Holden Karnofsky

"I think its somewhat of a happy coincidence so far that most breakthroughs have been good. To say, I see a breakthrough on the horizon. Is that good or bad? How can we prepare for it? Thats another thing academia is really not set up to do. Academia is set up to get the breakthrough. That is a question I ask myself a lot is heres an intellectual activity. Why cant it be done in academia? These days, my answer is if its really primarily of interest to a very cosmopolitan philanthropist trying to help the whole future, and theres no one client and its not frontier advancing, then I think that does make it pretty plausible to me that theres no one doing it. We would love to change that, at least somewhat, by funding what we think is the most important work."

"Regarding (b) ["checking boxes I want to check for considering myself a personally moral/ethical person, which is related but not identical to trying for maximum expected positive impact on the world"]: every year, I want to give a significant amount to "charity" as conventionally construed, straightforwardly helping the less fortunate. I generally believe in trying to be an ethical person by a wide variety of different ethical standards (not all of which are consequentialist). And I wouldnt feel that I were meeting this standard if I were giving nothing (or a trivial amount) to known, outstanding opportunities to help the less fortunate, for purposes of saving as much money as possible for adversarial projects (such as political campaigns) and/or more speculative projects (such as work related to artificial intelligence). I think the best giving opportunities in this category are GiveWells top charities, so I will be giving a portion of this years donation there, following the recommended allocation."

"So one crazy analogy to how my morality might turn out to work, and the big point here is I dont know how my morality works, is we have a painting and the painting is very beautiful. There is some crap on the painting. Would I like the crap cleaned up? Yes, very much. Thats like the suffering thats in the world today. Then there is making more of the painting, thats just a strange function. My utility with the size of the painting, its just like a strange and complicated function. It may go up in any kind of reasonable term that I can actually foresee, but flatten out, at some point. So to see the world as like a painting and my utility of it is that, I think that is somewhat of an analogy to how my morality may work, that its not like there is this linear multiplier and the multiplier is one thing or another thing. Its: starting to talk about billions of future generations is just like going so far outside of where my morality has ever been stress-tested. I dont how it would respond. I actually suspect that it would flatten out the same way as with the painting."

"But on the other hand, there are a couple of dimensions where [Harvard] alumni have much higher opinions of themselves, and these are the things I think people have come to humblebrag about. One of them is positive contribution to society: 15% of us think were in the top 10%, and 4% of us think were in the top 1%. The much bigger one is happiness: only 4% of us think were below average, over 30% of us think were in the happiest 10%, and a whopping 10% of us think were in the happiest one percent. So I think this is going to be a really interesting and really weird reunion, because it looks like our generation has become some sort of bragging hipster generation. Instead of bragging about money and fame like traditional people do, were way too cool for that and instead were all high on ourselves for being good people with the right priorities in life. I think were going to be hearing a lot of conversations along the lines of "Yeah Im kinda poor, but Im doing what I believe in and Im really happy and I think thats just what matters, but I dont know, maybe thats just me." "No man I totally feel you, and actually I think Im even poorer and happier, I mean I literally love my spouse so much Id kill myself if we split up."

"I know some effective altruists who see [effective altruists] like Holden Karnofsky or what not do incredible things, and feel a little bit of resentment at themselves and others; feeling inadequate that they cant make such a large difference."

"I model the world as having most of the impact from extreme cases, home-runs. I think thats true in business, science and social impact. If you have good personal fit, your chances of being that extreme case are dramatically better – you climb the ladder, you get to see and do things that other cant, and you get to make unique contributions."