The local Effective Altruism chapter had a stand at the university hobby fair.
Last time I read their charity guide spam email for student clubs, they were still mostly into the relatively benign end of EA stuff, listing some charities they had deemed most effective by some methodology. My curiosity got the best of me and I went to talk to them. I wanted to find out if they’d started pushing seedier stuff and whether the people at the stand were aware of the dark side of TESCREAL.
They seemed to have gotten into AI risk stuff, which was not surprising. Also, they seemed to be unaware of most of the incidents and critics I referred to, mostly only knowing about the FTX debacle.
They invited me to attend their AI risk discussion event, saying (as TREACLES adjacents always do) that they love hearing criticism and different points of view and so on.
On one hand, EA is not super big here and most of their members and prospectively interested participants are probably not that invested in the movement yet. This could be an opportunity to spread awareness of the dark side of EA and its adjacent movements and maybe prevent some people from falling for the cult stuff.
On the other hand, acting as the spokesman for the opposing case is a big responsibility and the preparation is a lot of work. I’m slightly worried that pushing back at the event might escalate into a public debate or even worse, some kind of Ben Shapiro style affair where I’m DESTROYED with FACTS and LOGIC by some guy with a microphone and a primed audience. Also, dealing with these people is usually just plain exhausting.
So, I’m feeling conflicted and would like some advice from the best possible source: random people on the internet. Do y’all think it’s a good idea to go? Do you think it’s a terrible idea?
Think about debate night, think about the day after, the week after, and one year from then. Think about what will happen, what could happen, and what should happen at each time.
Do it again except this time from the perspective of you stayed home and didn’t go.
Focus especially hard on your emotions and how these hypotheticals will make you feel.
Choose the future you want live.
Or if you aren’t good at planning ahead commit to a coin flip. If you accept the result, you either got the one you wanted or truly didn’t care, while If you hesitate and want to flip again then you’ve found the answer you don’t want and should probably go with the other one.
That works for general decision making. The reason I’m asking for input is that there might be risks or opportunities involved that I haven’t fully considered. There are also people here who have more experience interacting with the AI alarmists’ target audience and might be able to comment on their experiences or suggest strategies and talking points.