This seems like an essay on your personal resentment at tech
You reference founders' age multiple times, "someone younger than me, who won't put on real pants." Later, "someone under 30."
You make a spurious claim that the general public (via pensions) is paying for Juicero. Venture Capital has performed very well as an asset class, and taking risks like Juicero is what makes this possible. If its effect on pension funds is truly your basis for evaluating tech companies, then you should be very happy with tech
Instead of a serious critique of Effective Altruism, you resort to name-calling. They're "annoying." But caiming to "foresee humanity's greatest problems" and "prioritize them over the problems we face today" is exactly what the adults in the room are doing. Just one group does it with climate change, while the other priorities AI risk and pandemic preparedness. You could have used the column to make a reasoned argument that AI risk + pandemics aren't worth the investment. But you didn't make that argument.
In short, this is just a post about which groups of people you don't like. You're entitled to dislike whichever group you choose, but I can get that content anywhere. It's not why I subscribe to Josh. I'm here for serious analysis.
No idea why you are harking on the first 3-5 paragraph's when the rest of the essay is a serious and very Josh-esque argument. Sure VC is a risk-taker's game but the argument is to point out that easy money led to bad risk-taking that in retrospect looks silly. you can be upset that you didn't get a serious critique of EA but don't pretend the rest of the essay didn't present a cohesive analysis.
I agree with OP that the complaints about EA and VC in the first half seemed half-baked and I was turned off by them. In particular, the complaints about EA seem uninformed and unhelpful. But the second half of the essay has much better analysis; Subscribed!
"They weren’t simply creating new products — they claimed to foresee humanity’s biggest problems many years into the future and could prioritize them over the problems we face today. The arrogance of it all! So annoying!!!"
The entire point here is societal risk-management. I plan my life around the idea that I will be alive another few decades and I have to safeguard against a variety of low-risk catastrophic outcomes. Any responsible business does the same thing. Some of these EA people (and lots of other people) pointed out that given the occasional occurrence of flu pandemics we might want to be prepared for the next Spanish Flu, and then it happens and we don't even have a stockpile of N95 masks or a CDC that can make a PCR test. One of SBF's big issues was future pandemic preparedness, and whatever else was wrong with that guy, it is really strange to me that we've lost interest in this issue so quickly.
The AI-risk stuff is harder to assess, but I think non-crazy to worry about. Certainly if we can worry about what global warming will do between 2050 and 2100, we can worry about pandemics and AI risk could do in that time..
Even beyond that, there are still a lot of people who are or were in the EA verse who are still beating the old drums saying "it's better if you give money to food banks rather than canned goods" or "ensuring that we know which charities spend all their money on frivolous shit is good"
This seems like an essay on your personal resentment at tech
You reference founders' age multiple times, "someone younger than me, who won't put on real pants." Later, "someone under 30."
You make a spurious claim that the general public (via pensions) is paying for Juicero. Venture Capital has performed very well as an asset class, and taking risks like Juicero is what makes this possible. If its effect on pension funds is truly your basis for evaluating tech companies, then you should be very happy with tech
Instead of a serious critique of Effective Altruism, you resort to name-calling. They're "annoying." But caiming to "foresee humanity's greatest problems" and "prioritize them over the problems we face today" is exactly what the adults in the room are doing. Just one group does it with climate change, while the other priorities AI risk and pandemic preparedness. You could have used the column to make a reasoned argument that AI risk + pandemics aren't worth the investment. But you didn't make that argument.
In short, this is just a post about which groups of people you don't like. You're entitled to dislike whichever group you choose, but I can get that content anywhere. It's not why I subscribe to Josh. I'm here for serious analysis.
No idea why you are harking on the first 3-5 paragraph's when the rest of the essay is a serious and very Josh-esque argument. Sure VC is a risk-taker's game but the argument is to point out that easy money led to bad risk-taking that in retrospect looks silly. you can be upset that you didn't get a serious critique of EA but don't pretend the rest of the essay didn't present a cohesive analysis.
I agree with OP that the complaints about EA and VC in the first half seemed half-baked and I was turned off by them. In particular, the complaints about EA seem uninformed and unhelpful. But the second half of the essay has much better analysis; Subscribed!
I agree with a lot here, but this part irked me:
"They weren’t simply creating new products — they claimed to foresee humanity’s biggest problems many years into the future and could prioritize them over the problems we face today. The arrogance of it all! So annoying!!!"
The entire point here is societal risk-management. I plan my life around the idea that I will be alive another few decades and I have to safeguard against a variety of low-risk catastrophic outcomes. Any responsible business does the same thing. Some of these EA people (and lots of other people) pointed out that given the occasional occurrence of flu pandemics we might want to be prepared for the next Spanish Flu, and then it happens and we don't even have a stockpile of N95 masks or a CDC that can make a PCR test. One of SBF's big issues was future pandemic preparedness, and whatever else was wrong with that guy, it is really strange to me that we've lost interest in this issue so quickly.
The AI-risk stuff is harder to assess, but I think non-crazy to worry about. Certainly if we can worry about what global warming will do between 2050 and 2100, we can worry about pandemics and AI risk could do in that time..
Even beyond that, there are still a lot of people who are or were in the EA verse who are still beating the old drums saying "it's better if you give money to food banks rather than canned goods" or "ensuring that we know which charities spend all their money on frivolous shit is good"
Enjoyed this Allison. THANKYOU. Still, I’m kinda wanting some Holiday Christmas content. Food, drinks, etc.
So good, Thank you