mikbp
Posts 9
Comments50
I'm sad that such events are often needed to make some common sense ideas arise, but I am very happy that they nonetheless arose!
Some particular comments:
if someone who might feel ‘on your side’ appears to be doing unusually well, try to increase scrutiny rather than reduce it
Yes! This is general. Mostly everyone is interested that their side is "good". Taking shortcuts, low moral standards, etc. help doing particularly well, so one needs to be particularly careful with those people.
we should be skeptical about the idea that EAs have better judgement about anything that’s not a key area of EA or personal expertise, and should use conventional wisdom, expert views or baserates for those (e.g. how to run an org; likelihood of making money; likelihood of fraud. A rule of thumb to keep in mind: “don’t defer to someone solely because they’re an EA.” Look for specific expertise or evaluate the arguments directly.
I’m less into the vision of EA as an identity / subculture / community, especially one that occupies all parts of your life
Yes, in general actively fighting against EA communities to become silos and for EA enterprises to have workers outside EA communities would be of great value. I've seen quite a lot of outside criticism to EA in this line but did not notice any change. This is why I was so happy when I red this post and when I saw this passage in a comment from Rob about his interview with SBF:
In recent years, in pursuit of better work-life balance, I’ve been spending less time socialising with people involved in the EA community, and when I do, I discuss work with them much less than in the past.
Maybe this idea is more accepted than I thought? I would ask core EAs who agree with this to be more vocal about it. You may already act accordingly in your life, but it would be valuable that "the community" can see that, at least some relevant EA figures have a life outside EA. And I say this not only for individual's better work-life balance, this is also very important community-wide.
Ok, thanks. Edited to add an approx min length and that whips are expensive. I didn't state any specific length because the minimum depends on the organisation, but yes, a guideline is good. More than that... there is actually nothing. It is super easy to do and it is common sense that many people who don't have hair because of cancer are really not comfortable with this, and specially for children this makes them stand out and be an easy target for jokes and comments. For those that struggle with money, this is very valuable —at an almost negligible cost for us. Downsides? Having colder ears? ;-) I'm not asking people who don't want to cut their hair to do anything, I'm saying if you want to cut yours, consider donating it.
Re shortform: I actually first clicked on it but: 1) I wrote the post in the phone, 2) there was no title line, 3) I've never wrote (or read, I think) a shortform 4) I have not written the post for several weeks already. So 2) looked weird and because of 1) and 3) I was not sure that everything was fine, and because of 4) I didn't want to delay more writing the post (which often leads me to not writing any post at all). So I went to the safe option of writing a (short) post (which I don't think is not adequate as I've read quite a few very short posts, also by notable EAs, and nobody complained in the comments or seemed to have downvoted). This also explains the rough writing. I have to note here that I've red several times posts from the forum masters asking people to write rough/short/half-baked posts as it is much preferable than not writing them at all.