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Holly_Elmore
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The Sorry State of AI X-Risk Advocacy, and Thoughts on Doing Better
Holly_Elmore4mo96

Yeah I suspect that these one-shot big protests are drawing on a history of organizing in those or preceding fields. The Women’s March coalition comes together all for one big event but draws on a far on deeper history involving small demonstrations and deliberate organizing to make it to that point, is my point. Idk about Free Internet but I would bet it leaned on Free Speech organizing and advocacy.

I sure wish someone would put on a large AI Safety protest if they know a way to do this in one leap. If I got a sponsor for a concert or some other draw then perhaps I could see a larger thing happening quickly in the family of AI Safety protest, but I’d like the keep the brand pretty earnest and message-focused.

I have to note, based on our history, I interpret your posts as attacking, like the subtext is that I’m just not a good organizer and, if you wanted to, you could organize a way bigger movement way faster. If that’s true, I wish you would! I’m trying my best with my understanding of how this can work for me and I wish more people like you were embracing broad messaging like protests.

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The Sorry State of AI X-Risk Advocacy, and Thoughts on Doing Better
Holly_Elmore4mo76

?

I’m saying he’s projecting his biases onto others. He clearly does think PauseAI rhymes with unabomber somehow, even if he personally knows better. The weird pro-tech vs anti-tech dichotomy, and especially thinking that others are blanketly anti-tech, is very rationalist.

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The Sorry State of AI X-Risk Advocacy, and Thoughts on Doing Better
Holly_Elmore4mo30

Do you think those causes never had organizing before the big protest? 

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The Sorry State of AI X-Risk Advocacy, and Thoughts on Doing Better
[+]Holly_Elmore4mo-10-1
The Sorry State of AI X-Risk Advocacy, and Thoughts on Doing Better
Holly_Elmore4mo80

I think the relevant question is how often social movements begin with huge protests, and that’s exceedingly rare. It’s effective to create the impression that the people just rose up, but there’s basically always organizing groundwork for that to take off.

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The Sorry State of AI X-Risk Advocacy, and Thoughts on Doing Better
Holly_Elmore4mo30

Do you guys seriously think that big protests just materialize?

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The Sorry State of AI X-Risk Advocacy, and Thoughts on Doing Better
Holly_Elmore4mo120

Yeah the SF protests have been about constant (25-40) in attendance, but we have more locations now and have put a lot more infrastructure in place 

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The Sorry State of AI X-Risk Advocacy, and Thoughts on Doing Better
Holly_Elmore4mo71

The thing is there isn’t a great dataset— even with historical case studies where the primary results have been achieved, there are a million uncontrolled variables and we don’t and will never have experimentally established causation. But, yes, I’m confident in my model of social change.

What leapt out to me about your model was that is was very focused how an observer of the protests would react with a rationalist worldview. You didn’t seem to have given much thought to the breadth of social movements and how a diverse public would have experienced them. Like, most people aren’t gonna think PauseAI is anti-tech in general and therefore similar to the unabomber. Rationalists think that way, and few others.

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The Sorry State of AI X-Risk Advocacy, and Thoughts on Doing Better
Holly_Elmore4mo94

Sounds like you are saying that you have those associations and I still see no evidence to justify your level of concern.

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The Sorry State of AI X-Risk Advocacy, and Thoughts on Doing Better
Holly_Elmore4mo7-5

Small protests are the only way to get to big protests, and I don’t think there’s a significant risk of backfire or cringe reaction making trying worse than not trying. It’s the backfire supposition that is baseless.

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4Holly_Elmore's Shortform
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162Holly Elmore and Rob Miles dialogue on AI Safety Advocacy
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105TOMORROW: the largest AI Safety protest ever!
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4Holly_Elmore's Shortform
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