percentile or higher by our own preferences within jobs that we could plausibly get.[1] Whether you work at an EA-aligned organization, hold a high-impact role elsewhere, or have a well-compensated position which allows you to make significant high effectiveness donations, your job situation is likely extraordinarily fortunate and high impact by global standards. This career conversations week, it's worth reflecting on this and considering how we can make the most of these opportunities. Intro I think job choice is one of the great advantages of development. Before the industrial revolution, nearly everyone had to be a hunter-gatherer or a farmer, and they typically didn’t get a choice between those. Now there is typically some choice in low income countries, and typically a lot of choice in high income countries. This already suggests that having a job in your preferred field puts you in a high percentile of job choice. But for many in the EA community, the situation is even more fortunate. The Mathematics of Job Preference If you work at an EA-aligned organization and that is your top preference, you occupy an extraordinarily rare position. There are perhaps a few thousand such positions globally, out of the world's several billion jobs. Simple division suggests this puts you in roughly the 99.9999th percentile of job preference. Even if you don't work directly for an EA organization but have secured: * A job allowing significant donations * A position with direct positive impact aligned with your values * Work that combines your skills, interests, and preferred location You likely still occupy a position in the 99.9th percentile or higher of global job preference matching. Even without the impact perspective, if you are working in your preferred field and preferred country, that may put you in the 99.9th percentile of job preference
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Sometimes working on animal issues feels like an uphill battle, with alternative protein losing its trendy status with VCs, corporate campaigns hitting blocks in enforcement and veganism being stuck at the same percentage it's been for decades. However, despite these things I personally am more optimistic about the animal movement than I have ever been (despite following the movement for 10+ years). What gives? At AIM we think a lot about the ingredients of a good charity (talent, funding and idea) and more and more recently I have been thinking about the ingredients of a good movement or ecosystem that I think has a couple of extra ingredients (culture and infrastructure). I think on approximately four-fifths of these prerequisites the animal movement is at all-time highs. And like betting on a charity before it launches, I am far more confident that a movement that has these ingredients will lead to long-term impact than I am relying on, e.g., plant-based proteins trending for climate reasons. Culture The culture of the animal movement in the past has been up and down. It has always been full of highly dedicated people in a way that is rare across other movements, but it also had infighting, ideological purity and a high level of day-to-day drama. Overall this made me a bit cautious about recommending it as a place to spend time even when someone was sold on ending factory farming. But over the last few years professionalization has happened, differences have been put aside to focus on higher goals and the drama overall has gone down a lot. This was perhaps best embodied by my favorite opening talk at a conference ever (AVA 2025) where Wayne and Lewis, leaders with very different historical approaches to helping animals, were able to share lessons, have a friendly debate and drive home the message of how similar our goals really are. This would have been nearly unthinkable decades ago (and in fact resulted in shouting matches when it was attempted). But the cult