My choice of examples is partially driven by who happens to be most salient to me.
My list wasn’t intended to be a list of people with the most impressive accomplishments: I intentionally omitted extreme outliers because there’s a strong prior against being able to enable someone to become one.
When I referred to impressive/outstanding accomplishments, I did have social value in mind specifically.
I’m indifferent as to whether the social value is added through involvement with rationality or effective altruism, or through other channels.
My main point being, if you’re going to push people towards specific careers and away from others for your own ideological reasons, that should really be VERY clear in the copy on your website. Same as if a fundamentalist Christian group was offering free consulting on family planning.
To date, our focus has been on producing a holistic package of information to help our advisees attain life satisfaction. The vast majority of the pages that we’ve produced are not about topics directly related to effective altruism.
A number of our advisees have explicitly expressed interest in doing something socially valuable. We’re working to advise them accordingly. Our estimate of our potential impact as described in the original post is based on people in this reference class.
We’re committed to providing unbiased information, and present the pros and cons of all career options under consideration irrespective of their social value.
Nothing wrong with that. MattG is not accusing you, but you are defending (note: defending is a sign of weakness). I recommend that you agree on MattGs point. It is not wrong. It is an improvement suggestion and would make you appear more humble if followed.
Added: I think this is the reason he is upvoted and you are not.
My choice of examples is partially driven by who happens to be most salient to me.
My list wasn’t intended to be a list of people with the most impressive accomplishments: I intentionally omitted extreme outliers because there’s a strong prior against being able to enable someone to become one.
When I referred to impressive/outstanding accomplishments, I did have social value in mind specifically.
I’m indifferent as to whether the social value is added through involvement with rationality or effective altruism, or through other channels.
My main point being, if you’re going to push people towards specific careers and away from others for your own ideological reasons, that should really be VERY clear in the copy on your website. Same as if a fundamentalist Christian group was offering free consulting on family planning.
To date, our focus has been on producing a holistic package of information to help our advisees attain life satisfaction. The vast majority of the pages that we’ve produced are not about topics directly related to effective altruism.
A number of our advisees have explicitly expressed interest in doing something socially valuable. We’re working to advise them accordingly. Our estimate of our potential impact as described in the original post is based on people in this reference class.
We’re committed to providing unbiased information, and present the pros and cons of all career options under consideration irrespective of their social value.
Nothing wrong with that. MattG is not accusing you, but you are defending (note: defending is a sign of weakness). I recommend that you agree on MattGs point. It is not wrong. It is an improvement suggestion and would make you appear more humble if followed.
Added: I think this is the reason he is upvoted and you are not.