I think the idea of a motivational shadow is a good one, and it can be useful to think about these sorts of filters on what sorts of evidence/argument/research people are willing to share, especially if people are afraid of social sanction.

However, I am less convinced by this concrete application. You present a hierarchy of activities in order of effort required to unlock, and suggest that something like 'being paid full time to advocate for this' pushes people up multiple levels:

• Offhand comment
• irate Tweet
• Low-effort blog post
• Sensationalised newpaper article
• Polite, charitable, good faith, evidentially rigorous article

I don't believe that the people who are currently doing high quality Xrisk advocacy would counter-factually be writing nasty newspaper hit pieces; these just seem like totally different activities, or that Timnit would write more rigourously if people gave her more money. My impression is that high quality work on both sides is done by people with strong inherent dedication to truth-seeking and intellectual inquiry, and there is no need to first pass through a valley of vitriol before your achieve a motivational level-up to an ascended state of evidence. Indeed, historically a lot of Xrisk advocacy work was done by people for whom such an activity had negative financial and social payoff.

I also think you miss a major, often dominant motivation: people love to criticize, especially to criticize things that seem to threaten their moral superiority. 

Thanks for sharing. I found it very interesting, and I thought the focus on elite incentives and creating pro-growth coalitions is very promising. Having said that, I am less convinced by some of the specific policies being highlighted.

One theme I noticed running through many of the proposed policies is strengthening the power of the state. I think in some cases this can make a lot of sense - maybe El Salvador's crackdown on the gangs is good at reducing violence - but I would have thought it was worthwhile to consider the downsides to this strategy. Governments have been responsible for many pro-growth policies, but they have also been directly responsible for many of the largest disasters in history - incremental taxes do not necessarily go towards "fund growth-enabling activities".

This particularly came to mind with the discussion of financial flows and civil asset forfeiture, which while not explicitly endorsing is generally quite positive:

There is another route for affected countries to recover stolen assets. In many jurisdictions, civil forfeiture and analogous processes allow assets themselves to be prosecuted and returned if you can prove they were stolen or obtained with the proceeds of crime. This allows a wronged party (in this case, a government that is the victim of corruption or graft that generates the IFF) to press a claim against the proceeds of crimes rather than the criminals per se. This is a lower bar for evidence and successful prosecution than criminal proceedings — but a successful prosecution of stolen assets can then result in money being repatriated.

I am not an expert in the subject matter, but the 'civil forfeiture' being discussed here sounds very similar to the doctrine of 'civil asset forfeiture' in the US, which as far as I'm aware is widely regarded as an illiberal, arbitrary and capricious regime that unjustly deprives innocent people of their money (see for example the IFJ or the ACLU). The "lower bar for evidence" you highlight positively has the negative effect that many people who are not criminals end up losing their money, and face a lengthy and costly process they may struggle to navigate to get it returned.

The situation seems if anything likely to be worse in the third world than in a generally well-governed country like the US. My impression is that in many places diasporas can be valuable forces for positive change against ill-governed countries, providing a link to the outside world and a source of expertise and wealth when a regime opens up. Giving regimes more tools to crack down on people who flee seems potentially quite dangerous.

I could see a utilitarian argument that, even though states can be brutal and unfair at times, you cannot make an omelette without breaking some eggs and on average we are better off under the the Leviathan. But I have trouble reconciling this attitude with the stance taken towards scholarship contracts with return obligations as a means to combat brain drain:

Classic scholarship programmes cannot reverse this; even they impose “rules” that students need to return: the global labour market for highly skilled labour is highly flexible, and it would be unfair to deny opportunities for individual progress. 

These scholarships are voluntary contracts, to go abroad to study in return for some number of years of service upon return. Given that people choose to accept the offer, and seem to benefit from the programs (there is no secret 'gotcha'), the idea of repayment through work does not seem inherently unfair, no more than it is unfair to expect repayment for a loan - and cash repayment is sometimes offered as an alternative anyway. Certainly I struggle to see how these contracts could be so unfair as to render them verboten while civil asset forfeiture, widely regarded in the US as one of the worst and most unfair abuses of US policing, can be recommended without qualification.

Thanks! Perhaps you or someone else with an iPhone could copy-paste it.

Thanks for sharing; would be great if there was a transcript! 

This paper was previously shared and discussed (with detailed responses from Toby) here, and the arguments also shared and discussed before that here.

Me: What do you think about early children’s rights advocates? They advocated for incremental reforms on child labour(restrictions on number of hours, banning children from working during school hours etc.) even though using child labour is morally forbidden. What they did seems to be commendable. So it looks like in some cases it’s commendable to get other people to do less bad things.

This seems like an odd example to me because child labour is legal and common almost everywhere (to my knowledge) and people generally do not think this is very bad, let alone morally forbidden. There are regulations about the type of work children can do but no blanket ban; I do not see any significant inherent problems with children having paper rounds or working as a babysitter or similar.

I think it's part of your job as the head of any EA org to present the best side of all aspects of effective autism

Why? We should hire leaders based on how well suited they are to running the organization in question. There is no requirement that to work in EA you have to agree with all EA causes, or that you should pretend that you do.

Sure, if EVF released more detailed information about Wytham Abbey, that would help people evaluate EVF a little bit, in the same way that if Apple released more detailed information about Apple Watch, that would also help shareholders evaluate Apple. It could also help bondholders, consumers, academics and policymakers make decisions. In both cases the impact is limited by the fact that the aggregate numbers are already released, so if EVF/Apple had an especially bloated cost structure on Wytham/Watch, that implies some other EVF/Apple division was extra-efficient.

I don't know exactly how Apple is internally organized, but I strongly suspect there is an Apple-Watch-level P&L calculated for planning purposes and compensating management. I would expect Apple Watch to have more professional accounting than Wytham, and to be more able to bear the additional costs involved in publishing (bringing internal numbers up to GAAP/IFRS standards etc.).

You're right that by publishing information Apple could help competitors, and this is a significant disincentive. It's less clear to me however that this should be a considered a cost from a social point of view; helping competitors make decisions could help increase competition and the spread of good practices in the market. 

Yes, Harvard Law School publishes details for the general public, but that is surely because HLS is trying to fundraise from the general public. Wytham fundraised from a small group of private donors, and presumably they got to see the financials. Wytham to my knowledge has never attempted to solicit donations from the general public so does not have the same need to share this information with the general public.

I think if EV had had a high corruption culture (even if they didn't literally know about any crimes), it would have been much more costly to have an external investigation (and such an investigation would likely have shaken out differently).

This is an interesting argument, thanks for making it. Would you mind explaining in a bit more depth? I would have thought the structure of the investigation, especially including the fact that the results were not published, would limit the cost of the investigation. As far as I'm aware the only thing outside observers have to go on is this paragraph, which appears to be from this guy:

Finally, I want to add this point.  Over the last year, my team and I had the chance to meet dozens of people affiliated with the various EV projects.  We were consistently impressed by everyone’s genuine commitment and dedication to the EA mission, particularly during a very challenging year.  I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.  

Is there some significant difference you see between the EVF investigation and the OpenAI investigation?