I was just sent this https://www.mzbworks.com/prayer.htm --- really fantastic. TLDR luck/magic is real but only works on one thing. I normally think of luck like the compass in Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) (that points to what you want most), although unlike this essay, I normally think of it where the user can juggle multiple goals and the compass will adjust to that. Here, with the author's notion of prayer, we can really only activate the power of luck on one thing. Perhaps "at a time", perhaps not. 

But this fellow was not an average young man; a little more was expected of him. He was not satisfied with Jesus' answer, and said, "Master, all this have I done from my childhood." In other words; "I've already done that, I think I'm ready for the next step on the way."

So this remarkable Rabbi leveled with him, and gave him the next step; "Then go, sell what thou hast and give to the poor, and follow me."

You can almost see the young man's mind working. "What? Me, who has kept the Commandments all my life? Must I do this too? There's nothing in the Law and the Prophets about this! People will call me crazy! Why can't I keep what I've got and be saved right here?"

So the Bible tells us the young man "went away sorrowing; for he had great possessions."

It doesn't say anywhere that this young man was damned, or that Jesus reproached him, or cursed him. He probably went on keeping the Commandments, and may have lived an excellent life, a happy life, as a pillar of his community.

But he had wanted something more; and he never got that. He never became one of the inner circle.

Just found it charming that jesus was like "oh you should've mentioned you beat easy mode already, i usually don't get around to telling people there are different difficulty levels". But the application to charitable living/giving is obvious. I literally recently said to myself "eh give yourself the beef cheat this month (i'm mostly vegetarian just open to cheating once or twice a month), you donated a kidney" which is of dubious validity, and yet, just might work (in some sense). 

but there's a sting in the tail. I knew a man who decided to concentrate entirely on money-making for a few years so that he would have money to study music and compose. He was an overwhelmingly talented man in half a dozen fields, and he became, in a scant six years, almost a millionaire. But that six years had wrought a tragic change in him, for by the time he had the money he had once vowed to devote to his composing, he had spent five years without once touching his piano, his cello, his flute and bassoon, his books.

He said, when asked about his decision, "Oh, music. That was just a juvenile notion. Now I've got a business to look after." The very act of making money had altered the man himself beyond recognition. Yet he had sincerely loved music, and the world of music is much the poorer by the loss of strange and lovely compositions, now never to be completed or published -- so that use of mental power backfired 

setting aside the fact that I almost literally did this personally, I thought this would resonate with some of yall who've thought about value drift. 

I think "outdated term" is a power move, trying to say you're a "geek" to separate yourself from the "mops" and "sociopaths". She could genuinely think, or be surrounded by people who think, 2nd wave or 3rd wave EA (i.e. us here on the forum in 2025) are lame, and that the real EA was some older thing that had died. 

I roughly feel more comfortable passing the responsibility onto wiser successors. I still like the "positive vs negative longtermism" framework, I think positive longtermism (increasing the value of futures where we survive) risks value lock-in too much. Negative longtermism is a clear cut responsibility with no real downside unless you're presented with a really tortured example about spending currently existing lives to buy future lives or something. 

I distinguish believing that good successor criteria are brittle from speciesism. I think antispeciesism does not oblige me to accept literally any successor.

I do feel icky coalitioning with outright speciesists (who reject the possibility of a good successor in principle), but I think my goals and all of generalized flourishing benefits a lot from those coalitions so I grin and bear it. 

I wrote a quick take on lesswrong about evals. Funders seem enchanted with them, and I'm curious about why that is. 

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kq8CZzcPKQtCzbGxg/quinn-s-shortform?commentId=HzDD3Lvh6C9zdqpMh 

I love these kinds of questions! I attempted a roundup here but it never really caught on 

nitpick: you say open source which implies I can read it and rebuild it on my machine. I can't really "read" the weights in this way, I can run it on my machine but I can't compile it without a berjillion chips. "open weight" is the preferred nomenclature, it fits the situation better. 

(epistemic status: a pedantry battle, but this ship has sailed as I can see other commenters are saying open source rather than open weight). 

And sorry, I’m not going to be embarrassed about trying to improve the world

You, my friend, are not sorry :)

In my mind since EA premises are vague and generic, any criticism above a quality bar gets borg'd in. So no, I didn't ever see an "external" criticism of EA be any good-- if it was good, then it'd be internal criticism, as far as im concerned.

It's important to consider adverse selection. People who get hounded out of everywhere else are inexplicably* invited to a forecasting conference, of course they come! they have nowhere else to go! 

* inexplicably, in the sense that a forecasting conference is inviting people specialized in demographics and genetics-- it's a little related, but not that related.