This reads to me like you interpreted me as arguing against pausing. To be clear, I am strongly in favor of pausing. I'm arguing against the mental model I had a few months ago where if we pause, then we're in the clear.
There should be more ongoing debate about whether it's good or not to call oneself an EA; I haven't seen many posts myself. We should try to think through all the pros and cons.
It probably depends on who you are and the career you want to have, but for some reason it feels like most people think it's bad in most cases.
Even if you disagree with some subgroups or like to have a small identity, it could be bad for the world that most EA-adjacents don't call themselves EAs.
Over time, it could make some of them less effective or altruistic. It could also allow crazy people to give bad first impressions and misrepresent the movement. SBF, of course, is the prime example of this; maybe it would be better if people were autistic about EA like he was. In this state, we may be a ticking bomb just waiting for more crazy EA-adjacents to join and worsen the brand even more. And it's just a matter of cases like those until it's left in an irrecoverable state.
Another reason may be that identifying with a label has to do with feelings that we cannot control and we should value honesty. But then, can we fix that from within the movement if we realize it would be better for people to identify as an EA?
It could be because it sounds cringe too, but maybe it's worth enduring it.
Idk, these are just some pros and cons I just thought about.
I think that the fact that "smart" is being applied to a "digital species" changes things because "species" implies agency & goal-directedness, and "digital" implies it will be able to access useful information and become knowledgeable.
But I can understand that maybe other species don't seem goal-directed, so maybe it feels less threatening.
slowing down a car by a few milliseconds probably radically changes the genetic make-up of posterity millions of years into the future.
What? I never read WWOTF because I thought it was like an introduction to longtermism and I'd probably not learn much from it, but maybe I should check it out.
I didn't get how it could justify a "deontological approach to norms around civility and epistemics"
To fight this disadvantage of innovating and having unpopular views, we should have a prize for people who do it and are then proven right.
You could try to do something like prediction markets about EA stuff, but more important than money, I think we should instrumentalize more the strong drive for social status that exists to foster specific things we'd like to see in EA.
This could be done by awarding symbolic physical prizes in EAGs, for example. If it were like rare yearly things and the prizes said things like "You were right" or "You were less wrong" or "Apology form to..." I can see them being cherished.
Analysing specific interventions externally and from inside the organisations which implement the intervention could lead to a better understanding of present and potential systemic change.
Strong agree. I think concrete examples of how systemic change thinking allowed/ increased the impact of an intervention would cause people to update on its importance.
Systemic change interventions should be mentioned as a category of things EA works on when introducing EA and categorizing EA work, outside the "countermeasure" interventions that are done to solve more specific problems (animal suffering, x-risks, global h&d, etc) and meta-work.
I think this would help clarify the idea that EA tries to analyze systemic change proposals and puts money and work on them sometimes.
They would include causes like improving institutional decision-making, happiness research, etc, and even new ideas like making AIs' character good.
I think there are a lot of people who want to do good, but just if they think they're fixing "the system". We can attract these people and give them answers to what we believe is better to do and incorporate their ideas if good.
In principle, they are of course great because of the positive feedback loops that systems could provide and that could make the impact of the interventions grow exponentially. Maybe the community could be thinking more about them.
This comment from OP may clarify some things
There should be more ongoing debate about whether it's good or not to call oneself an EA; I haven't seen many posts myself. We should try to think through all the pros and cons.
It probably depends on who you are and the career you want to have, but for some reason it feels like most people think it's bad in most cases.
Even if you disagree with some subgroups or like to have a small identity, it could be bad for the world that most EA-adjacents don't call themselves EAs.
Over time, it could make some of them less effective or altruistic. It could also allow crazy people to give bad first impressions and misrepresent the movement. SBF, of course, is the prime example of this; maybe it would be better if people were autistic about EA like he was. In this state, we may be a ticking bomb just waiting for more crazy EA-adjacents to join and worsen the brand even more. And it's just a matter of cases like those until it's left in an irrecoverable state.
Another reason may be that identifying with a label has to do with feelings that we cannot control and we should value honesty. But then, can we fix that from within the movement if we realize it would be better for people to identify as an EA?
It could be because it sounds cringe too, but maybe it's worth enduring it.
Idk, these are just some pros and cons I just thought about.
Oh, I understand what you mean now.
Yeah, but I think there is a low upper limit to how good a coversation can get.
Also, if there are too many participants and no "moderator", the game theory can benefit defecting from the norms.
Yeah, that's true
I think that the fact that "smart" is being applied to a "digital species" changes things because "species" implies agency & goal-directedness, and "digital" implies it will be able to access useful information and become knowledgeable.
But I can understand that maybe other species don't seem goal-directed, so maybe it feels less threatening.
What? I never read WWOTF because I thought it was like an introduction to longtermism and I'd probably not learn much from it, but maybe I should check it out.
I didn't get how it could justify a "deontological approach to norms around civility and epistemics"
To fight this disadvantage of innovating and having unpopular views, we should have a prize for people who do it and are then proven right.
You could try to do something like prediction markets about EA stuff, but more important than money, I think we should instrumentalize more the strong drive for social status that exists to foster specific things we'd like to see in EA.
This could be done by awarding symbolic physical prizes in EAGs, for example. If it were like rare yearly things and the prizes said things like "You were right" or "You were less wrong" or "Apology form to..." I can see them being cherished.
Strong agree. I think concrete examples of how systemic change thinking allowed/ increased the impact of an intervention would cause people to update on its importance.
I haven't seen anyone ever writing in the forums with the general public as their target audience
Systemic change interventions should be mentioned as a category of things EA works on when introducing EA and categorizing EA work, outside the "countermeasure" interventions that are done to solve more specific problems (animal suffering, x-risks, global h&d, etc) and meta-work.
I think this would help clarify the idea that EA tries to analyze systemic change proposals and puts money and work on them sometimes.
They would include causes like improving institutional decision-making, happiness research, etc, and even new ideas like making AIs' character good.
I think there are a lot of people who want to do good, but just if they think they're fixing "the system". We can attract these people and give them answers to what we believe is better to do and incorporate their ideas if good.
In principle, they are of course great because of the positive feedback loops that systems could provide and that could make the impact of the interventions grow exponentially. Maybe the community could be thinking more about them.