Oh, thanks for the clarification! I totally missed that difference.

Given how the "bottom half" of China's population is, to my admittedly cursory knowledge, mostly the poor rural farmers and migrant workers who have benefited a lot less from China's recent economic growth, and are likely a big reason why China's GDP per capita is still a fair bit lower than most western developed countries despite the shiny new city skylines, it makes sense that including that segment would make a big difference in the evaluation.

Thanks again! That actually makes me update on my earlier evaluation of the utilitarian impact of China a lot.

This post somewhat resonates with me, as I'm also sort of an old hand, albeit I've always been more on the periphery of EA, and sometimes consider myself EA-adjacent rather than full on EA (even though I've done a bunch of EA-ish things like donate to AMF/Give Directly and attend an EA Global).

I've been around long enough to see a bunch of the early EAs who were part of the old Felicifia forums become more or less leaders in the movement (i.e. Peter Wildeford), as well as some sorta fade into obscurity (i.e. Brian Tomasik?). It's interesting to see, and I'm happy for the former, and a bit sad about the latter.

Weirdly, I've also moved a bit further leftish on the political spectrum in recent years, and this has led me to feel conflicted about EA, as it's very much a western liberal movement, and my sympathy for socialism seems to be an awkward fit nowadays. Though, admittedly I tend to oscillate at times, so this may be temporary.

And yeah, as I've mentioned before in other comments, I do feel like the movement is more geared towards the young university elite as well.

Just some thoughts, I guess.

As I mentioned in another comment, while China ranks in the middle on the World Happiness Report, it actually ranked highest on the IPSOS Global Happiness Report from 2023, which was the last year that China was included in the survey.

I'm curious what you think of Geoffrey Hinton's recent comments during his interview with Jon Stewart, where he said that in a recent trip to China, he met with a member of the Politburo and found that this person was very serious about the concerns of AI safety and AI takeover and that Hinton felt that China was more likely to do things about it than the U.S.

Also, while it's definitely true that China hasn't embraced most western liberal values like multiparty democracy, rule of law, and human rights, you can debate some of the finer points and argue that, for instance, the Marxist intellectual tradition is western in origin, and that China's alternative to western liberalism is a strange mixture of Marxism and Confucianism.

And, it might be noted regarding ethnic minorities that while separatism is severely punished, minorities that conform to the existing system are often rewarded with, for instance, extra points on the university entrance examination system (Gaokao), as a form of affirmative action.

Back to moral philosophy, the nature of Chinese moral philosophy seems to be more practical than analytical. Probably the most analytical moral philosophy to come out of China was Mohism, which considering how much it predates it, is very, very similar to Utilitarianism in being an overall consequentialist framework with an emphasis on human equality and the greatest good. Interestingly, some of the CCP literature in the past has tried to emphasize Mohism as some kind of forerunner to modern Marxism.

In terms of the future going well, I think the strongest argument for a CCP aligned AGI being beneficial would be that some kind of post-scarcity communism is likely to achieve more human flourishing than the techno-feudalism that western capitalism could potentially devolve into with the AGI company leaders owning everything and the rest of us surviving on basic income that exists at the whim of these AGI owners.

The CCP, for all its faults, is nominally still a communist party, and so is more likely to, given an actual chance to succeed at it, introduce post-scarcity communism that spreads the benefits of AGI in a generally egalitarian way. Though, obviously a possible failure state is that the party instead monopolizes AGI's benefits and we still get techno-feudalism, albeit state-run instead of private.

Also, while China ranks in the middle on the World Happiness Report, it actually ranked highest on the IPSOS Global Happiness Report from 2023, which was the last year that China was included in the survey.

As for the lack of charitable donations, there are probably a number of reasons for this. Certain scandals involving the Red Cross have in the past made people weary of donating. And, probably more significantly, Chinese cultural expectations mean that a lot of what would be charitable work in the west is expected to be done by either family or the government. I personally have tried to convince some Chinese nationals to donate to, for instance, AMF, and their response is usually along the lines of this being the local government's responsibility. There is definitely a strain of collectivism in China that contrasts with the individualism of western liberal democracies.

So, I think, a CCP led AI future would probably be notably different than a western led one, but I'm unclear on whether this would actually be that much worse. At the end of the day, both would, ideally, be led by humans and human-aligned ASI.

As an EA and a Christian... I find Thiel's apparent views and actions to me resemble what the Bible says an Antichrist is, more than EA by far. He is hypocritically calling EA totalitarian while simultaneously, deeply supporting what amounts to technofascism in the U.S.

It is bizarre to me how unchristian his version of libertarianism is, with what seems like a complete indifference, if not utter disdain, towards the poor and downtrodden who Jesus sought to help. Thiel seems to be so far from the spirit of Christian values (at least as I understand them) that I have a hard time imagining what could be further from it.

I could go on, but people like this, who call themselves Christian and yet appear to be the polar opposite of what a good Christian ought to be (again, in my opinion) infuriate me to the point that I have trouble expressing things without getting angry, so I'll stop here.

The percentage of EAs earning to give is too low

I'm not very confident in this view, but I'm philosophically somewhat against encouraging Earning-To-Give as it can justify working at what I see as unethical high paying jobs (i.e. finance, the oil industry, AI capabilities, etc.) and pretending you can simply offset it with enough donations. I think actions like this condone the unethical, making it more socially acceptable and creating negative higher order effects, and that we shouldn't do this. It's also a slippery slope and entails ends justifies the means thinking, like what SBF seems to have thought, and I think we should be cautious about potentially following such an example.

I also, separately, think that we should respect the autonomy of the people making decisions about their careers, and that those who want to EtG and who have the personal fit for it are likely already doing that, and suggesting more people should do so is somewhat disrespectful of the autonomy and ability to make rational, moral decisions of those who choose otherwise.

Quick question! What's the best way to handle having long gaps on your resume?

So, I used to be a research scientist in AI/ML at Huawei Canada (circa 2017-2019), which on paper should make me a good candidate for AI technical safety work. However, in recent years I pivoted into game development, mostly because an EA friend and former moral philosophy lecturer pitched the idea of a Trolley Problem game to me and my interviews with big tech had gone nowhere (I now have a visceral disdain for Leetcode). Unfortunately, the burn rate of the company now means I can't be paid anymore, so I'm looking around at other things again.

Back in 2022, I went to EA Global Washington DC and got some interviews with AI safety startups like FAR and Generally Intelligent, but couldn't get past the technical interviews. As such, I'm not sure I'm actually qualified to be an AI safety technical researcher. I also left Huawei in part due to mental health issues making it difficult to work in such a high stress environment.

I've also considered doing independent AI safety research, and applied to the LTFF before and been rejected without feedback. I also applied to 80,000 Hours a while back and was also rejected.

Regularly reading the EA Forums and Less Wrong makes me continue to think AI safety work is the most important thing I could do, but at the same time, I have doubts I won't mess up and waste people's time and money that could go to more capable people and projects. I also have a family now, so I can't just move to the Bay Area/London and burn my life for the cause either.

What should I do?

I should point out that the natural tendency for civilizations to fall appears to apply to subsets of the human civilization, rather than the entirety of humanity historically. While locally catastrophic, these events were not existential, as humanity survived and recovered.

I'd also argue that the collapse of a civilization requires far more probabilities to go to zero and has greater and more complex causal effects than all time machines just failing to work when tried.

And, the reality is that at this time we do not know if the Non-Cancel Principle is true or false, and whether or not the universe will prevent time travel. Given this, we face the dilemma that if we precommit to not developing time travel and time travel turns out to be possible, then we have just limited ourselves and will probably be outcompeted by a civilization that develops time travel instead of us.

Ah, that makes sense! Thanks for the clarification.