I think that the value is going to vary hugely by the cause area and the exact ask.
For global poverty, anyone can donate money to buy malaria net, though it’s worth remembering that Dustin Moskovitz is worth a crazy number of low-value donors.
For AI Safety, it’s actually surprisingly tricky to find robustly net-positive actions we can pursue. Unfortunately it would be very easy to lobby a politician to pass legislation, which then makes the situation worse. Or to persuade voters this is an important issue, but then have them voting for things that sound good rather than things that solve the issue.
So I suspect that the value of producing more highly-enaged people actually stacks up better than many people think.
On the other hand, I agree with the shift towards engaging more with the public, which seems necessary at this stage if we don’t want to be defined by our critics.
I think that the value is going to vary hugely by the cause area and the exact ask.
For global poverty, anyone can donate money to buy malaria net, though it’s worth remembering that Dustin Moskovitz is worth a crazy number of low-value donors.
For AI Safety, it’s actually surprisingly tricky to find robustly net-positive actions we can pursue. Unfortunately it would be very easy to lobby a politician to pass legislation, which then makes the situation worse. Or to persuade voters this is an important issue, but then have them voting for things that sound good rather than things that solve the issue.
For global health & development, I think it is still quite useful to have influence over things like research and policy prioritisation (what topics academics should research, and what areas of policy think tanks should focus on), government foreign aid budgets, vaccine r&d, etc. This is tangential, but even if Dustin is worth a large number of low-value donors (he is), the marginal donation to effective global poverty charities is still very impactful.
For AI, I agree that it is tricky to find robustly net-positive actions, as of right now at least. I expect this to change over the next few years, and I hope people in relevant positions to implement these actions will be ready to do so once we have more clarity about which ones are good. Whether or not they’re highly engaged EAs doesn’t seem to matter inasmuch as they actually do the things, IMO.
I think that the value is going to vary hugely by the cause area and the exact ask.
For global poverty, anyone can donate money to buy malaria net, though it’s worth remembering that Dustin Moskovitz is worth a crazy number of low-value donors.
For AI Safety, it’s actually surprisingly tricky to find robustly net-positive actions we can pursue. Unfortunately it would be very easy to lobby a politician to pass legislation, which then makes the situation worse. Or to persuade voters this is an important issue, but then have them voting for things that sound good rather than things that solve the issue.
So I suspect that the value of producing more highly-enaged people actually stacks up better than many people think.
On the other hand, I agree with the shift towards engaging more with the public, which seems necessary at this stage if we don’t want to be defined by our critics.
For global health & development, I think it is still quite useful to have influence over things like research and policy prioritisation (what topics academics should research, and what areas of policy think tanks should focus on), government foreign aid budgets, vaccine r&d, etc. This is tangential, but even if Dustin is worth a large number of low-value donors (he is), the marginal donation to effective global poverty charities is still very impactful.
For AI, I agree that it is tricky to find robustly net-positive actions, as of right now at least. I expect this to change over the next few years, and I hope people in relevant positions to implement these actions will be ready to do so once we have more clarity about which ones are good. Whether or not they’re highly engaged EAs doesn’t seem to matter inasmuch as they actually do the things, IMO.