Information for LessWrong 2.0

Table of contents

Basic information

Item Value
Other names LessWrong
Country United States
Facebook username lesswrong2
Website lesswrong.com
Team page https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aG74jJkiPccqdkK3c/the-lesswrong-team
Launch date 2017-06-18
Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LessWrong
Last recorded date when we made major data updates for this org 2023-01-30
Donations List Website (data still preliminary) donee

Positions count by year

Hover over a name to see the position and date range. This table only includes positions where at least the start date is known. The positions count can count the same person multiple times if they held different positions; similarly, the list of staff may include the same person multiple times if they held more than one position during a single year. For each year, a person is included if they were at the organization for any part of the year; this means the actual staff count at any point during the year can be lower (or higher, if some staff held multiple positions in a single year).

Year Positions count Researchers General staff Associates Board members Advisors
2017 7 Ben Albert Pace, Eric Rogstad, Harmanas Chopra, Kaj Sotala, Matthew Graves, Oliver Habryka, Raymond Arnold
2018 8 Ben Albert Pace, Eric Rogstad, Harmanas Chopra, Kaj Sotala, Matthew Graves, Oliver Habryka, Raymond Arnold, Ruben Bloom
2019 8 Ben Albert Pace, Eric Rogstad, Harmanas Chopra, Kaj Sotala, Matthew Graves, Oliver Habryka, Raymond Arnold, Ruben Bloom
2020 8 Ben Albert Pace, Eric Rogstad, Harmanas Chopra, Kaj Sotala, Matthew Graves, Oliver Habryka, Raymond Arnold, Ruben Bloom
2021 8 Ben Albert Pace, Eric Rogstad, Harmanas Chopra, Kaj Sotala, Matthew Graves, Oliver Habryka, Raymond Arnold, Ruben Bloom
2022 7 Ben Albert Pace, Eric Rogstad, Harmanas Chopra, Kaj Sotala, Matthew Graves, Oliver Habryka, Raymond Arnold
2023 7 Ben Albert Pace, Eric Rogstad, Harmanas Chopra, Kaj Sotala, Matthew Graves, Oliver Habryka, Raymond Arnold

Number of full-time staff at the beginning each year

The following table lists some dates and people who were at the organization on the given date (namely, the start of the year). The table may not list every person who worked for the organization (e.g. they could have joined and left in the middle of a single year). This table excludes associates, interns, advisors, and board members.

Date Staff count Staff
2018-01-01 4 Ben Albert Pace, Kaj Sotala, Oliver Habryka, Raymond Arnold
2019-01-01 5 Ben Albert Pace, Kaj Sotala, Oliver Habryka, Raymond Arnold, Ruben Bloom
2020-01-01 5 Ben Albert Pace, Kaj Sotala, Oliver Habryka, Raymond Arnold, Ruben Bloom
2021-01-01 5 Ben Albert Pace, Kaj Sotala, Oliver Habryka, Raymond Arnold, Ruben Bloom
2022-01-01 4 Ben Albert Pace, Kaj Sotala, Oliver Habryka, Raymond Arnold
2023-01-01 4 Ben Albert Pace, Kaj Sotala, Oliver Habryka, Raymond Arnold

Full history of additions and subtractions

This table shows the full change history of positions. Each row corresponds to at least one addition or removal of a position. Additions are in green and subtractions are in red. If a position name changed, it is listed simultaneously as an addition (of the new name) and removal (of the old name) and colored yellow. Additionally there are faded variants of each color for visited links.

Date Number of positions Number of positions added Number of positions removed Positions added Positions removed
2 2 0 Elizabeth V, James Babcock
2017-06-01 7 5 0 Ben Albert Pace, Eric Rogstad, Harmanas Chopra, Matthew Graves, Oliver Habryka
2017-09-01 9 2 0 Kaj Sotala, Raymond Arnold
2018-09-01 10 1 0 Ruben Bloom
2021-07-01 9 0 -1 Ruben Bloom

List of people (10 positions)

Person Title Start date End date Employment type Source Notes
Oliver Habryka Developer 2017-06-01 full-time [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]
Matthew Graves 2017-06-01 [2], [3], [6]
Ben Albert Pace Core Team 2017-06-01 [2], [3], [6], [5]
Raymond Arnold Core Team 2017-09-01 [2], [3], [6], [4], [5]
Harmanas Chopra 2017-06-01 [3], [6]
Eric Rogstad 2017-06-01 [3], [6]
James Babcock Chief technology officer full-time [7], [8]
Ruben Bloom Co-Founder 2018-09-01 2021-07-01 [7], [9], [5], [9]
Kaj Sotala Moderator 2017-09-01 [7], [10], [5]
Elizabeth V Moderator [11], [5]

Products (2 products)

Name Creation date Description
AI Alignment Forum 2018-07-10 A group blog for discussion of technical aspects of AI alignment. The forum is built using the same software as LessWrong 2.0, and is integrated with LessWrong 2.0. For creation date, see [12].
LessWrong 2.0 2017-06-18 A community blog about rationality, decision theory, AI, the rationality community, and other topics relevant to AI safety. This is a re-launch/modernization of the original LessWrong. For the launch date, the date of the welcome post [13] is used.

Organization documents (2 documents)

Title Publication date Author Publisher Affected organizations Affected people Document scope Cause area Notes
I currently work for Less Wrong, as the fourth of four people on the team. We recently considered hiring, and trialed a few candidates, but decided not to for now. 2019-01-28 Jim Babcock Jeff Kaufman LessWrong 2.0 Oliver Habryka, Ben Pace, Raymond Arnold, Jim Babcock Hiring-related notice Rationality improvement Jim Babcock, the fourth person to join LessWrong 2.0 (after Oliver Habryka, Ben Pace, and Raymond Arnold) describes why, after initially looking for a while for more developers to join the organization, they ultimately decided not to hire for now unless they found an exceptional candidate. The comment is in response to a post "Simultaneous Shortage and Oversupply" by Jeff Kaufman, noting that a lot of people are interested in applying to organizations related to effective altruism, but the organizations still take a long time to fill their job postings
LessWrong is hiring 2018-06-18 Oliver Habryka LessWrong 2.0 LessWrong 2.0 Oliver Habryka, Ben Pace, Raymond Arnold Hiring-related notice Rationality improvement Announcement that LessWrong 2.0 is looking for somebody to fill a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) role. Criteria are experience as a programmer and excitement about the long-term vision. The salary range is $70,000 to $120,000, though higher salaries are possible. The post and comments also reveal that the current employees are Oliver Habryka, Raymond Arnold, and Ben Pace, and they all make $60,000 a year. Comments also reiterate previously documented funding sources: Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative, EA Grants, and individual donors such as Eric Rogstad

Documents (0 documents)

Title Publication date Author Publisher Affected organizations Affected people Affected agendas Notes

Similar organizations

Organization Number of people in common List of people in common
Center for Applied Rationality 3 Oliver Habryka, Matthew Graves, Eric Rogstad
Machine Intelligence Research Institute 3 Oliver Habryka, Matthew Graves, Kaj Sotala
Centre for Effective Altruism 1 Oliver Habryka
Effective Altruism Funds 1 Oliver Habryka
Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative 1 Eric Rogstad
Survival and Flourishing.Fund 1 Eric Rogstad
Survival and Flourishing.Org 1 Eric Rogstad
Foundational Research Institute 1 Kaj Sotala