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Emphasis on children. Another tell is that EAs uniformly seem pretty young, especially in relation to philanthropic circles. Their main guy William MacAskill may be an Oxford professor but he’s still just 35.
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Many older wealthy patrons I think indulge EAs like precocious children and their age alone makes the relationship a bit safer. A 60-year-old billionaire is a known quantity one way or another. SBF is young so much more able to play wolf in sheep’s clothing. Or fox in henhouse.
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One of my prejudices is believing that only age can get you to good moral judgment. Intelligence is neither necessary nor sufficient. Life experience is necessary but not sufficient (too much too early, like being in a war as a teen, is mostly going to create debilitating trauma)
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I don’t quite understand the Venn between EAs and rationalists. For a long time I thought they were co-extensive because they seem so similar in all ways. Young, earnest, mathematically literate egoists caught in a bit of a mutual validation death spiral but not bad people.
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ime 10% grandiose narcissists who need to show they’re better than everyone, 10% vulnerable narcissists who need an excuse that they’re not evil, and 80% sheltered adult child techworkers who were browbeaten by 1 and 2 into guilt for their own existence
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stripping yourself of "biases" like socio-emotional intuition in a quest for accuracy does reduce you to something of a defenseless, childlike state. We presumably have those biases because they have survival value...
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I met one of them, a not very bright 20 something who told me I reminded her of her dad. Because I expressed insufficient credulity to her chosen crusade against AI alignment, which was being funded by SBF/FF.
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