It really seems like when you say “outstanding people” you’re really saying:
“People who have accomplished a lot in the world of rationality or effective altruism.”
I could name off the top of my head half a dozen younger people who have blogs that get more facebook shares than slate star codex, have made more money than $1.4 million dollars, or have a bigger audience than Peter Singer. Not to mention other outstanding accomplishments (such as olympic athletes), which you didn’t seem to touch on at all.
By choosing these people as your examples, you’re indicating an implicit social bias towards your recommendations and values, which is not at all clear from the copy on your website.
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.
You’re right, but adding social value is very different from having an outstanding accomplishment.
My point is, if the point of their organization is to push people towards specific careers due to a specific ideology (which it’s clear based on this list is the case), that should be VERY clear in their marketing copy.
It’s a very crowded market. I don’t think that the value that people perceive rsises significantly if a new athlete that a tiny bit better than the existing ones comes along.
Well, for Olympic athletes proper, who are often amateurs or semi-professionals, this may be true, but for professional athletes who compete in major sports such as association football or basketball, this doesn’t seem to be the case: top-level athletes are able to command salaries in the order of $1M - $10M per year. Assuming the market isn’t grossly inefficient, this implies that there are very few people in the world who can perform these jobs delivering the same level of performance, despite the high demand. Thus, any single top-level athlete in these sports probably produces a significant amount of economic value.
Top-level basketball players get payed based on their skill in comparision to other basketball players.
An action that increaes the average skill level of all basketball players a bit won’t increase the amount of money that basketball fans are willing to pay for watching basketball games.
It really seems like when you say “outstanding people” you’re really saying:
“People who have accomplished a lot in the world of rationality or effective altruism.”
I could name off the top of my head half a dozen younger people who have blogs that get more facebook shares than slate star codex, have made more money than $1.4 million dollars, or have a bigger audience than Peter Singer. Not to mention other outstanding accomplishments (such as olympic athletes), which you didn’t seem to touch on at all.
By choosing these people as your examples, you’re indicating an implicit social bias towards your recommendations and values, which is not at all clear from the copy on your website.
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.
Being an olympic athletes doesn’t prdocue added social value. It’s very much a zero sum game.
You’re right, but adding social value is very different from having an outstanding accomplishment.
My point is, if the point of their organization is to push people towards specific careers due to a specific ideology (which it’s clear based on this list is the case), that should be VERY clear in their marketing copy.
People are willing to pay lots of money to watch Olympic athletes, so by economists’ definition of value they do provide lots of it.
It’s a very crowded market. I don’t think that the value that people perceive rsises significantly if a new athlete that a tiny bit better than the existing ones comes along.
Well, for Olympic athletes proper, who are often amateurs or semi-professionals, this may be true, but for professional athletes who compete in major sports such as association football or basketball, this doesn’t seem to be the case: top-level athletes are able to command salaries in the order of $1M - $10M per year. Assuming the market isn’t grossly inefficient, this implies that there are very few people in the world who can perform these jobs delivering the same level of performance, despite the high demand. Thus, any single top-level athlete in these sports probably produces a significant amount of economic value.
Top-level basketball players get payed based on their skill in comparision to other basketball players.
An action that increaes the average skill level of all basketball players a bit won’t increase the amount of money that basketball fans are willing to pay for watching basketball games.