Then I'm sure he has stuff in common with Mugwump as well (and with you, me, and Thorstad)

Do you mean Bernie Sanders, Peter Thiel, or "Anonymous Mugwump"? I can't think of an ideological leaning these three have in common, but I don't know much about Mugwump

I'll let readers decide, just adding some reactions at the time for more context:

Honest question, have you read the linked post?

- Build Trump’s wall, because it’s a meaningless symbol that will change nothing, but it’ll make Republicans like me, and it will make Democrats focus all their energy on criticizing that instead of anything substantive I do.

Maybe absurdist humor is not the right description, but it's very clearly not meant to be a serious post.

I do, reading Thorstad I thought Alexander

1. Was ignoring that Zuckerberg is indeed using nice pictures to improve his reputation.
2. Was seriously endorsing Murray for welfare czar.

Reading the original I see that neither is true: the Murray pick was absurdist humor, and the Zuckerberg thing was that good things are good even if Zuckerberg does them.

If some of the quotes from Scott Alexander seem particularly poorly reasoned, I would encourage readers to click through the original source. Some examples:

From Thorstad:

In late 2022, following continued reporting on scandals within the effective altruism movement, Alexander wrote an essay entitled “If the media reported on other movements like it does effective altruism.” Alexander suggested that a variety of ridiculous results would follow, for example:

Mark Zuckerberg is a good father and his children love him very much. Obviously this can only be because he’s using his photogenic happy family to “whitewash” his reputation and distract from Facebook’s complicity in spreading misinformation.

Original quote:

Mark Zuckerberg is a good father and his children love him very much. Obviously this can only be because he’s using his photogenic happy family to “whitewash” his reputation and distract from Facebook’s complicity in spreading misinformation. We need to make it harder for people to be nice to their children, so that the masses don’t keep falling for this ploy.

From Thorstad:

Scott Alexander was once asked whom he would name to various high positions in the US government if Alexander were the president of the United States. A number of Alexander’s picks are troubling, but most to the point, Alexander says that he would appoint Charles Murray as welfare czar. (After listing a few more picks, including Stephen Hsu, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk, Alexander says that: “Everything else can be filled by randomly selected black women so that I can brag about how diverse I am.“)

Original quote:

Anonymous asked:

You wake up on the morning on the 20th of January to find that you are now Donald Trump, on the day of your inauguration as president. (Investigation reveals there is another you still practising medicine in Michigan as normal fwiw.) As president, what do you do with the powers available to you? How do Congress, the media, and the public respond? How do you respond back?

 

My cabinet/related picks:

Attorney General: Preet Bharara
Commerce: Peter Thiel
Defense: James Mattis
State: Tulsi Gabbard
Housing & Urban Development: Matt Yglesias
Homeland Security: Anonymous Mugwump
Health & Human Services: Julia Wise
Transportation/Energy: Elon Musk
Treasury: Satoshi Nakamoto
Education: Eva Moskowitz
Veterans Affairs: David Petraeus
Agriculture: Buck Shlegeris
Labor: Bernie Sanders

White House Chief Of Staff: Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg
Head of NIH: Stephen Hsu
Surgeon General: Dr. Chris Ballas
Head of FDA: Alex Tabarrok
Welfare Czar: Charles Murray
Chair of Federal Reserve: Scott Sumner
Budget Director: Holden Karnofsky
Head of CIA: Philip Tetlock

Everything else can be filled by randomly selected black women so that I can brag about how diverse I am.

First order of business: in addition to being my Secretary of Labor, Bernie Sanders is now vice president. I don’t care what he does with the position, it’s just so that the Republican Congress knows that if they impeach me, they’re getting a pacifist Jewish socialist as the leader of the free-world.

[...]

There are many (most?) EAs who do not have a direct high-impact career or do a lot of high-impact volunteering. So roughly the other way of having impact is earning to give, and if people can give 10%, I think that should qualify.

I don't understand the reasoning behind this. The goal shouldn't be to allow everyone to "have an impact", and people can definitely "have an impact" by donating 10%, regardless of whether it counts as earning to give.

Emphasising the fraction of salary (rather than an absolute amount)

• This seems clearly better as it (1) may stimulate high-earners to give more and (2) also allows for people with a lower earning potential to consider earning to give as a career path.

It's not as clear to me that this is better.

• Since pain is not the unit of effort, it would be better for someone to earn $500,000 and give 10% than for someone to earn $50,000 and give 90%
• To motivate higher earners to give more, there could thresholds (you mention $10k and $100k in the post) for different levels of "earning to give", and the framing could be that the more you're donating in absolute amounts the more you're succeeding at Earning to Give. I know a person with a life goal to one day join Farmed Animals Funders, which is only open to people giving $250,000+ annually
• It's not clear to me that (2) is a positive thing, given that EtG would be a less valuable career path for people with a lower earning potential. As far as I know this was a major reason why EtG started being promoted less, at least by some: they were worried that it would cause low-middle-income people to switch to less effective careers, or discourage them from applying to more impactful opportunities

Something that I think is underappreciated about EtG is that it's often a win-win. Besides giving more money to charity; you earn more money for yourself, gain useful skills, and might have or at least try a more interesting job.

Some things in this spirit that I think are under-recommended to people

• Negotiate your salary.
• Move to a wealthier country / area / city, since that alone accounts for a large part of differences in income. This often has many other benefits in terms of future career opportunities and quality of life.
• Try a career in a high-income field for about a year or even less and see how it goes. You might find out that you enjoy it more than your current career, regardless of income. I know a person who switched from a physics PhD to finance and they love it.

Do you still do personal donations? If so, to which charities?

Followup question: in 2017 you used part of your donations to support animal welfare and the long term future, but later stopped doing so, what was the reasoning behind this change?