I don't really want to advise after I got it so badly wrong with the Scott Alexander/NYT stuff, and also I don't feel I know the EA community well enough to say what they do now. (TBF I think the largest group of journalists is probably the ones who've never heard of EA, and don't write about things that are anything to do with EA.) I think the first journalists are right and the second journalists are wrong. I think there are a lot of journalists who think EA is very wise and sensible, and there are a lot of journalists who think it's all neckbeard rationalist techbros, or whatever dismissive term they might use. Think taking people along that route one step at a time is probably wisest. That's weird and counterintuitive enough already, and I Should give it all to very specific infectious-disease charities in sub-SaharanĪfrica or whatever. That, actually, donating to Cancer Research UK is severely suboptimal and you Really likes MIRI! But if it's a "this is your first taste of effectiveĪltruism" deal, then you're already asking people to take on board the idea You're really sure that that is where you want to go. That's sort ofĪnd if you try to pretend that AI/X-risk isn't part of what you're worryingĪbout, then it looks like you're doing a scientology and hiding the weird stuffĪll that being said, in your concrete example, I wouldn't include MIRI unless Using the same processes - expected value etc - to reach the conclusions in AIĪs you did with more prosaic things like bednets or deworming. I do think, though, that you can still do it, if you can explain that you're To talk about it less before people start thinking of you as the weird AI risk is obviouslyĪ lot more expensive in weirdness points than, say, deworming. ![]() Points how you like, but once you spend them, they're gone. Who said that there are weirdness points: you are allowed to be only so weirdīefore people stop taking you seriously. But I think I agree with whoever it was (Eliezer?) I've won two "statistical excellence in journalism" awards from the Royal Statistical Society, and in 2013 Terry Pratchett told me I was "far too nice to be a journalist".Īsk me anything you like, but I'm probably going to be best at answering questions about journalism. It's out on March 18.īefore going freelance in January 2018, I worked at the UK Daily Telegraph and BuzzFeed UK. My next book, How to Read Numbers, written with my cousin David, who's an economist, is about how stats get misrepresented in the news and what you can do to spot it when they are. I wrote a book, The Rationalist's Guide to the Galaxy – originally titled The AI Does Not Hate You – in 2019, which is about the rationalist movement (and, therefore, the EA movement), and about AI risk and X-risk. ![]() ![]() Who I am: a science writer, and the science editor at. I plan to start answering questions on Wednesday 17 March at 9am UK: I reckon I can comfortably spend three hours doing it, and if I can't get through all the questions, I'll try to find extra time. Hi everyone! I'm Tom Chivers, and I'll be doing an AMA here.
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