Very very well put. 

I became quite emotional when reading this because I resonated with it quite strongly. I've been in some longer retreats practicing the teachings in Seeing That Frees and I've noticed the connections between EA and Rob Burbea's way of seeing things but I haven't been able to express it well. 

I think that there's a very beauitful deepening of a seeing of non-self when acting impartialy. One of the things that I really like about applying this to EA is that you often don't see the outcomes of your actions. This is often seen as a bad thing but from a vipassyana perspective this also somehow gets rid of the near enemy of loving kindness in purpose of getting something back. So it is almost like loving kindness based on EA principles is somehow less clinging than existing loving kindness practices? 

I love the focus on the cultiavation of positive mental states as a foundation for doing effective work as well. Beautifully put, maybe one of my favourite forum posts of all time, thank you for writing this. 

The question that is on every single EAs mind is, of course, what about huel or meal replacements? I've been doing huel+supplements for a while now instead of meat and I want to know if you believe this to be suboptimal and if so to what extent? Nutrition is annoyingly complex and so all I know for sure is like protein=good, cal in=cal out and minimize sugar (as well as some other things) and huel seems to tick all the boxes? I'm probably missing something but I don't know what so if you have an answer, please enlighten me!

This one hit close to home (pun not intended). 

I've been thinking about this choice for a while now. There's the obvious network and work benefits in living in an EA Hub yet in my experience there's also the benefit of a slower pace leading to more time to think and reflect and develop my own writing and opinions on things which is easier to get when not in a hub.

Yet in AI safety (where I work) all of the stuff is happening in the Bay and London and mostly the Bay. For the last 3 years people have constantly been telling me "Come to the Bay, bro. It will be worth it, everything is happening here". So there's a lot of FOMO and also literal missing out involved in this decision. 

I had been thinking that I would delay this decision until later but like 6 of your 9 criteria are fulfilled for me and I find that it feels more value aligned and that it might also be smart to plan with this in mind from an earlier age. (I'm 23 from Sweden)

So I'm leaning on Sweden as a home base and to visit the other places for conferences and work, maybe some longer work stances but generally living in Sweden and having it as a base. 

It feels a bit drastic (and we'll see if this holds) but it kind of feels like you helped me resolve one of my larger questions in life so thanks? :D

Uncertain risk. AI infrastructure seems really expensive. I need to actually do the math here (and I haven’t! hence this is uncertain) but do we really expect growth on trend given the cost of this buildout in both chips and energy? Can someone really careful please look at this?

https://www.lesswrong.com/users/vladimir_nesov <- Got a bunch of stuff on energy calculations and similar required for AI companies, especially the 2028 post, some very good analysis of these things imo.

I'm curious about the link that goes to AI-enabled coups and it isn't working, could you perhaps relink it?

Besides the point that "shoddy toy models" might be emotionally charged, I just want to point out that accelerating progress majorly increases variance and unknown unknowns? The higher energy a system is and the more variables you have the more chaotic it becomes. So maybe an answer is that a agile short-range model is the best? Outside view it in moderation and plan with the next few years being quite difficult to predict?

You don't really need another model to disprove an existing one, you might as well point out that we don't know and that is okay too.

Yeah, I think you're right and I also believe that it can be a both and? 

You can have a general non-profit board and at the same time have a form of representative democracy going on which seems the best we can currently do for this?

I think it is fundamentally about a more timeless trade-off between hierarchical organisations that generally are able to act with more "commander's intent" versus democratic models that are more of a flat voting model. The democratic models suffer when there is a lot of single person linear thinking involved but do well at providing direct information for what people care about whilst the inverse is true for the hierarchical one and the project of good governance is to some extent somewhere in between.

Yeah for sure, I think the devil might be in the details here around how things are run and what the purpose of the national organisation is. Since Sweden and Norway have 8x less of a population than germany I think the effect of a "nation-wide group" might be different?

In my experience, I've found that EA Sweden focuses on and provides a lot of the things that you listed so I would be very curious to hear what the difference between a local and national organisation would be? Is there a difference in the dynamics of them being motivated to sustain themselves because of the scale? 

You probably have a lot more experience than me in this so it would be very interesting to hear!

I like that decomposition. 

There's something about a prior on having democratic decision making as part of this because it allows for better community engagement usually? Representation often leads to feelings of inclusion and whilst I've only dabbled in the sociology here it seems like the option of saying no is quite important for members to feel heard? 

My guess would be that the main pros of having democratic deliberation doesn't come from when the going is normal but rather as a resillience mechanism? Democracies tend to react late to major changes and not change path often but when they do they do it properly? (I think this statement is true but it might as well be a cultural myth that I've heard in the social choice adjacent community.)