Do you worry about Torchbearers being a high demand group? ControlAI (the parent organization) recommended it to me after I did an interview with them. I looked at the signup funnel, and it was “read these two documents about our ideals and how we want to run this community, then commit to producing legible AI safety output in a way you will report on regularly. Also, attend an all-hands video call meeting every two weeks.” It kind of gave me a funny feeling, and I was reminded of the history of some of the more notorious high demand EA adjacent groups, so I bounced off it.
As for EA—yeah, as far as I can tell, you have to be rich or a top elite to matter to EA. They don’t really want you otherwise. It’s the natural consequence of focusing on capturing and spending resources for the Good as efficiently as possible. They’re all very nice people who would like it if everyone else did Good according to their ideals as well, but putting actual resources behind it would be inefficient compared to driving more millions of dollars and top elites toward cause areas. The externality—bycatch, EAs that disengaged after neglect—is a price they are willing to have others pay.
It’s a shame I didn’t see that take! Discovery is hard for that sort of thing on LW. This is different from Instagram, as I understand it; it obliges its users to view a lot of new things, which increases discoverability in general.
I wonder if I could take some time to just walk around my city and hit up random people for some conversation. I suppose I could put some effort into learning how to do that effectively before I do that.
…Though, thinking about it, people in the comments agree that this is a very effective thing to do, but… is it? I wonder if anyone’s actually checked or modeled to see how proselytizing + clip farming + reporting on this in blog posts does compared to other things. I wonder if other movements have studied this? Ahh, there goes the EA reflex again, I suppose.
Do you worry about Torchbearers being a high demand group? ControlAI (the parent organization) recommended it to me after I did an interview with them. I looked at the signup funnel, and it was “read these two documents about our ideals and how we want to run this community, then commit to producing legible AI safety output in a way you will report on regularly. Also, attend an all-hands video call meeting every two weeks.” It kind of gave me a funny feeling, and I was reminded of the history of some of the more notorious high demand EA adjacent groups, so I bounced off it.
As for EA—yeah, as far as I can tell, you have to be rich or a top elite to matter to EA. They don’t really want you otherwise. It’s the natural consequence of focusing on capturing and spending resources for the Good as efficiently as possible. They’re all very nice people who would like it if everyone else did Good according to their ideals as well, but putting actual resources behind it would be inefficient compared to driving more millions of dollars and top elites toward cause areas. The externality—bycatch, EAs that disengaged after neglect—is a price they are willing to have others pay.
It’s a shame I didn’t see that take! Discovery is hard for that sort of thing on LW. This is different from Instagram, as I understand it; it obliges its users to view a lot of new things, which increases discoverability in general.
I wonder if I could take some time to just walk around my city and hit up random people for some conversation. I suppose I could put some effort into learning how to do that effectively before I do that.
…Though, thinking about it, people in the comments agree that this is a very effective thing to do, but… is it? I wonder if anyone’s actually checked or modeled to see how proselytizing + clip farming + reporting on this in blog posts does compared to other things. I wonder if other movements have studied this? Ahh, there goes the EA reflex again, I suppose.