Upvoted for recognizing a problem & responding thoughtfully.

This level of aggression towards well-intentioned funders & NGO founders is a net negative. If this kind of discourse were normalized, I think it would reduce engagement with effective charity.

In response to "I hope [the big funders are not] fucking sleeping at night":

I hope the big funders are sleeping well, getting rest, and engaged with their hobbies. Perpetual terror is not a good mindset for making high stakes decisions.

IMO add it, especially if it bothers you for a given post. Cases are often egregious even when Pangram misses it. I personally feel like these posts end up long winded & eloquent (but empty of surprising insights). I am sad to read what looks to be an effort-post, only to realize it is little more than a prompt.

Alternatively, we should get an emoji react that is just 'LLM?'

I strongly agree.

Note that even the 'highly paid' COO position at CEA is arguably substantially below market rate. A COO in industry would likely get paid double or more.

S risks are a thing. There exist fates worse than death.

'significantly reduce' could mean a lot of things. I'm answering as if this reduces absolute X-risk by 20% or more over the next 10 centuries.

The article is good, but the title's claim is too strong.

Merely knowing that Malawi is a landlocked sub-Saharran African country has huge explanatory power. The question of 'We don't know why Malawi is poorer than Rwanda' seems like a better question (which the article explores).

The pushback against AI led productivity growth also seems comparatively weak. AI is not referenced until the last paragraph, and I don't think you really engage with what AI makes possible.

This is just annoying because the article is really good, but now I want to argue about the title XD

Arguing the object point is useful, and I love to see it done when possible.

Sometimes it is also useful to call out who is making the argument.

I see the argument that AI folks go from safety to capabilities made constantly (ie, every discussion of OpenAI's origin). It seems correct but neither novel nor controversial in EA/rat spaces. EX: Habyka's last point on: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MqgwHJ93pJpaeHXs6/posts-i-don-t-have-time-to-write

Maybe we are reading different folks though. Do you have specific examples of you making conflict-of-interest arguments and folks on the forum pushing back on you to instead argue the object-level-point?

Oh totally. I'm lucky to be in the Bay Area where EA is a thing at all.

The explanation is IMO less about frugality and more about getting lucky with my career choice. I spend about 45k a year, which is kinda frugal for my peers but globally I'm a spendthrift. I spend about 1.8k a month on rent, a few hundred on food, and take a vacation once or twice a year. My main hobbies are cheap (video games, board games, birding, pickleball).

It is often much easier to make more money than it is to save more. I would personally focus more on that side of the equation.

My wife & I don't want kids. If we did, I probably would want to save more (just for college). But even if we did, we were very lucky to have software engineering jobs over the last 10 years. We'd basically be fine.