Yarrow Bouchard 🔸
Bio
Pronouns: she/her or they/them.
I got interested in effective altruism back before it was called effective altruism, back before Giving What We Can had a website. Later on, I got involved in my university EA group and helped run it for a few years. Now I’m trying to figure out where effective altruism can fit into my life these days and what it means to me.
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Topic contributions1
David Nash just published a response to the Our World in Data blog post which seems like an important read.
I think the upshot is largely the same in any case: it is important to stimulate economic development in the poorest sub-Saharan African countries where GDP growth has been stagnant for a long time.
I don’t accept that there is such a thing as 'the polycrisis' happening currently (unless it has been happening for centuries, which I don’t think is the idea).
There’s no accounting for taste, but 'epistemics' sounds worse to my ear than 'epistemic practices' because the clunky jargoniness of 'epistemics' is just so evident. It’s as if people said 'democratics' instead of 'democracy', or 'biologics' instead of 'biology'.
I also don’t know for sure what 'epistemics' means. I’m just inferring that from its use and assuming it means 'epistemic practices', or something close to that.
'Epistemology' is unfortunately a bit ambiguous and primarily connotes the subfield of philosophy rather than anything you do in practice, but I think it would also be an acceptable and standard use to talk about 'epistemology' as what one does in practice, e.g., 'scientific epistemology' or 'EA epistemology'. It’s a bit similar to 'ethics' in this regard, which is both an abstract field of study and something one does in practice, although the default interpretation of 'epistemology' is the field, not the practice, and for 'ethics' it’s the reverse.
It’s neither here nor there, but I think talking about personal 'agency' (terminology that goes back decades, long predating the rationalist community) is far more elegant than talking about a person being 'agentic'. (For AI agents, it doesn’t matter.)
I just want to point out that I have a degree in philosophy and have never heard the word "epistemics" used in the context of academic philosophy. The word used has always been either epistemology or epistemic as adjective in front of a noun (never on its own, always used as an adjective, not a noun, and certainly never pluralized).
From what I can tell, "epistemics" seems to be weird EA Forum/LessWrong jargon. Not sure how or why this came about, since this is not obscure philosophy knowledge, nor is it hard to look up.
If you Google "epistemics" philosophy, you get 1) sources like Wikipedia that talk about epistemology, not "epistemics", 2) a post from the EA Forum and a page from the Forethought Foundation, which is an effective altruist organization, 3) some unrelated, miscellaneous stuff (i.e. neither EA-related or academic philosophy-related), and 4) a few genuine but fairly obscure uses of the word "epistemics" in an academic philosophy context. This confirms that the term is rarely used in academic philosophy.
I also don't know what people in EA mean when they say "epistemics". I think they probably mean something like epistemic practices, but I actually don't know for sure.
I would discourage the use of the term "epistemics", particularly as its meaning is unclear, and would advocate for a replacement such as epistemology or epistemic practices (or whatever you like, but not "epistemics").
To those who haven't studied philosophy, epistemics broadly refers to the idea of knowledge itself, or the study of how we gain knowledge, sort out good from bad, etc.
I just want to point out that I have a degree in philosophy and have never heard the word "epistemics" used in the context of academic philosophy. The word used has always been either epistemology or epistemic as adjective in front of a noun (never on its own, always used as an adjective, not a noun, and certainly never pluralized).
From what I can tell, "epistemics" seems to be weird EA Forum/LessWrong jargon. Not sure how or why this came about, since this is not obscure philosophy knowledge, nor is it hard to look up.
If you Google "epistemics" philosophy, you get 1) sources like Wikipedia that talk about epistemology, not "epistemics", 2) a post from the EA Forum and a page from the Forethought Foundation, which is an effective altruist organization, 3) some unrelated, miscellaneous stuff (i.e. neither EA-related or academic philosophy-related), and 4) a few genuine but fairly obscure uses of the word "epistemics" in an academic philosophy context. This confirms that the term is rarely used in academic philosophy.
I also don't know what people in EA mean when they say "epistemics". I think they probably mean something like epistemic practices, but I actually don't know for sure.
I would discourage the use of the term "epistemics", particularly as its meaning is unclear, and would advocate for a replacement such as epistemology or epistemic practices (or whatever you like, but not "epistemics").
The comments quoted in that tweet come perilously close to an incitement to violence. If you don’t think that anyone would actually commit violence due (partly) to ideas related to the rationalist community or AI alignment, I’ll point out that this has already happened, and possibly up to six people are dead because of it. (That’s not the whole explanation, but it’s part of it.)
When you are speaking publicly, I think you have a responsibility to be extra cautious not to incite violence or say things that could be interpreted by someone as encouraging violence. You’re not just talking to the median person listening, you’re talking to everyone listening, including people who are impressionable, emotionally unwell, and may be predisposed to violence.
It’s unfortunate, but this is what it means to hold a position of responsibility in our society. You have to consider these things. I really strongly disagree with dismissing these as mere “social status games” — we are talking about a real risk of irreparable physical harm to innocent people here, even if small.
What’s strange here is the “warning shot” already happened — up to six murders, perpetuated by people who almost certainly had multiple risk factors going on (as almost always seems to be the case), but for whom the discourse, ideas, and subcultural social norms of the whole LessWrong/Bay Area rationalist/AI alignment world seemed to play a role.