Jonas V

• Jonas V 24 Nov 2019 21:55 UTC

  11 points

  on: RAISE post-mortem

  I’m sure that wasn’t easy, congrats for going through with it and posting such a transparent write-up of your thinking!

• Jonas V 13 Apr 2020 13:07 UTC

  5 points

  on: Why don’t sin­gu­lar­i­tar­i­ans bet on the cre­ation of AGI by buy­ing stocks?

  Rather than just saying “just buy some AI companies” I’d be interested in the specific bets people are making, i.e., which stocks to buy, how to weight them, etc. Something like: Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook (or not because Good Ventures already might be overexposed?), Apple, IBM, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, perhaps plus some compute manufacturers. Thinking about the allocation seems relevant, too.

  Relatedly, we could also think about how this relates to concerns about supporting these companies; perhaps divestment would be better than investing in these companies.

  Obviously related, but not mentioned so far: The OP essentially describes mission hedging, see Hauke Hillebrandt: A generalized strategy of ‘mission hedging’: investing in ‘evil’ to do more good

• Jonas V 19 Sep 2020 10:28 UTC

  5 points

  on: Draft re­port on AI timelines

  Super exciting that this is being shared. Thanks!

• Jonas V 10 Oct 2020 8:57 UTC

  19 points

  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: The ra­tio­nal­ist com­mu­nity’s lo­ca­tion problem

  Upvoted, I would like to see Berlin considered more strongly. Having lived there for two years, I think it’s hard to overestimate how high the quality of living in Berlin is, not just in the easily verifiable ways listed above, but also in more subtle ways. E.g., in addition to being much cheaper, restaurants/​cuisine just generally seems higher quality compared to many other places. German housing is much better than UK/​US housing in ways that seem hard to appreciate for people who haven’t lived in both locations, etc.

  Edit: To clarify, I don’t want to suggest Berlin as the one single best rationalist hub, but as one of the global top 5.

  To add some downsides:

  • The language barrier is still a bit of an issue if you care about making friends outside the rationalist community

  • The airports are among the worst in the world Not true anymore (finally)

• Jonas V 12 Oct 2020 8:23 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: habryka’s comment on: The ra­tio­nal­ist com­mu­nity’s lo­ca­tion problem

  Yeah. Adjusting for cost of living and purchasing power, it would be (much?) less, but still a good reason against moving.

• Jonas V 12 Oct 2020 8:24 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: The ra­tio­nal­ist com­mu­nity’s lo­ca­tion problem

  I know of some EAs who lived in Berlin and found it very difficult to make friends due to the language barriers, and some EAs who had an experience more similar to yours.

• Jonas V 12 Oct 2020 18:33 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: habryka’s comment on: The ra­tio­nal­ist com­mu­nity’s lo­ca­tion problem

  Yeah, that seems very plausible for frugal people who don’t pay much rent, don’t eat out that often, etc. and updates me against Berlin

Ap­ply to Effec­tive Altru­ism Funds now

• Jonas V 14 Feb 2021 16:10 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: magfrump’s comment on: Ap­ply to Effec­tive Altru­ism Funds now

  I largely agree with Habryka’s perspective. I personally (not speaking on behalf of the EA Infrastructure Fund) would be particularly interested in such a grant if you had a track record of successful writing, as this would make it more likely you’d actually reach a large audience. E.g., Eliezer did not just write HPMoR but was a successful blogger on Overcoming Bias and wrote the sequences.

You can now ap­ply to EA Funds any­time! (LTFF & EAIF only)

• Jonas V 25 Jan 2022 10:09 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: lukeprog’s comment on: Fore­cast­ing Newslet­ter: De­cem­ber 2021

  Would be very excited to get applications to the EA Infrastructure Fund (EAIF)! Apply here, it’s fast and easy.

  (I run EA Funds, which includes EAIF.)

  What links here?

  • We are giv­ing $10k as fore­cast­ing micro-grants by Misha_Yagudin (EA Forum; 8 Feb 2022 12:20 UTC; 51 points)
  • Fore­cast­ing Newslet­ter: Jan­uary 2022 by NunoSempere (3 Feb 2022 19:22 UTC; 17 points)
  • Fore­cast­ing Newslet­ter: Jan­uary 2022 by NunoSempere (EA Forum; 3 Feb 2022 19:10 UTC; 16 points)

LessWrong read­ers are in­vited to ap­ply to the Lurkshop

• Jonas V 22 Nov 2022 13:09 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: mruwnik’s comment on: LessWrong read­ers are in­vited to ap­ply to the Lurkshop

  Yes. (Within reason.)

• Jonas V 22 Nov 2022 13:34 UTC

  4 points

  0

  in reply to: Lao Mein’s comment on: LessWrong read­ers are in­vited to ap­ply to the Lurkshop

  “Career networking” feels like it encompasses some useful stuff, like hearing about new opportunities, meeting potential co-founders, etc.

  It also sounds like it encompasses some bad stuff, like a race to get the most connections and impressing people.

  We’re going to try and have some of the useful kind of career networking, and to push hard against the strong pressures towards the bad kind of career networking.

  There also aren’t that many careers out there just waiting for an employee to come slot into a well-defined role that actually makes progress on preventing x-risk or similar, so we’re much more excited about helping people carve out their own path, not in connecting them to to employers running hiring rounds.

  Is there going to be a digital option?

  Unfortunately we’re not going to be able to accommodate that. It’s fully in-person, since a large part of the point is in-person interactions.

• Jonas V 22 Nov 2022 19:59 UTC

  5 points

  0

  in reply to: MikkW’s comment on: LessWrong read­ers are in­vited to ap­ply to the Lurkshop

  It’s funded by the Atlas Fellowship, which is funded by Open Philanthropy. It’s something of a side-hustle of Atlas (outside of the scope and brand of the organization, and run by a subset of our team and some external collaborators). We have a fair amount of experience running different kinds of workshops, and are experimenting with what programs targeted at other demographic and niches might look like.

  Thanks for the feedback! Added to the OP.

• Jonas V 22 Nov 2022 21:00 UTC

  5 points

  1

  in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: LessWrong read­ers are in­vited to ap­ply to the Lurkshop

  Thanks for the feedback! I’ve edited the post to clarify where the funding is coming from and who is running this.

  Regarding the content, one of my co-organizers may leave another comment later. The short version is that we’ll be re-running some of the most popular content from previous workshops, but primarily focus on informal conversations, as participants usually rate that as much more useful than the actual content of the workshop.

• Jonas V 24 Nov 2022 17:05 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: Velizar’s comment on: LessWrong read­ers are in­vited to ap­ply to the Lurkshop

  We might if it goes well. If you want to be pinged if we run one, please submit a quick application through our form!

• Jonas V 15 Dec 2022 20:21 UTC

  6 points

  0

  in reply to: Liron’s comment on: LessWrong read­ers are in­vited to ap­ply to the Lurkshop

  This workshop will be postponed to January, likely to 6–9 Jan. GradientDissenter was planning to give an update to all applicants; I hope they will do so soon. I understand that some of you may have made their plans hoping to be able to participate in the workshop or were otherwise hoping for a fast response, and I apologize for completely missing the deadline, the lack of communication, and the change of plans.

  (Why did this happen? Evaluating applications ended up being harder than anticipated, and I failed to jump in and fix things when the workshop planning wasn’t progressing as planned, partly because I was on vacation.)

• Jonas V 16 Dec 2022 19:04 UTC

  4 points

  0

  in reply to: Liron’s comment on: LessWrong read­ers are in­vited to ap­ply to the Lurkshop

  Yeah, I fully agree with this, and am aware of the cost. Apologies once more for not jumping in sooner when I wasn’t sure whether applicants had been emailed by my colleague or not.

• Jonas V 22 Jun 2023 17:36 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: Ben Pace’s comment on: My ten­ta­tive best guess on how EAs and Ra­tion­al­ists some­times turn crazy

  I think SBF rarely ever fired anyone, so “kicked out” seems wrong, but I heard that people who weren’t behaving in the way SBF liked (e.g., recklessly risk-taking) got sidelined and often left on their own because their jobs became unpleasant or they had ethical qualms, which would be consistent with evaporative cooling.