Kinda pro-pluralist, kinda anti-Bay EA.
I have come here to extend the principle of charity to bad criticisms of EA and kick ass. And I'm all out of charity.
(my opinions are fully my own, and do not represent the views of any close associates or the company I work for)
Going to quickly share that I'm going to take a step back from commenting on the Forum for the foreseeable future. There are a lot of ideas in my head that I want to work into top-level posts to hopefully spur insightful and useful conversation amongst the community, and while I'll still be reading and engaging I do have a limited amount of time I want to spend on the Forum and I think it'd be better for me to move that focus to posts rather than comments for a bit.[1]
If you do want to get in touch about anything, please reach out and I'll try my very best to respond. Also, if you're going to be in London for EA Global, then I'll be around and very happy to catch up :)
Though if it's a highly engaged/important discussion and there's an important viewpoint that I think is missing I may weigh in
Like others, I just want to say I'm so sorry that you had this experience. It isn't one I recognise from my own journey with EA, but this doesn't invalidate what you went through and I'm glad you're moving in a direction that works for you as a person and your values. You are valuable, your life and perspective is valuable, and I wish all you all the best in your future journey.
Indirectly, I'm going to second @Mjreard below - I think EA should be seen as beyond a core set of people and institutions. If you are still deeply driven by the ideals EA was inspired by, and are putting that into action outside of "the movement", then to me you are still "EA" rather than "EA Adjacent".[1] EA is a set of ideas, not a set of people or organisations, and I will stand by this point.
Regardless, I wish you all the best, and that if you want to re-engage you do so on your terms.
though ofc you can identify however you like
Again, a fan of you and your approach David, but I think you underestimate just how hostile/toxic Émile has been toward all of EA. I think it's very fair to substitute one for the other, and it's the kind of thing we do all the time in real, social settings. In a way, you seem to be emulating a hardcore 'decoupling' mindset here.
Like, at risk of being inflammatory, an intuition pump from your perspective might be:
It is possible that many complaints about Trump are true and also that Trump raises important concerns. I would not like to see personal criticism of Trump become a substitute for engagement with criticism by Trump.
I think many EAs view 'engagement with criticism by Torres' in the same way that you'd see 'engagement with criticism by Trump', that the critic is just so toxic/bad-faith that nothing good can come of engagement.
I think the main thing is their astonishing success. Like, whatever else anyone wants to say to Émile, they are damn hard working and driven. It's just in their case they are driven by fear and pure hatred of EA.
Approximately ~every major news media piece critical of EA (or covering EA with a critical lens, which are basically the same thing over the last year and a half) seems to link to/quote Émile at some point as a reputable and credible report on EA.
Sure, those more familiar with EA might be able to see the hyperbole, but it's not imo out there to imagine that Émile's immensely negative presentation of EA being picked out by major outlets has contributed to the fall of EA's reputation over the last couple of years.
Like, I was wish we could "collectively agree to make Émile irrelevant", but EA can't do that unilaterally given the influence their[1] ideas and arguments have had. Those are going to have to be challenged or confronted sooner or later.
That is, Émile's
To answer your question very directly on the confidence of millions of years in the future, the answer I think is "no", because I don't think we can be reasonably confident and precise about any significant belief about the state of the universe millions of years into the future.[1] I'd note that the article you link isn't very convincing for someone who doesn't share the same premesis, though I can see it leading to 'nagging thoughts' as you put it.
Other ways to answer the latter question about human extinction could be:
In practice though, I think if you reach a point where you might consider it to be a moral course of action to make all of humanity extinct, perhaps consider this a modus tonens of the principles that brought you to that conclusion rather than as a logical consequence that you ought to believe and act on. (I see David made a similar comment basically at the same time)
Some exceptions for phyisics especially outside of our lightcone yada yada, but I think for the class of beliefs (I used significant beliefs) that are similar to this question this holds
I don't understand your lack of understanding. My point is that you're acting like a right arse.
When people make claims, we expect there to be some justification proportional to the claims made. You made hostile claims that weren't following on from prior discussion,[1] and in my view nasty and personal insinuations as well, and didn't have anything to back it up.
I don't understand how you wouldn't think that Sean would be hurt by it.[2] So to me, you behaved like arse, knowing that you'd hurt someone, didn't justify it, got called out, and are now complaining.
So I don't really have much interest in continuing this discussion for now, or much opinion at the moment of your behaviour or your 'integrity'
Sorry Oli, but what is up with this (and your following) comment?
From what I've read from you[1] seem to value what you call "integrity" almost as a deontological good above all others. And this has gained you many admirers. But to my mind high integrity actors don't make the claims you've made in both of these comments without bringing examples or evidence. Maybe you're reacting to Sean's use of 'garden variety incompetence' which you think is unfair to Bostrom's attempts to tow the fine line between independence and managing university politics but still, I feel you could have done better here.
To make my case:
Maybe from your perspective you feel like you're just floating questions here and sharing your personal perspective, but given the content of what you've said I think it would have been better if you had either brought more examples or been less hostile.
(I'm going to wrap up a few disparate threads together here, and will probably be my last comment on this post ~modulo a reply for clarification's sake. happy to discuss further with you Rob or anyone via DMs/Forum Dialogue/whatever)
(to Rob & Oli - there is a lot of inferential distance between us and that's ok, the world is wide enough to handle that! I don't mean to come off as rude/hostile and apologies if I did get the tone wrong)
Thanks for the update Rob, I appreciate you tying this information together in a single place. And yet... I can't help but still feel some of the frustrations of my original comment. Why does this person not want to share their thoughts publicly? Is it because they don't like the EA Forum? Because their scared of retaliation? It feels like this would be useful and important information for the community to know.
I'm also not sure what to make of Habryka's response here and elsewhere. I think there is a lot of inferential distance between myself and Oli, but it does seem to me to come off as a "social experiment in radical honesty and perfect transparency" , which is a vibe I often get from the Lightcone-adjacent world. And like, with all due respect, I'm not really interested in that whole scene. I'm more interested in questions like:
Writing it down, 2.b. strikes me as what I mean by 'naive consequentialism' if it happened. People had information that SBF was a bad character who had done harm, but calculated (or assumed) that he'd do more good being part of/tied to EA than otherwise. The kind of signalling you described as naive consequentialism doesn't really seem pertinent to me here, as interesting as the philosophical discussion can be.
tl'dr - I think there can be a difference between a discussion about what norms EA 'should' have, or senior EAs should act by, especially in the post-FTX and influencing-AI-policy world, but I think that's different from the 'minimal viable information-sharing' that can help the community heal, hold people to account, and help make the world a better place. It does feel like the lack of communication is harming that, and I applaud you/Oli pushing for it, but sometimes I wish you would both also be less vague too. Some of us don't have the EA history and context that you both do!
epilogue: I hope Rebecca is doing well. But this post & all the comments makes me feel more pessimistic about the state of EA (as a set of institutions/organisations, not ideas) post FTX. Wounds might have faded, but they haven't healed 😞
Not that people should have guessed the scale of his wrongdoing ex-ante, but was there enough to start to downplay and disassociate?
People, the downvote button is not a disagree button. That's not really what it should be used for.
I do not trust your perspective on this saga Remmelt.
For observers, if you want to go down the twitter rabbit hole when this all kicked off, and get the evidence with your own eyes, start here: https://nitter.poast.org/RemmeltE/status/1627153200930508800#m and if you want read the various substack pieces linked in thread[1]
To me, it's clear that Émile is acting the worst of everyone on that thread. And I think you treat Andreas far too harshly as well. You said of him "I think you are being intentionally deceptional here, and not actively truth-seeking." which, to me, describes Émile's behaviour exactly. The fact that, over a year on, you don't seem to recognise this and (if anything) support Émile more against EA is a bad sign.
We even had a Forum DM discussion about this a while ago, and I provided even more public cases of bad behaviour by Émile,[2] and you don't seem to have updated much on it.
I applaud your other actions to seek alternative viewpoints on the world on issues that EA cares about (e.g. your collaborations with Forrest Landry and talking to Glen Weyl), but you are so far off the mark with Émile. I hope you can change your mind on this.
I recommend not doing it, since you all have much more useful things to do with your life. I'd note that Émile doesn't really push back on many of the claims in the Fuentes article, and the stuff around Hillary Greaves and 'Alex Williams' seem far enough to rule someone as a bad-faith actor.
Clarification - 'bad behaviour' as in, Émile should not be regarded as a trusted source on anything EA, and is acting in bad faith. Not that they're doing anything illegal afaik