cosmic gopnik
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The more explicitly you articulate an idea, the more likely someone is to claim it was already obvious and self-evident.
Even if they had never thought of it before: good articulation makes the conclusion feel inevitable in retrospect. There is no sense of acquisition. It is experienced not as “I learned something,” but as “I know, lol.”
Sometimes the idea becomes so obvious in retrospect that failing to have thought of it seems like stupidity. And people say “we knew” to avoid feeling stupid. In environments where intelligence is treated as the primary virtue (yes, here), this effect intensifies. For many, admitting they hadn’t noticed something before still reads as a reputational loss.
Upd someone wrote similar thing on Tumblr, which is as always nice to see
https://www.tumblr.com/real-real-numbers/816153062238552064
Caveat:, my experience here is pretty limited (mostly educational programs), but within that, I want to share where I currently see entry points for generalists.
I’d look for people who’ve taken on organizing roles within introductory parts of EA—running study groups, coordinating hackathon teams or cohorts, organizing events, etc. Especially people who’ve helped others learn, like facilitators or student group organizers. It isn’t perfect filter, but I see it as a decent proxy for epistemic rigor and ability to work with others.
And yes! We’ve too struggled hiring from outside the field—context turned out to matters a lot.We got many of our best people by watching which volunteers got things done and stealing them. At some point we decided to make this replicable, so now we run volunteer days for projects not directly tied to our core work (solstices, quests, etc.).
Sometimes we just grow our own organizers. For example, before our evals course, we ran a short facilitator training and built a team from there.
Not saying these are best practices, but that’s what worked for us. Curious how others approach this and what their pipelines look like.Also I’m really glad this is being pointed out. I wish more people start experimenting here.
I don’t see a dichotomy! I think his belief that nothing is happening could have been based on his confidence that other people care about our world.
sorry, but this isn’t anything significant
It’s just a local joke that I wrote in russian a long time ago. Essentially a shortened version of the post, but much more gopnik-esque.
That one’s on me for the phrasing.
What I meant to point at was more like “ozone hole wasn’t real” kind of reaction, where by saying “overblown” people imply that the problem was completely made up. I’m not tying to make a point about whether the response scale matched the risk, and I don’t really have the expertise to judge.
Asking how exactly the counterfactual world would have looked like is absolutely reasonable, and honestly it’s a much harder question than the one I was trying to talk about. My focus was only that the full scale of possible consequences is counterfactual to us and therefore invisible.
Btw I belive that in principle it can be estimated. Major industries currently have risk assessment systems in place, nothing stops us from using them to analyze past near-misses. And regarding Y2K specifically: we actually do have examples of software failures cascading through infrastructure—I was thinking specifically about the 2024 CrowdStrike thing while writing it.
I didn’t even realize Wikipedia had a public list of near-misses. Thank you!
Exactly what I’m looking for
Thank you!
Part of the reason why wrote this is hope that comments will actually yield a list of similar and better texts. I know they’re out there somewhere.
Hello! I’m wondering if I can translate your book into Russian?
I’m not going to monetize it, and of course I will give the credits.
Yeah, probably when you have clear evidence that you didn’t know any better, the effect weakens or breaks
You just gave me an idea to put a quick intuition-check before my explanations, so people see their own prior state. Thank you, this is actually very useful!