Pinocchio is narrated by Jiminy Cricket; the Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick; Sam Bankman-Fried’s story is narrated by Michael Lewis. His book, Going Infinite, isn’t written from Sam’s perspective, exactly. Michael Lewis is a sympathetic fly on the wall documenting a tragically flawed underdog being destroyed by his own...
This is a post I wrote for my blog, EA Lifestyles. like any good ea, I try to have a scout mindset. I don’t like to lie to myself or to other people. I try to be open to changing my mind. but that kind of intellectual honesty only works...
Pinocchio is narrated by Jiminy Cricket; the Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick; Sam Bankman-Fried’s story is narrated by Michael Lewis. His book, Going Infinite, isn’t written from Sam’s perspective, exactly. Michael Lewis is a sympathetic fly on the wall documenting a tragically flawed underdog being destroyed by his own infinite ambition.
But like the Great Gatsby, where Nick speaks so fondly about Daisy (who Gatsby loves) and so unkindly about Tom (who Gatsby hates), you get the sense that Sam’s love for the effective altruism movement colours a lot of what ended up in the book.
Spectacle is another thing that colours what went into the book. Michael Lewis doesn’t take the tabloid... (read 2191 more words →)
This is exactly how I feel; thank you for articulating it so well!
Yes, my current personal default is just deferring to what mainstream non-EA/rat AI experts seem to be saying, which seems to be trending towards more concerned. I just prefer not to talk about it most of the time. :)
Thanks, this is pretty persuasive and worth thinking about (so I will think about it!)
Thanks very much! I basically agree with you - I'm pretty comfortable telling people I don't have an opinion, but that's unusual in my social circles, so I wanted to write up an explanation for why.
This is a post I wrote for my blog, EA Lifestyles.
like any good ea, I try to have a scout mindset. I don’t like to lie to myself or to other people. I try to be open to changing my mind.
but that kind of intellectual honesty only works if you don’t get punished for being honest. in order to think clearly about a topic, all of the potential outcomes have to be okay - otherwise you just end up with mental gymnastics trying to come up with the answer you want.
and in some cases - like existential risks from ai - none of the potential outcomes of thinking deeply about it are... (read 445 more words →)
Hey Ruby, thanks for taking the time to provide this useful and detailed feedback. It makes sense to me - I'll copy and paste to crosspost when relevant but I'll be fairly conservative about when I do so.
Hi everyone, I'm Kirsten. I've been posting more on the EA Forum recently, and I thought I'd start crossposting relevant posts here. Today I was going to crosspost a piece about social status regulation and how it can mirror the counterintuitive way corporations sometimes behave. But it turns out having 10,000 karma on the EA Forum and 0 here means I can't crosspost here (whoops).
If y'all trust my track record and intentions, upvoting me to 100 karma and/or a mod allowing me to crosspost occasionally would be appreciated!
Link to my EA Forum profile: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/kirsten
Great post! I've linked to it from the EA Lifestyles substack. https://substack.com/profile/127787889-ea-lifestyles/note/c-14971201