Evan_Gaensbauer

• Evan_GaensbauerFeb 28, 2025, 9:35 PM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Lech Mazur’s comment on: AI Rapidly Gets Smarter, And Makes Some of Us Dum­ber”

  I peruse her content occasionally but I wasn’t aware that she is widely recognized as the quality of her analysis/​commentary varying so wildly, and often particularly lacklustre outside of her own field. Gwern mentioned that Gary Marcus has apparently said as much in the past when it comes to her coverage of AI topics. I’ll refrain from citing her as a source in the future.

• Evan_GaensbauerFeb 28, 2025, 9:33 PM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: gwern’s comment on: AI Rapidly Gets Smarter, And Makes Some of Us Dum­ber”

  You wrote a low quality summary of a low quality secondary-source video of no particular importance by a talking head whose expertise has little to do with AI (nor is regarded as such like a Gary Marcus)

  You’re right that I was probably exaggerating when I said it was the best effort I could provide. It was more like what I expected would be considered a basic, accurate summary I could generate in a brief period of time.

  low quality secondary-source video of no particular importance by a talking head whose expertise has little to do with AI (nor is regarded as such like a Gary Marcus)

  That the source itself is not considered to be of particularly significant quality or importance makes sense given that my post is only lightly downvoted relative to the number of votes it has received. While of course her expertise isn’t that relevant to AI, the fact that she has expertise in a sufficiently technical field seemed to me relevant to clarify to indicate she shouldn’t be strongly suspected to present the information based on a wild misunderstanding. I wasn’t aware that Gary Marcus has previously criticized the quality of her coverage of these sort of issues, or whatnot, so I’ll keep in mind for the future she shouldn’t be regarded as a reliable source.

  That she, or anyone else, might apparently be a “talking head whose expertise has little to do with AI” doesn’t by itself seem like it’d be a strong argument against taking the person seriously as a source, relative to the standards on LW, given that the same could be said of many whose contributions are frequently well-received on LW. Similar criticisms have frequently been leveled at Eliezer Yudkowsky, or could be at Scott Alexander. I’d be unmoved by many such criticisms for the same reason as anyone else, though that criticism of others who’ve for longer been well-received on LW could be warranted. There are also many with expertise in AI who among rationalists are often dismissed as talking heads.

  where you added no original information or thought, and failed to follow up on basic details, like failing to name or link the study in the final item

  I wasn’t aware that additional info or analysis/​commentary beyond the contents of the source was expected. Anyone could follow up on basic details as easily as I could if they were curious to learn even more, and I’m technically not obliged to do so myself, though I’m also not entitled to be well received even if I don’t bother citing other sources, so that seems fair enough others would be nonplussed by that.

  I do not think you really have to ask why your post is not being upvoted to the skies.

  I agree, which is why I didn’t. I asked why it was being downvoted.

  (despite praising your own “effort” repeatedly)

  I didn’t praise my effort but mentioned that I put in any. I didn’t mean to use the word effort in any exaggerated sense. There’s no need to diminish it as though it’s not technically true. If someone takes two minutes to brush their teeth, I’d consider to say they put in two minutes of effort is as appropriate a way to describe that as any other.

  If you are spending a lot of “effort” on posts like this and you are upset by the reception

  I wasn’t as upset by the reaction but more frustrated that nobody before had bothered before explaining why it was mostly receiving downvotes. I was aware the post might be banal, though it also seemed innocuous enough, that I didn’t expect it to be mostly downvoted either, as though it somehow particularly subtracts from the quality of content on LW. I now understand better the reasons why, so thanks for explaining.

  I mentioned above:

  I’m just hoping you can offer insight into whether I should keep bothering with the effort of posts like this because I’m the one who’s off here, or others just have superficial reactions.

  You’ve offered enough that I understand that the answer to my own question is that it was mostly the former—that I was the one who was off—so I’m satisfied by this response.

• Evan_GaensbauerFeb 27, 2025, 11:07 PM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: AI Rapidly Gets Smarter, And Makes Some of Us Dum­ber”

  I appreciate that, though it seems since yesterday my post may have been downvoted even more. I wouldn’t mind as much except nobody has explained why when I bothered putting in the effort. I could think maybe it’s because of the clickbait-y title, or on account of the fact that it’s a YouTube video meant to convey important info about AI to, like, normies in a mainstream way, and is therefore assumed to be of super low quality.
  
  Yet that’d be in spite of facts that:
  1. I clarified this is from theoretical physicist and science communicator who’s trying to inform the public in an approachable way, which is something I figure others on LessWrong could appreciate.
  2. I have now summarized the details as best as I can so that others on LessWrong don’t need to bother with digesting the info through a medium they don’t prefer, in spite of the fact that having that available in a multimedia format is more preferred by others, so it could recognized how it’s constructive there are multiple options.
  
  I suspect part of it might just be a latent preference on LessWrong for the sort of lengthy blog posts in a style they’re accustomed to, which is valid, but a tendency to presume the same sort of info they like being exposed to but delivered in a different way means it must be lower quality. That could be a bias I might question, though it’s fair enough if others just disagree. I’m just hoping you can offer insight into whether I should keep bothering with the effort of posts like this because I’m the one who’s off here, or others just have superficial reactions.

• Evan_GaensbauerFeb 27, 2025, 1:52 AM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: AI Rapidly Gets Smarter, And Makes Some of Us Dum­ber”

  I’ve now summarized those details as they were presented in the video. ‘Staying more grounded in how bad it is’ with more precision would require you or whoever learning more about these developments from the respective companies on your own, though the summaries I’ve now provided can hopefully serve as a starting point for doing so.

“AI Rapidly Gets Smarter, And Makes Some of Us Dum­ber,” from Sabine Hossenfelder

Chi­nese Re­searchers Crack ChatGPT: Repli­cat­ing OpenAI’s Ad­vanced AI Model

• Evan_GaensbauerDec 16, 2024, 2:35 AM

  −9 points

  −4

  on: Why I quit effec­tive al­tru­ism, and why Ti­mothy Tel­leen-Law­ton is stay­ing (for now)

  Comment cross-posted to the Effective Altruism Forum
  
  Edit, 15 December 2024: I’m not sure why this comment has gotten so downvoted in only the couple hours since I posted it, though I could guess why. I wrote this comment off the cuff, so I didn’t put as much effort into writing it as clearly or succinctly as I could, or maybe should, have. So, I understand how it might read is as a long, meandering nitpick, of a few statements near the beginning of the podcast episode, without me having listened to the whole episode yet. Then, I call a bunch of ex-EAs naive idiots, like Elizabeth referred to herself as at least formerly being a naive idiot, and then say even future effective altruists will be proven to be idiots, and those still propagating EA after so long, like Scott Alexander, might be the most naive and idiotic of all. To be clear, I also included myself, so this reading would also imply that I’m calling myself a naive idiot.
  
  That’s not what I meant to say. I would downvote that comment too. I’m saying that

  1. If it’s true what Elizabeth is saying about her being a naive idiot, then it would seem to follow that a lot of current, and former, effective altruists, including many rationalists, would also be naive idiots for similar reasons.

  2. If that were the case, then it’d be consistent with greater truth-seeking, and criticizing others for not putting enough effort into truth-seeking with integrity with regards to EA, to point out to those hundreds of other people that they either, at one point were, or maybe still are, naive idiots.

  3. If Elizabeth or whoever wouldn’t do that, not only because they consider it mean, but moreover because they wouldn’t think it true, then they should apply the same standards to themselves, and reconsider that they were not, in fact, just naive idiots.

  4. I’m disputing the “naive idiocy” hypothesis here as spurious, as it comes down to the question of
     whether someone like Tim—and, by extension, someone like me in the same position, who has also mulled over quitting EA—are still being naive idiots, on account of not having updated yet to the conclusion Elizabeth has already reached.

  5. That’s important because it’d seem to be one of the major cruxes of whether someone like Tim, or me, would update and choose to quit EA entirely, which is the point of this dialogue, so if that’s not a true crux of disagreement here, speculating about whether hundreds of current and former effective altruists have been naive idiots is a waste of time.

  I’ve begun listening to this podcast episode. Only a few minutes in, I feel a need to clarify a point of contention over some of what Elizabeth said:

  Yeah. I do want to say part of that is because I was a naive idiot and there’s things I should never have taken at face value. But also I think if people are making excuses for a movement that I shouldn’t have been that naive That’s pretty bad for the movement.

  She also mentioned that she considers herself to have caused harm by propagating EA. It seems like she might be being too hard on herself. While she might consider being that hard on herself to be appropriate, the problem could be what her conviction implies. There are clearly still some individual, long-time effective altruists she still respects, like Tim, even if she’s done engaging with the EA community as a whole. If that wasn’t true, I doubt this podcast would’ve been launched in the first place. Having been so heavily involved in the EA community for so long, and still being so involved in the rationality community, she may know hundreds of people, friends, who either still are effective altruists now, or used to be effective altruists, but no longer. Regarding the sort of harm caused by EA propagating itself as a movement, she provides this as a main example.

  The fact that EA recruits so heavily and dogmatically among college students really bothers me.

  Hearing that made me think about a criticism of the organization of EA groups for university students made last year by Dave Banerjee, former president of the student EA club at Columbia University. His was one of the most upvoted criticisms of such groups, and how they’re managed, ever posted to the EA Forum. While Dave apparently realized what are presumably some of the same conclusions as Elizabeth about the problems with evangelical university EA groups, he did so with a much quicker turnaround than her. He shifted towards such a major update while still a university student, while it took her several years. I don’t mention that so as to imply that she was necessarily more naive and/​or idiotic than he was. From another angle, given that he was propagating a much bigger EA club than Elizabeth ever did, at a time when EA was being driven to grow much faster than when Elizabeth might’ve been more involved with EA movement/​community building, Dave could have easily have been responsible for causing more harm. Therefore, perhaps he has perhaps been even a more naive idiot than she ever was.
  
  I’ve known other university students who were formerly effective altruists helping build student EA clubs, who quit because they also felt betrayed by EA as a community. Given that it’s not like EA will be changing overnight, in spite of whoever considers it imperative some of it movement-building activities stop, there will be teenagers in the future, coming months, who may come through EA with a similar experience. Their teenagers who may be chewed up and spit out, feeling ashamed of their complicity in causing harm through propagating EA as well. They may not have even graduated high school yet, and within a year or two, they may also be(come) those effective altruists, then former effective altruists, who Elizabeth is anticipating and predicting that she would call naive idiots. Yet those are the very young people Elizabeth would seek to prevent from befalling harm themselves by joining EA in the first place. It’s not evident that there’s any discrete point at which they cease being those who should heed her warning in the first place, and instead become naive idiots to chastise.
  
  Elizabeth also mentions how she became introduced to EA in the first place.

  I’d read Scott Alexander’s blog for a long time, so I vaguely knew the term effective altruist. Then I met one of the two co founders of Seattle EA on OkCupid and he invited me to the in person meetings that were just getting started and I got very invested.

  As of a year ago, Scott Alexander wrote a post entitled In Continued Defense of Effective Altruism. While I’m aware he made some later posts responding to some criticisms of that one he made, I’m guessing he hasn’t abandoned that thesis of that post in its entirety. Meanwhile, as one of, if not the, most popular blog associated with either the rationality or EA communities, one way or another, Scott Alexander may still be drawing more people into the EA community than almost any other writer. If that means he may be causing more harm by propagating EA than almost any other rationalist still supportive of EA, then, at least in that particular way Elizabeth has in mind, Scott may right now continue to be one of the most naive idiots in the rationality community. The same may be true of so many effective altruists Elizabeth got to know in Seattle.
  
  What I’m aware is a popular refrain among rationalists is: speak truth, even if your voice trembles. Never mind on the internet, Elizabeth could literally go meet hundreds of effective altruists or rationalists she has known in either the Bay Area, and Seattle, and tell them that for years they, too, were also naive idiots, or that they’re still being naive idiots. Doing so could be how Elizabeth could prevent them from causing harm. In not being willing to say so, she may counterfactually be causing so much more harm by saying or doing so much less to stop EA from propagating than she knows that she can.
  
  Whether it be Scott Alexander, or so many of her friends who have been or still are in EA, or those who’ve helped propagate university student groups like Dave Banerjee, or those young adults who will come and go through EA university groups by the year 2026, there are hundreds of people Elizabeth should be willing to call, to their faces, naive idiots. It’s not a matter of whether she, or anyone, expects that’d work as some sort of convincing argument. That’s the sort of perhaps cynical and dishonest calculation she, and others, rightly criticize in EA. She should tell all of them that, if she believes it, even if her voice trembles. If she doesn’t believe that, that merits an explanation of how she considers herself to have been a naive idiot, but so many of them to not have been. If she can’t convincingly justify, not just to herself, but others, why she was exceptional in her naive idiocy, then perhaps she should reconsider her belief that even she was a naive idiot.
  
  In my opinion she, or so many other former effective altruists, were not just naive idiots. Whatever mistakes they made, epistemically or practically, I doubt the explanation is that simple. The operationalization here of “naive idiocy” doesn’t seem like a decently measurable function of, say, how long it took before it was just how much harm someone was causing by propagating EA, and how much harm they did cause in that period of time. “Naive idiocy” here doesn’t seem to be all that coherent an explanation for why so many effective altruists got so much, so wrong, for so long.

  I suspect there’s a deeper crux of disagreement here, one that hasn’t been pinpointed yet, by Elizabeth or Tim. It’s one I might be able to discern if I put in the effort, though I don’t have a sense of what it might’ve been either. I could, given that I still consider myself an effective altruist, though I ceased to be an EA group organizer myself last year too, on account of me not being confident in helping grow the EA movement further, even if I’ve continued participating in it for what I consider its redeeming qualities.

  If someone doesn’t want to keep trying to change EA for the better, and instead opts to criticize it to steer others away from it, it may not be true that they were just naive idiots before. If they can’t substantiate their formerly naive idiocy, then to refer to themselves as having only been naive idiots, and by extension imply so many others they’ve known still are or were naive idiots too, is neither true nor useful. In that case, if Elizabeth would still consider herself to have been a naive idiot, that isn’t helpful, and maybe it is also a matter of her, truly, being too hard on herself. If you’re someone who has felt similarly, but you couldn’t bring yourself to call so many friends you made in EA a bunch of naive idiots to their faces because you’d consider that false or too hard on them, maybe you’re being too hard on yourself too. Whatever you want to see happen with EA, us being too hard on ourselves like that isn’t helpful to anyone.

  What links here?

  • Evan_Gaensbauer's comment on EA: Re­nais­sance or Di­as­pora? by TimothyTelleenLawton (EA Forum; Dec 16, 2024, 2:34 AM; 0 points)

Hu­man Bio­di­ver­sity (Part 4: As­tral Codex Ten)

• Evan_GaensbauerSep 24, 2024, 8:13 AM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Defin­ing al­ign­ment research

  Do you mean Evan Hubinger, Evan R. Murphy, or a different Evan? (I would be surprised and humbled if it was me, though my priors on that are low.)

• Evan_GaensbauerSep 24, 2024, 8:01 AM

  0 points

  0

  in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Habryka’s Short­form Feed

  How do you square encouraging others to weigh in on EA fundraising, and presumably the assumption that anyone in the EA community can trust you as a collaborator of any sort, with your intentions, as you put it in July, to probably seek to shut down at some point in the future?

Cat­a­logue of POLITICO Re­ports and Other Cited Ar­ti­cles on Effec­tive Altru­ism and AI Safety Con­nec­tions in Wash­ing­ton, DC

[Question] Are there high-qual­ity sur­veys available de­tailing the rates of polyamory among Amer­i­cans age 18-45 in metropoli­tan ar­eas in the United States?

[Question] What ev­i­dence is there for (or against) the­o­ries about the ex­tent to which effec­tive al­tru­ist in­ter­ests mo­ti­vated the ouster of Sam Alt­man last year?

• Evan_GaensbauerMay 14, 2023, 8:53 PM

  2 points

  0

  on: Google “We Have No Moat, And Nei­ther Does OpenAI”

  The Substack post only mentions that a researcher leaked the document, not that any researcher authored it. The document could’ve been written up by one or more Google staffers who aren’t directly doing the research themselves, like a project manager or a research assistant.

  Nothing in the document should necessarily be taken as representative of Google, or any particular department, though the value of any insights drawn from the document could vary based on what AI research project(s)/​department the authors of the document work on/​in. This document is scant evidence in any direction of how representative the statements made are of Google and its leadership, or any of the teams or leaders of any particular projects or departments at Google focused on the relevant approaches to AI research.

• Evan_GaensbauerMay 14, 2023, 8:49 PM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Google “We Have No Moat, And Nei­ther Does OpenAI”

  Thanks for making this comment. I had a similar comment in mind. You’re right nobody should assume any statements in this document represent the viewpoint of Google, or any of its subsidiaries, like DeepMind, or any department therein. Neither should be assumed that the researcher(s) who authored or leaked this document are department or project leads. The Substack post only mentions that a researcher leaked the document, not that any researcher authored it. The document could’ve been written up by one or more Google staffers who aren’t directly doing the research themselves, like a project manager or a research assistant.

  On the other hand, there isn’t enough information to assume it was only one or more “random” staffers at Google. Again, nothing in the document should necessarily be taken as representative of Google, or any particular department, though the value of any insights drawn from the document could vary based on what AI research project(s)/​department the authors of the document work on/​in.
  
  That might not be a useful question to puzzle over much, since we could easily never find out who the anonymous author(s) of the document is/​are. Yet that the chance the authors aren’t purely “random” researchers should still also be kept in mind.

• Evan_GaensbauerJul 11, 2022, 10:05 PM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Quinn’s comment on: Changes in Com­mu­nity Dy­nam­ics: A Fol­low-Up to ‘The Berkeley Com­mu­nity & the Rest of Us’

  Thank you for this detailed reply. It’s valuable, so I appreciate the time and effort you’ve put into it.
  
  The thoughts I’ve got to respond with are EA-focused concerns that would be tangential to the rationality community, so I’ll draft a top-level post for the EA Forum instead of replying here on LW. I’ll also read your EA Forum post and the other links you’ve shared to incorporate into my later response.
  
  Please also send me a private message if you want to set up continuing the conversation over email, or over a call sometime.

• Evan_GaensbauerJul 10, 2022, 6:19 PM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: localdeity’s comment on: Changes in Com­mu­nity Dy­nam­ics: A Fol­low-Up to ‘The Berkeley Com­mu­nity & the Rest of Us’

  I’ve edited the post so It’s now “resentment from rationalists elsewhere to the Bay Area community” to “resentment from rationalists elsewhere toward the Bay Area community” because that seems to reduce the ambiguity some. My use of the word ‘resentment’ was intentional.

• Evan_GaensbauerJul 9, 2022, 6:01 PM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: localdeity’s comment on: Changes in Com­mu­nity Dy­nam­ics: A Fol­low-Up to ‘The Berkeley Com­mu­nity & the Rest of Us’

  Thanks for catching those. The word ‘is’ was missing. The word “idea” was meant to be “ideal.” I’ve made the changes.

Changes in Com­mu­nity Dy­nam­ics: A Fol­low-Up to ‘The Berkeley Com­mu­nity & the Rest of Us’

• Evan_GaensbauerJun 29, 2022, 1:48 AM

  2 points

  in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Is there any way some­one could post about pub­lic policy re­lat­ing to abor­tion ac­cess (or an­other sen­si­tive sub­ject) on LessWrong with­out get­ting su­per down­voted?

  I’m thinking of asking as another question post, or at least a post seeking feedback probably more than trying to stake a strong claim. Provoking debate for the sake of it would hinder that goal, so I’d try to writing any post in a way to avoid that. Those filters applied to any post I might write wouldn’t hinder any kind of feedback I’d seek. The social barriers to posting raised by others with the concerns you expressed are seeming high enough that I’m unsure I’ll post it after all.