I'm TJ (they/them), formerly Research Scholar at FHI, Co-Founder of PIBBSS, and Research Director at AI Objectives Institute. Currently Research Affiliate at Mimir Center for Long Term Futures Research.
As somebody with reasonable familiarity with EA India community, and somebody who still spends significant time as a Delhi resident every year, I have a few things to add.
While I cannot divine which reference class is being denoted by "many local senior EAs" (or for that matter, what constitutes 'seniority' in a largely diffused community), nor do I have access the teleological specifics at play (what are the specific motivations to even hold an EAGx in this instance), I do feel compelled to point out that I personally know several active community members have held strong concerns for a Delhi Winter conference for air quality reasons for a long time.
Of course such a view is not consensus, but I'd be really surprised if the local feedback was received as 'strong preference for Delhi (over other venues)'.
Certainly different cities provide different profile densities -- I can imagine that policy-inclined people might prefer New Delhi, tech-inclined people might prefer Bangalore, and tourist-y destinations like Jaipur or even Goa might make it more appealing to those who have to take long flights across world to attend. And there is some merit to rotate potential venues across the cities. But it is less clear to me that more people being from Delhi NCR should be -- or even can be -- a stronger consideration than those factors.
Furthermore, Delhi NCR is a large, populous (comparable to entire countries) and a very busy city (esp traffic-wise). Note that the conference venue is in Lutyen's -- an area where paying for hotel accommodation out of your own pocket can be significantly more expensive in my experience. I personally, would have preferred to take a domestic flight once to another city and then live closer to the conference than commute for three days from the part of Delhi I live in to the venue for three consecutive days (and I don't even live that far compared to overall diameter of NCR). Especially when daily local commute will have to be in hours of day when air quality is worst. So I would certainly caution against drawing interpretations from "I live in X" to "I'd prefer the event to be in X".
I'm sure there are significant good reasons to hold a conference in Delhi (especially in this season) that dominate the countervailing reasons, and would hope that the organizing team finds validating feedback on those reasons, but for "overall our decision turned out to be okay overall" -- I'd say too soon to tell, lest one may not notice the feedback at all.
It may not be exactly what you are looking for, but the reading list listed in this post might provide a range of writings (compiled in early 2023), categorized according to agency-relevant phenomena. And this reading guide (written originally for facilitators), might assist in contextualizing the texts.
Some other people like Andrej Karpathy and Ryan Lowe have left in the same time period, but have avoided use of safety-based justifications, and so far as one can tell it's unlikely that safety was the reason there.
I want to point out to you that regardless of whether Torres is worth engaging with or not, misgendering them like this signals lack of cooperativeness to the several queer and trans* 'EAs' who have nothing to do with the issue (which is fine, as long as you really intend to be uncooperative with them, in which case doing so helps them get accurate maps of who is worth working with for the future lightcone and who is not).
I'm writing this comment to merely report my position, rather than to intellectually explain it, on the dimensions presented by the author.
[ETA: This response does not imply an agreement with the author on whether the listed characteristics do describe EA thought or not, and I'm mostly inclined to think that they don't.]
This looks like a large judging panel (so consensus and social dynamics will likely be important even without veto powers) that consists entirely of EA insiders who likely buy into the core EA principles.
As a member of the judging panel, I'm doing this primarily to provide evidence (perhaps anecdotal at best) that members who may seem 'EA insiders' may not necessarily be as homogeneous as the author claims, and that the above claim may be more complicated.(I expect this to mostly be valuable to bystanders seeking data about diversity of opinions)
I strongly endorse/resonate with #2 and #16. And weakly endorse/resonate with #3, #8, and #20.
I think my views are complicated, and do not amount to either endorsement or disagreement (though I might find some of these as valuable concepts to have in your moral practice), on #5, #6, #7, #10 and #17. Most of this has to do with something like 'there is ambiguity in the framing, and I might agree with some version, but might strongly disagree with some other common interpretations'.
I think 'utilitarianism' (#1) is underdetermined, and therefore not totally helpful, and find value in other moral philosophies. While I think that Benthamite thought has valuable ideas, my overall position is closer to Parfit's 'climbing the same mountain from different sides'.
On #19, I respect veganism and find it aspirational, but fail to practice it, mostly out of akrasia-related and habit-related reasons.
I think I weakly disagree with #4, #9 and #15, and the role they play. And I strongly disagree with #11, #12, #13, #14, #18 and #21.
At the same time, if the shift in EA practice as claimed by you is indeed real (which I think it is), then it would also seem that EA has failed to do adequate mistake acknowledgement with respect to past critiques. This might hold some insights as to why certain forms of criticisms are by-default disincentivized.
(I do hope that this contest will make a genuine attempt to correct that disincentive landscape.)
Hello Dion,
As somebody with reasonable familiarity with EA India community, and somebody who still spends significant time as a Delhi resident every year, I have a few things to add.
While I cannot divine which reference class is being denoted by "many local senior EAs" (or for that matter, what constitutes 'seniority' in a largely diffused community), nor do I have access the teleological specifics at play (what are the specific motivations to even hold an EAGx in this instance), I do feel compelled to point out that I personally know several active community members have held strong concerns for a Delhi Winter conference for air quality reasons for a long time.
Of course such a view is not consensus, but I'd be really surprised if the local feedback was received as 'strong preference for Delhi (over other venues)'.
Certainly different cities provide different profile densities -- I can imagine that policy-inclined people might prefer New Delhi, tech-inclined people might prefer Bangalore, and tourist-y destinations like Jaipur or even Goa might make it more appealing to those who have to take long flights across world to attend. And there is some merit to rotate potential venues across the cities. But it is less clear to me that more people being from Delhi NCR should be -- or even can be -- a stronger consideration than those factors.
Furthermore, Delhi NCR is a large, populous (comparable to entire countries) and a very busy city (esp traffic-wise). Note that the conference venue is in Lutyen's -- an area where paying for hotel accommodation out of your own pocket can be significantly more expensive in my experience. I personally, would have preferred to take a domestic flight once to another city and then live closer to the conference than commute for three days from the part of Delhi I live in to the venue for three consecutive days (and I don't even live that far compared to overall diameter of NCR). Especially when daily local commute will have to be in hours of day when air quality is worst. So I would certainly caution against drawing interpretations from "I live in X" to "I'd prefer the event to be in X".
I'm sure there are significant good reasons to hold a conference in Delhi (especially in this season) that dominate the countervailing reasons, and would hope that the organizing team finds validating feedback on those reasons, but for "overall our decision turned out to be okay overall" -- I'd say too soon to tell, lest one may not notice the feedback at all.
It may not be exactly what you are looking for, but the reading list listed in this post might provide a range of writings (compiled in early 2023), categorized according to agency-relevant phenomena. And this reading guide (written originally for facilitators), might assist in contextualizing the texts.
Some other people like Andrej Karpathy and Ryan Lowe have left in the same time period, but have avoided use of safety-based justifications, and so far as one can tell it's unlikely that safety was the reason there.
Who thought the userid did not have leftism as in left of center, but leftism as in those who left the community. :D
What do you think about MSRI (https://www.msri.org/web/cms) and Simons Institute (https://simons.berkeley.edu/), btw?
Sorry, not fine what?
I want to point out to you that regardless of whether Torres is worth engaging with or not, misgendering them like this signals lack of cooperativeness to the several queer and trans* 'EAs' who have nothing to do with the issue (which is fine, as long as you really intend to be uncooperative with them, in which case doing so helps them get accurate maps of who is worth working with for the future lightcone and who is not).
I'm writing this comment to merely report my position, rather than to intellectually explain it, on the dimensions presented by the author.
[ETA: This response does not imply an agreement with the author on whether the listed characteristics do describe EA thought or not, and I'm mostly inclined to think that they don't.]
As a member of the judging panel, I'm doing this primarily to provide evidence (perhaps anecdotal at best) that members who may seem 'EA insiders' may not necessarily be as homogeneous as the author claims, and that the above claim may be more complicated.(I expect this to mostly be valuable to bystanders seeking data about diversity of opinions)
I strongly endorse/resonate with #2 and #16. And weakly endorse/resonate with #3, #8, and #20.
I think my views are complicated, and do not amount to either endorsement or disagreement (though I might find some of these as valuable concepts to have in your moral practice), on #5, #6, #7, #10 and #17. Most of this has to do with something like 'there is ambiguity in the framing, and I might agree with some version, but might strongly disagree with some other common interpretations'.
I think 'utilitarianism' (#1) is underdetermined, and therefore not totally helpful, and find value in other moral philosophies. While I think that Benthamite thought has valuable ideas, my overall position is closer to Parfit's 'climbing the same mountain from different sides'.
On #19, I respect veganism and find it aspirational, but fail to practice it, mostly out of akrasia-related and habit-related reasons.
I think I weakly disagree with #4, #9 and #15, and the role they play. And I strongly disagree with #11, #12, #13, #14, #18 and #21.
At the same time, if the shift in EA practice as claimed by you is indeed real (which I think it is), then it would also seem that EA has failed to do adequate mistake acknowledgement with respect to past critiques. This might hold some insights as to why certain forms of criticisms are by-default disincentivized.
(I do hope that this contest will make a genuine attempt to correct that disincentive landscape.)