I'm having trouble parsing but I think the first point is about the mutation rate in humans? I don't expect that to be informative about flu virus except as a floor.

This post was hard for me to read. A few months after I wrote it I developed medical issues that are still ongoing and really sapped my ability to work. Right now I feel on the precipice of developing Large Scale Ambitions, and that I'd probably have taken the plunge to something bigger if I'd hadn't gotten so sick for so long. 

On the other hand, I spent the past 2 years trying to dramatically reform Effective Altruism. I expected to quit in May but got sucked back in via my work with Timothy TL.  I didn't think of this as ambitious, but looking back I do find it ridiculous that I thought I would succeed, which is kind of like ambition except I'm not having any fun with it.

I remain really happy with the "dear self" format. Most advice is advice to your past self anyway, and it's nice to be straightforward about it. It avoids friction with people very different from me, because they can't argue that that they know better for me personally.

I like the balance I struck between treating social motivations as real and important, and encouraging people to look beyond them.

You might also enjoy my twitter thread on Frying Pan Agency, where you start with small actions like fixing a wobbly frying pan handle and work your way up. 

Still no answer to "how do you tell when to release subpar work and when to keep improving?”. I have a sense I should be working on my ceiling and not my floor right now, but don't know how. 

Thank you for the explanation.

Is there a reason you deflected when I originally asked about AI assistance? To me that's a much bigger deal than the AI assistance itself.

I think this is a useful concept that I use several times a year. I don't use the term Dark Forest I'm not sure how much that can be attributed to this post, but this post is the only relevant thing in the review so we'll go with that.

I also appreciate how easy to read and concise this post is. It gives me a vision of how my own writing could be shorter without losing impact.

I didn't keep good track of them, but this post led to me receiving many DMs that it had motivated someone to get tested. I also occasionally indirectly hear about people who got tested, so I think the total impact might be up to 100 people, of which maybe 1/3 had a deficiency (wide confidence intervals on both numbers). I'm very happy with that impact. 

I do wish I'd created a better title. The current one is very generic, and breaks LW's "aim to inform not persuade" guideline.

My ultimate goal with this post was to use vegan advocacy as an especially legible example of a deepseated problem in effective altruism, which we could use to understand and eventually remove the problem at the root. As far as I know, the only person who has tried to use it as an example is me, and that work didn't have much visible effect either. I haven't seen anyone else reference this post while discussing a different problem. It's possible this happens out of sight (Lincoln Quirk implies this here), but if I'd achieved my goal it would be clearly visible. 

I suggest putting your proposed dress code at the top. Right now it's only kind of described, somewhere in the middle with no way to jump to it.  

This sounds like a problem with the transcript itself, not placing it in the post vs. a separate link? Which is fair enough, just want to make sure I understand.

I stand by what I said here: this post asks an important question but badly mangles the discussion. I don't believe this fictional person weighed the evidence and came to a conclusion she is advocating for as best she can: she's clearly suffering from distorted thoughts and applying post-hoc justifications.

The conflation of "Duncan's ideal" and "the perfect ideal everyone has agreed to" is what I'm complaining about. 

If Duncan had, e.g., included guidelines that were LW consensus but he disagreed with, then it would feel more like an attempt to codify the site's collective preferences rather than his in particular.

I'm very grateful I found Tristan and we were able to have this discussion.

My series on vegan nutrition epistemics generated a lot of friction and hostility. Tristan was one of very few vegan advocates I felt I learned things from, and the things I learned were valuable and beautiful. The frame of impractical reverence continues to come up and I'm glad I can recognize it now. I am also happy this primed me to recognize what I don't like about reverence as a frame, and refine my articulation of my own values. 

I wish this had been called "Duncan's Guidelines for Discourse" or something like that. I like most of the guidelines given, but they're not consensus. And while I support Duncan's right to block people from his posts (and agree with him far on discourse norms far more than with the people he blocked), it means that people who disagree with him on the rules can't make their case in the comments. That feels like an unbalanced playing field to me. 

This is outside the reference class I intended (needed at least one human case), but since I didn't specify that I'll award a token $10. Please let me know what your paypal is.

How sure are you that flu is generally spread through fluids? It seems like the medical system is ~prejudiced against the concept of airborne transmission. 

The use case is a lesswrong post people use to make decisions (which could be written by me, or you, but it's looking like @DirectedEvolution).

Is this partially AI written? The reference to further clinical study seems weird.

I love this detailed list. I've responded in-line to every one, but feel free to ask more questions, here or over email. 

1. Livestock vs. Wild Birds
   The distinction between livestock and wild birds is significant. Livestock are in much closer contact with humans and are biologically closer as well. How granular of an analysis are you interested in here?

I care about wild birds to the extent they're spreading disease to livestock or serve as reservoirs.

I've also heard a wide number of mammals have been infected. I care about this to the extent it affects humans and livestock. E.g. does this suggest it's airborne after all, or say something about the mutation rate?

1. US-specific H5N1 Trends
   It's peculiar that H5N1 seems so prevalent in the US. Could this be due to measurement bias, or does the US simply have more factory farming? How interested are you in exploring the reasons behind this trend?

I'm interested in quantifying the quality of US surveillance, but otherwise deprioritize this.  

1. Citations and Depth
   While most points aren’t cited (which is fine), it might be valuable to compile both a list of key aspects and resources for further reading. Are you looking for a more polished, thoroughly cited document?

Citations are important to the extent they let people check and build on your work. But if it's a widely known consensus such that it's easy to look up but complicated to cite, it's not important to add a citation. E.g. my fact about RNA segments is very easy to check but would have been annoying to find a citation for because I learned it 20 years ago. 

Overall citations for the current state of things (e.g. how many human infections of unknown providence) are more important than citations for basic science.

1. Biological Factors of Severity
   Binding to human receptors is just one factor controlling the severity and infectiousness of a virus. Would you like a deeper dive into the biology of respiratory infections and what makes them dangerous?

Low priority. Pass on resources if you find them but don't bother with synthesis. 

1. Tamiflu and Xofluza
   Wikipedia notes that Tamiflu has limited evidence of being worth the side effects. Are you interested in a detailed evaluation of its effectiveness? Similarly, how interested are you in assessing the likelihood of shortages and efficacy of Tamiflu/Xofluza during an H5N1 pandemic?

I'm very interested in tamiflu's efficacy. Some specific important questions: 

• is tamiflu more effective when taken very early? when did the people in the studies that found low efficacy take tamiflu? My understanding is it is effective for prophylactic use, which suggests earlier is better.
• how does the math change if the flu is more dangerous or virulent?

Not interested in assessing likelihood of shortages.

1. Over-the-counter Tests
   Is the issue a lack of over-the-counter tests specifically for H5N1, or for flu in general? General flu PCR testing is likely available—should we investigate this?

My assumption is the European OTC tests will catch H5N1, but if that's wrong I'd like to know. 

I don't care much about non-home tests, except I am interested in the national flu surveillance program and how much we can trust it. 

1. Trajectory of Illness
   For past H5N1 cases, is there a treatable "window of opportunity" before the infection becomes severe? How critical is it to determine whether mild cases might escalate and require aggressive intervention?

Very interested in this. 

1. Historical Epidemics
   I could pull together a list of relevant modern epidemics (human-to-human airborne transmission without an animal vector). Are there any specific criteria you'd like to prioritize?

The reference class is "things that got at least as far as H5N1 did this year"- widespread in livestock and with some humans infected.

1. Cross Immunity
   While cross immunity seems important, determining decision-relevant information may be challenging. Would you like a summary of existing knowledge or only actionable insights?

Medium priority for a summary of existing knowledge, bonus points for a quantitative model even if it's low confidence.

1. Respiratory Infection Dynamics
   Epidemiologists suggest that respiratory infections are deadlier lower in the lungs but more infectious higher in the system. Is this a fundamental tradeoff? Would a "both-and" virus be possible? What evolutionary advantages might viruses have in infecting the lower lungs?

If you happen to stumble on relevant information I'd like to hear it, but I don't want synthesis.

1. Government Stockpiles and Interventions
   What stockpiles of H5N1 vaccines exist? What options are available for increasing testing and vaccination of livestock? How are governments incentivizing medication, vaccine, and PPE production?

Yes to stockpiles, yes to shallow investigation of options for livestock.

1. Political Considerations
   Should we examine how a Trump presidency or similar political scenarios might influence the interaction between local and federal health agencies?

No.

1. Species-to-Species Spread
   The rapid spread of H5N1 to multiple bird and mammal species raises the question of whether humans will inevitably be affected. Is this worth exploring in-depth?

Yes.

1. Mortality and Long-term Effects
   What demographics do other flu strains tend to affect most? Are there long-term side effects comparable to "long COVID"?

We know who normally gets hit hardest by diseases, I'm only interested in deviation from that.

No to "long flu", because I am already convinced it exists but the data on it is bad.

1. Mutation and Vaccine Efficacy
   How quickly do flu strains, especially H5N1, tend to mutate? What implications does this have for vaccine efficacy and cross-reactivity? How much asymptomatic spread occurs with flu, and how long does it remain airborne?

Yes to mutation rate, especially if you can quantify what's needed to allow human-to-human transfer.

Yes to general flu knowledge like asymptomatic period and time airborne.

1. No Deaths Yet
   How should we update based on the fact that, contrary to past occurrences of H5N1 that had a ~50% CFR, none of the 58 confirmed cases have died?

 

This paper says there has been one death from the current clade. I'm very interested in knowing if that's correct. It also says tamiflu was found to reduce mortality in earlier, more deadly forms of H5N1.

That's a lot, so here are my top three priorities: vaccine efficacy (wide confidence intervals are fine), treatment efficacy, and likelihood of human-to-human transmission.

The current h5n1 strain already has one death https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/230/3/533/7758741

IIRC my serum iodine after 6 months of gargling and basically-cured hypothyroidism were within a 1% of pre-gargling levels. 

After my last test but before getting the results I started forgetting to gargle, and was resistant to taking my medication in the morning. The test revealed this was correct- I didn't need meds anymore.

I've used iodine a bit to treat infections since then but now that I know water is about as good, I will stick to that unless I start craving iodine again or a test reveals my levels have slipped.

I think the expenses for the website look high in this post because so much of it goes into invisible work like mod tools. Could you say more about that invisible work?

it looks like you're taking the total amount spent per employee as the take-home salary, which is incorrect. At a minimum that amount should include payroll taxes, health insurance, CA's ETT, and state and federal unemployment insurance tax. It can also include things things like education benefits, equipment, and 401k bonuses. Given the crudeness of the budget, I expect there's quite a bit being included under "etc".

(note for readers: I effectively gave >$10k to LW last year, this isn't an argument against donating)

This seems quite modest by EA COI standards.

Doesn't EAIF give to other EVF orgs? Seems weird that you would be a conflict of interest but that isn't.

I was part of the 2.0 reboot beta: there are no posts of mine on LW before that

Comments on my own blog are almost non existent, all the interesting discussion happens on LW and Twitter.

(Full disclosure: am technically on mod team and have deep social ties to the core team)

Yes. This is not unusually bad for a medical paper but that's not exactly a defense. 

Perplexity is still my daily driver, due to the superior UI. I go to elicit or you.com for harder problems.

Because I don't believe the papers saying that iodine doesn't alter the thyroid.

can you elaborate on "this format"?

see also: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Wiz4eKi5fsomRsMbx/change-my-mind-veganism-entails-trade-offs-and-health-is-one

There’s a lot here and if my existing writing didn’t answer your questions, I’m not optimistic another comment will help^[1]. Instead, how about we find something to bet on? It’s difficult to identify something both cruxy and measurable, but here are two ideas:

I see a pattern of:
1. CEA takes some action with the best of intentions
2. It takes a few years for the toll to come out, but eventually there’s a negative consensus on it.
3. A representative of CEA agrees the negative consensus is deserved, but since it occurred under old leadership, doesn’t think anyone should draw conclusions about new leadership from it.
4. CEA announces new program with the best of intentions.

So I would bet that within 3 years, a CEA representative will repudiate a major project occurring under Zach’s watch.

I would also bet on more posts similar to Bad Omens in Current Community Building or University Groups Need Fixing coming out in a few years, talking about 2024 recruiting. 
 

1. ^{^}

   Although you might like Change my mind: Veganism entails trade-offs, and health is one of the axes (the predecessor to EA Vegan Advocacy is not Truthseeking) and Truthseeking when your disagreements lie in moral philosophy and Love, Reverence, and Life (dialogues with a vegan commenter on the same post)

Seeing my statements reflected back is helpful, thank you.

I think Effective Altruism is upper case and has been for a long time, in part because it aggressively recruited people who wanted to follow^[1]. In my ideal world it both has better leadership and needs less of it, because members are less dependent. 

I think rationality does a decent job here. There are strong leaders of individual fiefdoms, and networks of respect and trust, but it's much more federated. 

1. ^{^}

   Which is noble and should be respected- the world needs more followers than leaders. But if you actively recruit them, you need to take responsibility for providing leadership. 

I'm curious why this feels better, and for other opinions on this. 

How much are you arguing about wording, vs genuinely believe and would bet money that in 3-5 years my work will have moved EA to something I can live with?

The desire for crowdfunding is less about avoiding bias^[1] and more that this is only worth doing if people are listening, and small donors are much better evidence on that question than grants. If EV gave explicit instructions to donate to me it would be more like a grant than spontaneous small donors, although I in general agree people should be looking for opportunities they can beat GiveWell. 

ETA: we were planning on waiting on this but since there's interest I might as well post the fundraiser now.

1. ^{^}

   I'm fortunate to have both a long runway and sources of income outside of EA and rationality. One reason I've pushed as hard as I have on EA is that I had a rare combination of deep knowledge of and financial independence from EA. If couldn't do it, who could?

there are links in the description of the video

Maybe you just don't see the effects yet? It takes a long time for things to take effect, even internally in places you wouldn't have access to, and even longer for them to be externally visible. Personally, I read approximately everything you (Elizabeth) write on the Forum and LW, and occasionally cite it to others in EA leadership world. That's why I'm pretty sure your work has had nontrivial impact. I am not too surprised that its impact hasn't become apparent to you though.

I've repeatedly had interactions with ~leadership EA that asks me to assume there's a shadow  EA cabal (positive valence) that is both skilled and aligned with my values. Or puts the burden on me to prove it doesn't exist, which of course I can't do. And what you're saying here is close enough to trigger the rant.

I would love for the aligned shadow cabal to be real. I would especially love if the reason I didn't know how wonderful it was was that it was so hypercompetent I wasn't worth including, despite the value match. But I'm not going to assume it exists just because I can't definitively prove otherwise. 

If shadow EA wants my approval, it can show me the evidence. If it decides my approval isn't worth the work, it can accept my disapproval while continuing its more important work. I am being 100% sincere here, I treasure the right to take action without having to reach consensus- but this doesn't spare you from the consequences of hidden action or reasoning. 

This is a good point. In my ideal movement makes perfect sense to disagree with every leader and yet still be a central member of the group. LessWrong has basically pulled that off. EA somehow managed to be bad at having leaders (both in the sense that the closest things to leaders don't want to be closer, and that I don't respect them), while being the sort of thing that requires leaders. 

If people in EA would consider her critiques to have real value, then the obvious step is to give Elizabeth money to write more [...] If she would get paid decently, I would expect she would feel she's making an impact. 

First of all, thank you, love it when people suggest I receive money. Timothy and I have talked about fundraising for a continued podcast. I would strongly prefer most of the funding be crowdfunding, for the reason you say. If we did this it would almost certainly be through Manifund. Signing up for Patreon and noting this as the reason also works, although for my own sanity this will always be a side project.

I should note that my work on EA up through May was covered by a Lightspeed grant, but I don't consider that EA money.

Reading this makes me feel really sad because I’d like to believe it, but I can’t, for all the reasons outlined in the OP. 

I could get into more details, but it would be pretty costly for me for (I think) no benefit. The only reason I came back to EA criticism was that talking to Timothy feels wholesome and good, as opposed to the battery acid feeling I get from most discussions of EA. 

There were ~20 in round 2, and I've gotten reports of other people being inspired by the post to get tested themselves that I estimate at least double that.  

I think not enforcing an "in or out" boundary is big contributor to this degradation -- like, majorly successful religions required all kinds of sacrifice.

I feel ambivalent about this.  On one hand, yes, you need to have standards, and I think EA's move towards big-tentism degraded it significantly. On the other hand I think having sharp inclusion functions are bad for people in a movement^[1], cut the movement off from useful work done outside itself, selects for people searching for validation and belonging, and selects against thoughtful people with other options. 

I think I'm reasonably Catholic, even though I don't know anything about the living Catholic leaders.

I think being a Catholic with no connection to living leaders makes more sense than being an EA who doesn't have a leader they trust and respect, because Catholicism has a longer tradition, and you can work within that. On the other hand... I wouldn't say this to most people, but my model is you'd prefer I be this blunt... my understanding is Catholicism is about submission to the hierarchy, and if you're not doing that or don't actively believe they are worthy of that, you're LARPing. I don't think this is true of (most?) protestant denominations: working from books and a direct line to God is their jam. But Catholicism cares much more about authority and authorization. 

It feels like AI safety is the best current candidate for [lifeboat], though that is also much less cohesive and not a direct successor for a bunch of ways. I too have been lately wondering what "Post EA" looks like.

I'd love for this to be true because I think AIS is EA's most important topic. OTOH, I think AIS might have been what poisoned EA? The global development people seem much more grounded (to this day), and AFAIK the ponzi scheme recruiting is all aimed at AIS and meta (which is more AIS). ETG was a much more viable role for GD than for AIS. 

1. ^{^}

   If you're only as good as your last 3 months, no one can take time to rest and reflect, much less recover from burnout. 

Some related posts:

• one example among many of a long runway letting me make more moral choices
• ongoing twitter thread on frying pan agency
• I get to the airport super early because any fear of being late turns me into an asshole.

I used the word obligation because it felt too hard to find a better one, but I don't like it, even for saving children in shallow ponds. In my mind, obligations are for things you signed up for. In our imperfect world I also feel okay using it for things you got signed up for and benefit from (e.g. I never agreed to be born in the US as a citizen, but I sure do benefit from it, so taxes are an obligation). In my world obligations are always to a specific entity, not general demands. 

I think that for some people, rescuing drowning children is an obligation to society, similar to taxes. Something feels wrong about that to me, although I'd think very badly of someone who could have trivially saved a child and chose not to. 

A key point for me is that people are allowed to be shitty. This right doesn't make them not-shitty or free them from the consequences of being shitty, but it is an affordance available to everyone. Not being shitty requires a high average on erogatory actions, plus some number of supererogatory ones. 

How many supererogatory actions? The easiest way to define this is relative to capacity, but that seems toxic to me, like people to don't have a right to their own gains. It also seems likely to drive lots of people crazy with guilt. I don't know what the right answer is.

TBH I've been really surprised at my reaction to "~obligation to maximal growth". I would have predicted it would feel constraining and toxic, but it feels freeing and empowering, like I've been given a more chances to help people at no cost to me. I feel more powerful. I also feel more permission to give up on what is currently too hard, since sacrificing myself for one short term goal hurts my long term obligation. 

Maybe the key is that this is a better way to think achieve goals I already had. It's not a good frame for deciding what one's goals should be. 

[cross-posted from What If You Lived In the Least Convenient Possible World]

I came back to this post a year later because I really wanted to grapple with the idea I should be willing to sacrifice more for the cause. Alas, even in a receptive mood I don't think this post does a very good job of advocating for this position. I don't believe this fictional person weighed the evidence and came to a conclusion she is advocating for as best she can: she's clearly suffering from distorted thoughts and applying post-hoc justifications. She's clearly confused about what convenient means (having to slow down to take care of yourself is very inconvenient), and I think this is significant and not just a poor choice of words. So I wrote my own version of the position.

Let's say Bob is right that the costs exceed the benefits of working harder or suffering. Does that need to be true forever? Could Bob invest in changing himself so that he could better live up to his values? Does he have an ~obligation^[1] to do that? 

We generally hold that people who can swim have obligations to save drowning children in lakes^[2], but there's no obligation for non-swimmers to make an attempt that will inevitably drown them. Does that mean they're off the hook, or does it mean their moral failure happened when they chose not to learn how to swim?

One difficulty with this is that there are more potential emergencies than we could possibly plan for. If someone skipped the advance swim lesson where you learn to rescue panicked drowning people because they were learning wilderness first aid, I don't think that's a moral failure. 

This posits a sort of moral obligation to maximally extend your capacity to help others or take care of yourself in a sustainable way. I still think obligation is not quite the right word for this, but to the extent it applies, it applies to long term strategic decisions and not in-the-moment misery. 

1. ^{^}

   I don't love the word obligation in general. I'm using it here to convey that whatever morality applies to split-second-decisions also applies to long term planning.

2. ^{^}

   The original Singer parable refers to a shallow pond, I assume to get around this problem.

I came back to this post a year later because I really wanted to grapple with the idea I should be willing to sacrifice more for the cause. Alas, even in a receptive mood I don't think this post does a very good job of advocating for this position. I don't believe this fictional person weighed the evidence and came to a conclusion she is advocating for as best she can: she's clearly suffering from distorted thoughts and applying post-hoc justifications. She's clearly confused about what convenient means (having to slow down to take care of yourself is very inconvenient), and I think this is significant and not just a poor choice of words. So I wrote my own version of the position.

Let's say Bob is right that the costs exceed the benefits of working harder or suffering. Does that need to be true forever? Could Bob invest in changing himself so that he could better live up to his values? Does he have an ~obligation^[1] to do that? 

We generally hold that people who can swim have obligations to save drowning children in lakes^[2], but there's no obligation for non-swimmers to make an attempt that will inevitably drown them. Does that mean they're off the hook, or does it mean their moral failure happened when they chose not to learn how to swim?

One difficulty with this is that there are more potential emergencies than we could possibly plan for. If someone skipped the advance swim lesson where you learn to rescue panicked drowning people because they were learning wilderness first aid, I don't think that's a moral failure. 

This posits a sort of moral obligation to maximally extend your capacity to help others or take care of yourself in a sustainable way. I still think obligation is not quite the right word for this, but to the extent it applies, it applies to long term strategic decisions and not in-the-moment misery. 

1. ^{^}

   I don't love the word obligation in general. I'm using it here to convey that whatever morality applies to split-second-decisions also applies to long term planning.

2. ^{^}

   The original Singer parable refers to a shallow pond, I assume to get around this problem.

What makes grammarly pro worth it? I used the free version for a while, but it became so aggressive with unwanted corrections I couldn't even see the real suggestions, chrome caught up with the useful features, and on long essays it crippled my browser. 

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CYYBW8QCMK722GDpz/how-much-i-m-paying-for-ai-productivity-software-and-the

Never [consciously] hating anyone more than transiently and finding a childhood that bad to not be terrible are consistent with an unwell person in denial (in a way I don't think holds for all of your statements. e.g. "self loathing was a confusing concept for me" feels much more consistent with the kind of confusion I'd expect from 99th percentile mental health).