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I think the desire to exclude e/accs is mainly because of their attitude that human extinction is acceptable or even desirable, not because of the specifics of what regulatory actions they support. So how do you feel about human extinction?
1I use eBay somewhat regularly, and I've found that most of the time I get what I expected at a reasonable price. So I find the theory that I should always regret participation in any auction somewhat dubious.
1I think the distinction is that even for plant cultivars and pharmaceuticals, we can straightforwardly circumscribe the potential danger, e.g. a pharmaceutical will not endanger people unless they take it, and a new plant cultivar will not resist our attempts to control it outside of the usual ways plants behave. That's not necessarily the case with an AI that's smarter than us.
As a control, you could look at Craigslist, which hasn't changed its appearance for about 25 years, but is still the most popular website in its category according to SimilarWeb.
I think most organizations the size of EA have formal accountability mechanisms that attempt to investigate claims of fraud and abuse in some kind of more-or-less fair and transparent way. Of course, the actual fairness and effectiveness of such mechanisms can be debated, but at least the need for them is acknowledged. The attitude among EAs, on the other hand, seems to be that EAs are all too smart and good to have any real need for accountability.
2I guess I should know better by now, but it still astonishes me that EAs can set such abysmally low standards for themselves while simultaneously representing themselves as dramatically more ethical than everyone else.
It seems like anger against the exact kind of neoliberal technocracy you propose was a major source of energy for the 2016 Trump campaign, as well as the highly contentious Sanders campaigns.
After carefully considering your arguments, I've decided that you are right. Therefore, I won't update my current belief that I should sometimes update my beliefs.
8Why would a sane person want to use DMT?
I'm not in Berkeley and I have no direct knowledge of Berkeley parties, but a certain level of contempt or revulsion toward e/acc seems pretty universal among the LW-aligned people I know. I have no reason to doubt that there's no explicit rule against e/accs showing up at Berkeley parties, as others have said. I personally wouldn't feel entirely comfortable at a party with a lot of e/accs.