77:I[392826,["$2","$3","$4","$5","$6","$7","$8","$9","$a","$b","$c","$d","$2a","$2b"],"default"] 78:I[836637,["$2","$3","$4","$5","$6","$7","$8","$9","$a","$b","$c","$d","$2a","$2b"],"default"] 79:T145f,

I run Sentinel, a team that seeks to anticipate and respond to large-scale risks. You can read our weekly minutes here. I like to spend my time acquiring deeper models of the world, and generally becoming more formidable. I'm also a fairly good forecaster: I started out on predicting on Good Judgment Open and CSET-Foretell, but now do most of my forecasting through Samotsvety, of which Scott Alexander writes:

Enter Samotsvety Forecasts. This is a team of some of the best superforecasters in the world. They won the CSET-Foretell forecasting competition by an absolutely obscene margin, “around twice as good as the next-best team in terms of the relative Brier score”. If the point of forecasting tournaments is to figure out who you can trust, the science has spoken, and the answer is “these guys”.

I used to post prolifically on the EA Forum, but nowadays, I post my research and thoughts at nunosempere.com / nunosempere.com/blog rather than on this forum, because:

I disagree with the EA Forum's moderation policy—they've banned a few disagreeable people whom I like, and I think they're generally a bit too censorious for my liking.
The Forum website has become more annoying to me over time: more cluttered and more pushy in terms of curated and pinned posts (I've partially mitigated this by writing my own minimalistic frontend)
The above two issues have made me take notice that the EA Forum is beyond my control, and it feels like a dumb move to host my research in a platform that has goals different from my own.

But a good fraction of my past research is still available here on the EA Forum. I'm particularly fond of my series on Estimating Value.

My career has been as follows:

Before Sentinel, I set up my own niche consultancy, Shapley Maximizers. This was very profitable, and I used the profits to bootstrap Sentinel. I am winding this down, but if you have need of estimation services for big decisions, you can still reach out.
I used to do research around longtermism, forecasting and quantification, as well as some programming, at the Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute (QURI). At QURI, I programmed Metaforecast.org, a search tool which aggregates predictions from many different platforms—a more up to date alternative might be adj.news. I spent some time in the Bahamas as part of the FTX EA Fellowship, and did a bunch of work for the FTX Foundation, which then went to waste when it evaporated.
I write a Forecasting Newsletter which gathered a few thousand subscribers; I previously abandoned but have recently restarted it. I used to really enjoy winning bets against people too confident in their beliefs, but I try to do this in structured prediction markets, because betting against normal people started to feel like taking candy from a baby.
Previously, I was a Future of Humanity Institute 2020 Summer Research Fellow, and then worked on a grant from the Long Term Future Fund to do "independent research on forecasting and optimal paths to improve the long-term."
Before that, I studied Maths and Philosophy, dropped out in exasperation at the inefficiency, picked up some development economics; helped implement the European Summer Program on Rationality during 2017, 2018 2019, 2020 and 2022; worked as a contractor for various forecasting and programming projects; volunteered for various Effective Altruism organizations, and carried out many independent research projects. In a past life, I also wrote a popular Spanish literature blog, and remain keenly interested in Spanish poetry.

You can share feedback anonymously with me here.

Note: You can sign up for all my posts here: <https://nunosempere.com/.newsletter/>, or subscribe to my posts' RSS here: <https://nunosempere.com/blog/index.rss>

7a:T887,

I'm a researcher at Forethought; before that, I ran the non-engineering side of the EA Forum (this platform), ran the EA Newsletter, and worked on some other content-related tasks at CEA. [More about the Forum/CEA Online job.]

Selected posts

Background

I finished my undergraduate studies with a double major in mathematics and comparative literature in 2021. I was a research fellow at Rethink Priorities in the summer of 2021 and was then hired by the Events Team at CEA. I later switched to the Online Team. In the past, I've also done some (math) research and worked at Canada/USA Mathcamp.

7b:T887,

Selected posts

Background

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Far fewer people are working on it than you might think, and even the alignment research that is happening is very much not on track. (But it’s a solvable problem, if we get our act together.)

Observing from afar, it's easy to think there's an abundance of people working on AGI safety. Everyone on your timeline is fretting about AI risk, and it seems like there is a well-funded EA-industrial-complex that has elevated this to their main issue. Maybe you've even developed a slight..."},"group":null,"coauthors":null,"customHtmlHighlight":"","tags":[{"_id":"oNiQsBHA3i837sySD","core":true,"name":"AI safety","slug":"ai-safety","tagRel":{"_id":"oTfc8EnXyZ9YnsHPF","voteType":null,"baseScore":2},"postCount":7325,"description":"

AI safety is the study of ways to reduce risks posed by artificial intelligence.

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My name is Saulius Šimčikas. I'm currently studying to become a psychotherapist. Previously, I worked as an animal advocacy researcher at Rethink Priorities for four years. I also did some earning-to-give as a programmer, did some EA community building, and was a research intern at Animal Charity Evaluators. I love meditation and talking about emotions. I'm no longer actively engaged in EA, but I still care about doing good. Hence, I'm still happy to answer questions about my past work, review stuff, consult about related questions, or even help with some cost-effectiveness estimates or something.
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[Edit 2024-11-05: my views have changed quite a lot since I wrote this. See here.]

This is the story of how I came to see Wild Animal Welfare (WAW) as a less promising cause than I did initially. I summarise three articles I wrote on WAW: ..."},"group":null,"coauthors":null,"customHtmlHighlight":"","tags":[{"_id":"EHLmbEmJ2Qd5WfwTb","core":true,"name":"Building effective altruism","slug":"building-effective-altruism","tagRel":{"_id":"eXoNspD2or5synTxS","voteType":null,"baseScore":2},"postCount":7869,"description":"
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Wild animal welfare is the welfare of non-human animals under natural conditions, and the study of interventions aimed at improving the welfare of these animals.
Wild animals outnumber animals in factory farms by several orders of magnitu..."},{"_id":"ui3ZZqd23HzA7wNwP","core":false,"name":"Criticism of effective altruist causes","slug":"criticism-of-effective-altruist-causes","tagRel":{"_id":"J5CDTAoRjmdyDwdkW","voteType":null,"baseScore":4},"postCount":242,"description":"
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Governments and philanthropists spend considerable resources attempting to do good in the world...."}]},{"_id":"h2N9qEbvQ6RHABcae","slug":"a-critical-review-of-open-philanthropy-s-bet-on-criminal","title":"A Critical Review of Open Philanthropy’s Bet On Criminal Justice Reform","url":null,"baseScore":308,"voteCount":148,"commentCount":97,"postedAt":"2022-06-16T16:40:07.358Z","curatedDate":null,"frontpageDate":"2022-06-16T17:11:40.027Z","draft":false,"deletedDraft":false,"question":false,"isEvent":false,"groupId":null,"sticky":false,"eventImageId":null,"socialPreview":null,"socialPreviewImageAutoUrl":"https://res.cloudinary.com/cea/image/upload/v1676649698/mirroredImages/h2N9qEbvQ6RHABcae/xw3yad2wmrgyrajkvj95.png","readTimeMinutesOverride":null,"collabEditorDialogue":false,"disableRecommendation":false,"authorIsUnreviewed":false,"lastCommentedAt":"2022-06-16T16:40:07.358Z","sharingSettings":null,"shortform":false,"startTime":null,"onlineEvent":false,"googleLocation":null,"user":{"_id":"YRCdk7cvPT6pyiph9","slug":"nunosempere","displayName":"NunoSempere","username":"NunoSempere","createdAt":"2018-11-15T15:52:18.347Z","profileImageId":"Profile/k878ddoduabhtngbawob","karma":13987,"jobTitle":"Director, Head of Foresight","organization":"Sentinel","postCount":107,"commentCount":1294,"deleted":false,"biographyHtml":"$79"},"contents":{"wordCount":6448,"htmlHighlight":"
Epistemic status: Dwelling on the negatives.
Hello AstralCodexTen readers! You might also enjoy this series on estimating value, or my forecasting newsletter. And for the estimation language used throughout this post, see..."},"group":null,"coauthors":null,"customHtmlHighlight":"","tags":[{"_id":"8FxWuRZCwoxzQPkWM","core":false,"name":"United States","slug":"united-states","tagRel":{"_id":"7qgEsAhvuvTips5PX","voteType":null,"baseScore":2},"postCount":185,"description":"
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For instance, economists who are interested in predicting how people will behave often analyze mod..."},{"_id":"qnpsn9LbiD4hkbPRF","core":false,"name":"Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute","slug":"quantified-uncertainty-research-institute","tagRel":{"_id":"kmKwDrQjqY6NHwrS5","voteType":null,"baseScore":2},"postCount":96,"description":"
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Related tags
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- Posts written by EA orgs or their representatives, if users have written critical comments responding to those posts

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