Hey Yonatan, thanks for replying, I really appreciate it! Here is a quick response.

I read the comments by Oliver and Ben in "Shutting Down the Lightcone Offices". 

I think that they have very valid concerns about AI Safety Movement Building (pretty sure I linked this piece in my article). 

However, I don't think that the optimum response to such concern is to stop trying to understand and improve how we do AI Safety Movement building. That seems premature given current evidence. 

Instead, I think that the best response here (and everywhere else there is criticism) is to be proactively try to understand and address the concerns expressed (if possible). 

To expand and link into what I discuss in my top level post: When I, a movement builder, read the link above, I think something like this: Oliver/Ben are smarter than I am and more knowledgeable about the AI safety community and it's needs. I should therefore be more concerned than I was about the risks of AI Safety movement building. 

On the other hand, lots of other people who are similarly smart and knowledgeable are in favour of AI Safety movement building of various types. Maybe Oliver and Ben hold a minority view? 

I wonder: Do Oliver/Ben have the same conception of movement building as me or as many of the other people I have talked to? I imagine that they are thinking about the types of movement building which involve largely unsupervised recruitment whereas I am thinking about a wide range of things. Some of these things involve no recruitment (e.g., working on increasing contributions and coordination via resource synthesis), and all are ideally done under the supervision of relevant experts. I doubt that Oliver and Ben think that all types of movement building are bad (probably not given that they work as movement builders).

So all in all, I am not really sure what to do.

This brings me to some of what I am trying to do at the moment, as per the top level post: trying to create, then hopefully use, some sort of shared language to better understand what relevant people think is good/bad AI Safety Movement building, and why, so that I can hopefully make better decisions.

As part of this, I am hoping to persuade people like Oliver/Ben to i) read something like what I wrote above (so that they understand what I mean by movement building) and then ii) participate in various survey/discussion activities that will help me and others to understand what i) sort of movement building activities they are for and against and why they feel as they do about these options.

Then, when I know all that, hopefully, I will have a much improved and more nuanced understanding of who thinks what and why (e.g., that 75% of respondents want more ML engineers with skill X, or think that a scaled up SERI-mats project in Taiwan would be valuable, or have these contrasting intuitions about a particular option). 

I can use that understanding to guide decisions about if/how to do movement building as effectively as possible.

Is that response helpful? Does my plan sound like a bad idea or very unlikely to succeed? Let me know if you have any further questions or thoughts!

Thanks, Linda, that was very helpful. I really appreciate that you took the time to respond in such detail.

Quote 1: “Are you aware of Alignment Ecosystem Development? They have a list of potentially high impact community building projects. If anyone want to volunteer some time to help with AI Safety community building, you can join their discord”

No, thank you for sharing. I will check it out. My immediate thought is that 54 options is a lot so I’d like to know which ones are more promising, which sort of ties into my comments below!

Quote 2: “Regarding how to prioritise. I would be very worried if there where a consensus around how to rank what projects are highest priority, that would more likely be groupthink than wisdom. I think it's much healthier for everyone form their own opinion. The sort of coordination I would like to see is different community builders getting to know each other and knowing about each others projects.”

I probably disagree with you here. I see EA as a well-functioning aggregator for the wisdom of well-calibrated crowds, and want to see something similar for AI Safety Movement building. 

To explain: I wouldn’t want a world where we all formed our own opinions isolated from EA evidence and aggregate because I think that most people would end up with worse opinions. For instance, without 80k or GWWC I would not have as good opinions on career or donation impact. I think that there are simply too many things to learn and compare for it to be optimal for people to figure everything out by discussion and comparison. I think that any (large) marketplace of ideas will need ratings and various other differentiation signals to function well. 

So I suppose I want a clearer consensus than what we have now and think that it would provide a lot of value.

I agree that we should watch out for group think, but I don’t see that as a sufficient risk that it is likely to outweigh the potential benefits of better information and decision-making. If I did then I probably would be against that the annual EA survey or similar initiatives.

I also think that the ideas I am suggesting (.e.g, collecting aggregating the predictions of AI safety researchers) will make group think easier to identify and challenge. It’s harder to address something that is mainly captured via comments across many different forum posts than something captures as an aggregated rating in a survey.

Quote 3: “Fractional Movement Building is a good idea. I'm doing this my self, and the same is true for about half of the AI Safety community builders I know. But I would not prescribe it as a one-size-fits-all solution. I am also not claiming that you are suggesting this, it's unclear to me how far you want to take this concept.”

Thanks. I am also unsure about the right distribution here and will need to know more before I can be confident. Interesting to hear that you think that half of the CB you know are doing FMB. That’s more than I expected. I wonder if most think it is ideal or their best option though?

Quote 4: “You write about the importance of a shared language. This sems useful. Although if you want to contribute to this, maybe create a vocabulary list? In the section about shared language in you previous post you wrote:

This is why I wrote this series of posts to outline and share the language and understanding that I have developed and plan to use if I engage in more direct work. 

However, your posts are really long. I'm not going to read all of them. I only read a few bits of your previous post that seemed most interesting. Currently I don't know what vocabulary you are proposing. 

Also regarding shared vocabulary, I'd be exited about that if and only if it doesn't become too normative. For example I think that the INT framework is really good as a starting point, but since then has become too influential. You can't make a singel framework that captures everything.”

Thanks, good point. I will need to pull out the vocabulary and concepts in a more concise post. I tend to disagree that INT is too influential. Perhaps because I think that the alternative of not using it is worse. Of course you might have evidence or insights that I am missing.

Quote 5: “In your previous post you also write

To determine if they should get involved, they ask questions like: Which movement building projects are generally considered good to pursue for someone like me and which are bad? What criteria should I evaluate projects on? What skills do I need to succeed? If I leave my job would I be able to get funding to work on (Movement Building Idea X)?  

I know you are just describing what other people are saying and thinking, so I'm not criticizing you. But other than the last question, these are the wrong questions to ask. I don't want community builders to ask what projects are generally considered good, I want them to ask what projects are good. Also, focus on evaluation early on seems backwards. Uncertainty about funding is a real issue though. It might be tempting to focus on the community building that is most ledigble good, in order to secure a career. But I think that is exactly the road that leads to potentially net negative community building. “

I think we slightly disagree here: You say “I don't want community builders to ask what projects are generally considered good, I want them to ask what projects are good.”

In contrast, I do want new entrants to AISMB to ask what projects are generally considered good and have answers. I want that in the same way that I want new graduates to the workforce think about career impacts and be able to look at the 80k website. Or new donors to think about charities and be able to check GWWC. Then I want them to think about what they agree with.

You say: A focus on evaluation early on seems backwards.

However, I want people to arrive to an evaluation by an expert, not to be expected to be the expert on arrival or to do huge amounts of work to collect and assess opportunities and become an expert. Realistically, if no-one evaluate the impact of charities and careers I and most people would never do it and our subsequent decisions would probably be much less impactful.

Anyway, I hope that some of this was helpful in explaining where I am coming from! I am not confident in any of it, so I welcome more thoughts and feedback. Please don't put yourself under pressure to reply though.