Thank you for this post - I had been waiting for warning signs, I think I will not do that anymore.
Note the post is possibly laced with a bit too many lesswrong/overcoming bias concepts to work for some people without the relevant background (e.g. "looking good to other people" as a large motivation in people's reasoning), but I'm not sure that's avoidable.
But at least significantly increased my short-timeline probabilities, from very low to plausible. And helped my System 1 feel a bit more urgency on this topic...
I think a major blocker to this kind of thing is that people feel like 'it's not a real career' and worry what would happen if they tried to leave, or just didn't see success in their fieldbuilding startup.
IMO this is very incorrect above a certain threshold of ability, especially for people already working in EA or AIS technical/policy/generalist roles. But it would be very helpful if your team could offer some stronger guarantees to these people!
Here's one basic idea (common and probably far from optimal): 'failed-fieldbuilding-attempt insurance' - For p... (read more)