I was born in 1962 (so I’m in my 60s). I was raised rationalist, more or less, before we had a name for it. I went to MIT, and have a bachelors degree in philosophy and linguistics, and a masters degree in electrical engineering and computer science. I got married in 1991, and have two kids. I live in the Boston area. I’ve worked as various kinds of engineer: electronics, computer architecture, optics, robotics, software.
Around 1992, I was delighted to discover the Extropians. I’ve enjoyed being in that kind of circles since then. My experience with the Less Wrong community has been “I was just standing here, and a bunch of people gathered, and now I’m in the middle of a crowd.” A very delightful and wonderful crowd, just to be clear.
I‘m signed up for cryonics. I think it has a 5% chance of working, which is either very small or very large, depending on how you think about it.
I may or may not have qualia, depending on your definition. I think that philosophical zombies are possible, and I am one. This is a very unimportant fact about me, but seems to incite a lot of conversation with people who care.
I am reflectively consistent, in the sense that I can examine my behavior and desires, and understand what gives rise to them, and there are no contradictions I‘m aware of. I’ve been that way since about 2015. It took decades of work and I’m not sure if that work was worth it.
This question is two steps removed from reality. Here’s what I mean by that. Putting brackets around each of the two steps:
what is the threshold that needs meeting [for the majority of people in the EA community] [to say something like] “it would be better if EAs didn’t work at OpenAI”?
Without these steps, the question becomes
What is the threshold that needs meeting before it would be better if people didn’t work at OpenAI?
Personally, I find that a more interesting question. Is there a reason why the question is phrased at two removes like that? Or am I missing the point?