I think this is a ridiculous idea, but the linked article (and headline of this post) is super clickbait-y. This idea is mentioned in two sentences in the court documents (p. 20 of docket 1886, here). All we know is that Gabriel, Sam's brother, sent a memo to someone at the FTX Foundation mentioning the idea. We have no idea if Sam even heard about this or if anyone at the Foundation "wanted" to follow through with it. I'm sure all sorts of wild possibilities got discussed around that time. Based on the evidence it's a a huge leap to say there were desires or plans to act on them.

Thanks for this! I agree interventions in this direction would be worth looking into more, though I'd also say that tractability remains a major concern. I'm also just really uncertain about the long-term effects.

I think the Quincy Institute is interesting but want to note that it's also very controversial. Seems like they can be inflammatory and dogmatic about restraint policies. From an outside perspective I found it hard to evaluate the sign of their impact, much less its magnitude. I don't think I'd recommend 80K put them on the job board right now.

Thanks for catching that, you're absolutely right. That should either read about 100,000 deaths or hundreds of thousands of casualties. I'll get that fixed.

I can certainly empathize with the longtermist EA community being hard to ignore. It's much flashier and more controversial.

For what it's worth I think it would be possible and totally reasonable for you to filter out longtermist (and animal welfare, and community-building, etc.) EA content and just focus on the randomista stuff you find interesting and inspiring. You could continue following GiveWell,  Founders Pledge's global health and development work, and HLI. Plus, many of Charity Entrepreneurship's charities are randomista-influenced.

For example, I make heavy use of the unsubscribe feature on the Forum to try and keep my attention focused on the issues I care about rather than what's most popular (ironically I'm unsubscribed and supposed to be ignoring the 'Community' feed lol).

I agree with you about SNT/ITN. I like that chapter of your thesis a lot, and also find John's post here convincing.

It does seem to me that randomista EA is alive and largely well—GW is still growing, global health still gets the most funding (I think), many of Charity Entrepreneurship's new charities are randomista-influenced, etc.

There's a lot of things going on under the "EA" umbrella. HLI's work feels very different from what other EAs do, but equally a typical animal welfare org's work will feel very different, and a typical longtermist org's work will feel very different, because other EAs do a lot of different things now.

Just curious - do you not feel like GiveWell, Happier Lives Institute, and some of Founders Pledge's work, for example, count as randomista-flavoured EA?

On (1), I commented above, but most supplemental creatine is vegan as far as I can tell.

I think most supplemental creatine is vegan? From what I can tell it's lab-synthesized from chemicals. Folks should obviously double-check that for themselves and their specific supplements, though.

I think that one's a reach, tbh.

(I also think the one about using guilt to control is a stretch.)

In what sense is it "sort of" true that members need to get permission from leaders to date, change jobs, or marry?