Davidmanheim

Head of Research and Policy @ ALTER - Association for Long Term Existence and Resilience
7552 karmaJoined Working (6-15 years)

Participation
4

  • Received career coaching from 80,000 Hours
  • Attended more than three meetings with a local EA group
  • Completed the AGI Safety Fundamentals Virtual Program
  • Completed the In-Depth EA Virtual Program

Sequences
2

Deconfusion and Disentangling EA
Policy and International Relations Primer

Comments
930

Topic contributions
1

Now, if you own a house, you can demand that other people obey you or leave your house. But the state does not own the country; no one does. 

By what authority does such ownership exist? Because at some point, we're arguing over which social structures (ownership, government, negative rights) are good or bad, and I don't see much justification to draw the line where you choose to.

Other answers are very much on point, but I want to flag a point others are not focused on.

While I’m currently living with my parents and paying $700 per month in rent, I’ve been thinking seriously about saving more aggressively now that I'm just starting my career.

You should absolutely be doing this, and it should be a focus. I don't think it's a reason not to donate, but this has been discussed several times before.

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZXQ53du9sBjLZs5XB/how-to-balance-personal-savings-and-giving

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/psvQMXEgQsT5RMDTu/consider-financial-independence-first

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/w9ENDad268PT9KnWn/thoughts-on-personal-finance-for-effective-altruists 

And on donating now vs. later,

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7uJcBNZhinomKtH9p/giving-now-vs-later-a-summary 

Yeah, I was mostly thinking about policy - if we're facing 90% unemployment, or existential risk, and need policy solutions, the difference between 5 and 7 years is immaterial. (There are important political differences, but the needed policies are identical.)

I agree that better understanding of progress and which problems are more or less challenging is valuable, but it seems clear that timelines get fare more attention than needed in places where they aren't decision relevant.

You very much do not know what you are talking about, as that linked "explanation" makes clear.

I'm not sure if you're honestly confused, or intentionally wasting peoples time, but either way, you should spend an hour or two asking 4o to explain in detail why an expert in AI would object to this, and think about the answers.

Yeah, you should talk to someone who knows more about security than myself, but as a couple starting points;

math-proven safe AIs

This is not a thing, and likely cannot he a thing. You can't prove an AI system isn't malign, and work that sounds like it says this is actually doing something very different.

You can do everything you do now, even buy or rent GPUs, all of them just will be cloud math-proven safe GPUs

You can't know  that a given matrix multiplication won't be for an AI system. It's the same operation, so if you can buy or rent GPU time, how would it know what you are doing?

I think it's better to play 5d chess - so I'm EA-adjacent-adjacent-adjacent-adjacent-adjacent.

This would benefit greatly from more in-depth technical discussion with people familiar with the technical, regulatory, and economic issues involved. It talks about a number of things that aren't actually viable as described, and makes a number of assertions that are implausible or false.

That said, I think it's directionally correct about a lot of things.

You seem to have ignored a central part of what was said by Daniela Amodei; "I'm not the expert on effective altruism," which seems hard to defend.

Edit to add: the above proof that signing on to the GWWC pledge doesn't mean you are an EA is correct, but the person you link to is using having signed as a proof that he understands what EA is.

As always, and as I've said in other cases, I.don't think it makes sense to ask a disparate movement to make pronouncements like this.

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