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I just learned that Lawrence Lessig, the lawyer who is/was representing Daniel Kokateljo and other OpenAI employees, supported and encouraged electors to be faithless and vote against Trump in 2016. He wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post (archived) and offered free legal support. The faithless elector story was covered by Politico, and was also supported by Mark Ruffalo (the actor who recently supported SB-1047). I think this was clearly an attempt to steal an election and would discourage anyone from working with him. I expect someone to eventually sue AGI companies for endangering humanity, and I hope that Lessig won't be involved.
A little while ago I posted this quick take:  I didn't have a good response to @DanielFilan, and I'm pretty inclined to defer to orgs like CEA to make decisions about how to use their own scarce resources.  At least for EA Global Boston 2024 (which ended yesterday), there was the option to pay a "cost covering" ticket fee (of what I'm told is $1000).[1] All this is to say that I am now more confident (although still <80%) that marginal rejected applicants who are willing to pay their cost-covering fee would be good to admit.[2] In part this stems from an only semi-legible background stance that, on the whole, less impressive-seeming people have more ~potential~ and more to offer than I think "elite EA" (which would those running EAG admissions) tend to think. And this, in turn, has a lot to do with the endogeneity/path dependence of I'd hastily summarize as "EA involvement." That is, many (most?) people need a break-in point to move from something like "basically convinced that EA is good, interested in the ideas and consuming content, maybe donating 10%" to anything more ambitious. For some, that comes in the form of going to an elite college with a vibrant EA group/community. Attending EAG is another—or at least could be. But if admission is dependent on doing the kind of things and/or having the kinds of connections that a person might only pursue after getting on such an on-ramp, you have a vicious cycle of endogenous rejection. The impetus for writing this is seeing a person who was rejected with some characteristics that seem plausibly pretty representative of a typical marginal EAG rejectee: * College educated but not via an elite university * Donates 10%, mostly to global health * Normal-looking middle or upper-middle class career * Interested in EA ideas but not a huge amount to show for it * Never attended EAG Of course n=1, this isn't a tremendous amount of evidence, I don't have strictly more information than the admissions folks, the optim
I'm pretty confident that Marketing is in the top 1-3 skill bases for aspiring Community / Movement Builders. When I say Marketing, I mean it in the broad sense it used to mean. In recent years "Marketing" = "Advertising", but I use the classic Four P's of Marketing to describe it. The best places to get such a skill base is at FMCG / mass marketing organisations such as the below. Second best would be consulting firms (McKinsey & Company): * Procter & Gamble (P&G) * Unilever * Coca-Cola * Amazon 1. Product - What you're selling (goods or services) - Features and benefits - Quality, design, packaging - Brand name and reputation - Customer service and support 2. Price - Retail/wholesale pricing - Discounts and promotions - Payment terms - Pricing strategy (premium, economy, etc.) - Price comparison with competitors 3. Place (Distribution) - Sales channels - Physical/online locations - Market coverage - Inventory management - Transportation and logistics - Accessibility to customers 4. Promotion - Advertising - Public relations - Sales promotions - Direct marketing - Digital marketing - Personal selling
Last night, I quickly thumbed through the websites (and Ambitious Impact listings) of some smaller charities as I started thinking about my end of year giving plans.  I'd encourage smaller orgs to refer to something on their website dated within the past few months -- an event, a dated blog post, etc. -- that the median website visitor will ~quickly see. This is particularly true if the website refers to more distant events, has older-dated blog posts, etc. Without some indicator of freshness, the visitor may be left uncertain whether the org is still meaningfully active and potentially worth funding. After all, the closure rate for small, new orgs is not low. [Caveats: the thumbing was on mobile, while taking a bath, and at the end of a difficult day, so there could easily have been misses on my part]
In the spirit of Funding Strategy Week, I'm resharing this post from @Austin last week: