Andy Masley

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Andy Masley

Andy Masley

@AndyMasley

When the going gets weird the weird turn pro.

Washington DC Katılım Mayıs 2015
2.2K Takip Edilen11.2K Takipçiler
Matt Reardon
Matt Reardon@Mjreard·
@LarsESchonander @AndyMasley The other issue is that EA adjacent is not a term anyone actually uses to describe themselves. I think one guy referred to himself as EA adjacent in early 2023 and since then that term as only ever been used to make fun of anyone who would think to do that
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Andy Masley
Andy Masley@AndyMasley·
EA ideas suffer from a particular problem where many people who've been significantly influenced by them still feel like endorsing any part of the worldview means endorsing all the people and orgs who are currently operating under the EA umbrella. But the ideas are general enough that this seems like saying you can't identify with capitalism without vouching for every self-described capitalist. I think this is an underrated reason more people aren't vocal about the EA ideas they've found valuable. And I'd like to see that change. I don't really care whether someone calls themselves "an EA" or want them to endorse any one thing that's happening or make the brand high status. It's because it's a real deep loss when people can't even point their audience toward the ideas that shaped how they think about the world. The ideas deserve guideposts pointing new people toward them. There are plenty of influential people who I know have been shaped by the basic EA framework who could serve their audiences well by just saying what they liked and what they didn't, but that influence stays mostly invisible unless you already know to look for it. I think it's on people into EA to show that in promoting specific ideas we're not just trying to make the brand or people high status, but it's also on people who have been influenced a lot by these ideas to take a bit of a leap for the sake of the ideas themselves.
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Agus 🔸
Agus 🔸@austinc3301·
@AndyMasley that rounded left border on a callout is maybe the most well known sign of AI design, and some people (like me) have built up an aversion to it
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Andy Masley
Andy Masley@AndyMasley·
I have claude code automatically uploading every substack post I make to a really luxurious page on my website now, only took a few prompts to make this happen andymasley.com/writing/a-chea…
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Tiger Lava Lamp
Tiger Lava Lamp@DaCaveOfWonders·
@AndyMasley Not to mention that personalized ads are good! I'd love it if you could actually make the ads I see be things that I like and would want to buy. I get that most people part with their money easier than I do, but it's still such a strange thing to take issue with to me
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Andy Masley
Andy Masley@AndyMasley·
@foomagemindset @NeastWS I agree with this but a lot of EA is imo about identifying trade-offs where the goodness of one side is so lopsided that basically everyone agrees. Like we don't know if eating ice cream or playing the piano is "better" but 10 people dying from malaria is worse than 1 etc
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Kassandra Popper
Kassandra Popper@foomagemindset·
@NeastWS @AndyMasley Surely what is good or bad cannot be a matter of mere empiricism? That question must precede any on effectiveness. Is that all worked out in EA?
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Andy Masley
Andy Masley@AndyMasley·
@LarsESchonander I feel like both "I'm an EA" and "I'm EA adjacent" are too much about people's, like, social identity with the movement. I'd rather they just say things like "This specific cluster of EA ideas I'm excited about, that one I think is bad" etc.
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Andy Masley
Andy Masley@AndyMasley·
@eris_nerung @moultano The extend to which charities have historically not focused on rigorously measuring real impact is bleak
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secret eris
secret eris@eris_nerung·
@moultano im surprised, was this really an EA innovation? were philanthropic initiatives before just.. vibes based?
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Ryan Moulton
Ryan Moulton@moultano·
IMHO, the most valuable innovation from EA is that you want to operate a charity like a business, where some quantitative measurable success metric substitutes for profit. If you don't do that things rapidly get fluffy and dumb, and you waste all the money.
Andy Masley@AndyMasley

EA ideas suffer from a particular problem where many people who've been significantly influenced by them still feel like endorsing any part of the worldview means endorsing all the people and orgs who are currently operating under the EA umbrella. But the ideas are general enough that this seems like saying you can't identify with capitalism without vouching for every self-described capitalist. I think this is an underrated reason more people aren't vocal about the EA ideas they've found valuable. And I'd like to see that change. I don't really care whether someone calls themselves "an EA" or want them to endorse any one thing that's happening or make the brand high status. It's because it's a real deep loss when people can't even point their audience toward the ideas that shaped how they think about the world. The ideas deserve guideposts pointing new people toward them. There are plenty of influential people who I know have been shaped by the basic EA framework who could serve their audiences well by just saying what they liked and what they didn't, but that influence stays mostly invisible unless you already know to look for it. I think it's on people into EA to show that in promoting specific ideas we're not just trying to make the brand or people high status, but it's also on people who have been influenced a lot by these ideas to take a bit of a leap for the sake of the ideas themselves.

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Andy Masley
Andy Masley@AndyMasley·
@PhilWMagness Suspect there's another decorated veteran of World War 1 Tucker feels has been unfairly treated
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Andy Masley
Andy Masley@AndyMasley·
@vivian39_ I used to think this but I've met so so so many people who told me they weren't using AI because they thought it was bad for the environment, then when they learned it wasn't they started using it
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vivian
vivian@vivian39_·
Much like with housing, “environmental impacts” are not the real reason people citing them are ai skeptical— it’s just a rationalization of “change scary”
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Andy Masley
Andy Masley@AndyMasley·
Right yeah and imo it should be the responsibility of people involved to not imply there's a single real EA that requires you to buy into incredibly contentious empirical questions, but I realize sociologically it can shake out that way. Still, I'd like those original ideas to get way more oxygen
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Sam Tobin-Hochstadt
@AndyMasley As an intellectual trend I understand why it happened. But it's just true that (a) it's a big change and that (b) many people who were on board for the original ideas are not for the new ones.
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Andy Masley
Andy Masley@AndyMasley·
@samth On this one I might disagree. I think there's just a lot of consistency in EAs wanting to prioritize what they think is actually the very most important, and we should just kind of expect deep schisms over that empirical question
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Sam Tobin-Hochstadt
@AndyMasley Also, and maybe more importantly, Adam Smith did not follow up The Wealth of Nations with pivoting into advocacy for a different set of ideas with quite different implications, social and political valence, and conclusions. This is, at least, why I feel uncomfortable as an "EA".
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Andy Masley
Andy Masley@AndyMasley·
@samth All very good points, I think this is one reason I've never liked the idea of EA being "a community" in the first place, I think of it more as a loose network. I'm not in "community" with all vegans, etc.
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Sam Tobin-Hochstadt
@AndyMasley The people who created capitalism, or who argued for it early on, did not try to set up the Center for Capitalism that would host a Capitalism Conference where everyone who was in the capitalism community would talk about what the whole community should prioritize.
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Andy Masley retweetledi
Amelia Michael
Amelia Michael@amelia__michael·
Company announcements of AI layoffs get lots of attention, but they're a bad proxy for the effect of AI on the labor market. @sj_manning and I wrote about why:
Amelia Michael tweet media
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Andy Masley
Andy Masley@AndyMasley·
@zdch Well my coding ability is “I know what a for loop is”
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Zac Hill
Zac Hill@zdch·
@AndyMasley How much of this was manual BTW vs ~vibe-coded? Trying to place in the context of my Frontier AI Deployment Fund thesis.
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