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at the 2022 Sohn Conference: youtube.com/watch?v=xVaSST.

Sohn 2022 | Patrick Collison in conversation with Sam Bankman-Fried

00:00 Introduction00:35 Bitcoin vs. Gold04:01 High Real Rates: Good or Bad for Crypto?06:00 Crypto: Good or Bad for the Dollar?09:18 Sam’s View on Trading12:...

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A common "criticism of EA" that appears here is that it is/was overly focused on measurability and GHW vs. more abstract causes (at least "until recently"). I believe this is almost entirely a misunderstanding that "Givewell top charities = EA". Here is the timeline:

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EA was "founded" in mid-2000s. Givewell was founded in 2007. Givewell Labs was founded in 2011. blog.givewell.org/2011/09/12/why In 2014 it became Open Philanthropy. blog.givewell.org/2014/08/20/ope

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Vicarious, arguably the first "AGI x-risk" thing (at least from my POV/Holden was never that into it) was funded in 2012 goodventures.org/about-us/press We made grants in e.g. macroeconomic policy, as early as 2014 and science as early as 2016.

goodventures.org

Vicarious Announces $15M Series A Funding Led by Good Ventures | Good Ventures

Press Release: Artificial Intelligence Company Vicarious Announces $15M Series A Funding Led by Good Ventures.

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specifically mentioned the importance of politics (e.g. around foreign policy) as overlooked, bc it inevitably impacts all the other causes. We shifted on this explicitly in 2016. (This time with consensus among OP leadership) medium.com/@moskov/compel

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So when I see those complaints, they feel like either strawmen, or ghosts, attacking the very very early years of a still young movement. Yes, shifts in the past 10 years are still "recent changes" but they nonetheless represent 2/3 of the entire lifetime.

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Even with respect to those early years, I feel much was just a matter of pragmatism and path dependence. Givewell was founded to solve for people with a lot of money and not a lot of time who wanted ~guaranteed impact. That was the initial market for which they sought PMF.

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And this is all just from my POV as one donor. The EA community is as ideologically diverse in almost as many ways as it is homogenous. You can always find limited thinkers in any big group - it doesn't mean they represent the truth.

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FWIW I think that OpenPhil was one of the orgs that led the charge on exploring a wider range of topics! I do think that c.a. 2018, a large fraction of 'core EAs' generally thought that the 'more diffuse' angles of doing good were generally not compelling.

9:41 PM · Jun 11, 2022Twitter Web App

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The early EA folks didn't seem to make much of a connection that two of the biggest philanthropists were EAs in all but name: Gates and Buffett.

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Who are the “core EAs” if not OpenPhil? Is this a no true scotsman type disagreement?

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For the last hour, I've had a funny image in my head of Will MacAskill descending from Mt. Sinai and declaring "thou shall not calculate flow-through effects!"

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Curly f* crypto. Stop him!