Thanks so much for the feedback—just edited with the improved formatting. Regarding your thoughts:
Point well taken that MB likely receives a higher proportion of hours. However, it still seems plausible that its share of hours is too low; there a lot of people with full time positions dedicated to direct work (though insofar as these people are earning a salary for themselves that they’d have to earn in some position, not all of this time can be thought of as being spent on an EA cause unless we discount their salary from the ‘donation’ side of things). Also, seems that a reason that the main forms of MB are cheap is because MB isn’t well-funded. If AI safety was underfunded, the main forms of AI safety work would be cheap too.
Seems perfectly reasonable that the 80k podcast, etc. should consider entertainment, non-EA engagement, and similar considerations. That said, an unintended consequence might be that people like me get the wrong impression that more experienced folks have concluded that MB isn’t super important/neglected/tractable.
Yeah, the 10 vs 4 utils/dollar example might have been misleading and I agree with your point. One thought: perhaps this might be a sort of coordination problem, where it isn’t rational for an individual to fund MB in isolation, but everyone would prefer that everyone give more funding to MB if they could coordinate. Haven’t given this idea much thought though.
Good point that non-MB work has a sort of MB ‘externality.’ This has to be balanced against the obvious ways that MB helps direct causes.
Probably shouldn’t have used the Future Perfect example, as it was fallacious to think that funding was its main constraint. Thanks for the correction.
Thanks so much for the feedback—just edited with the improved formatting. Regarding your thoughts:
Point well taken that MB likely receives a higher proportion of hours. However, it still seems plausible that its share of hours is too low; there a lot of people with full time positions dedicated to direct work (though insofar as these people are earning a salary for themselves that they’d have to earn in some position, not all of this time can be thought of as being spent on an EA cause unless we discount their salary from the ‘donation’ side of things). Also, seems that a reason that the main forms of MB are cheap is because MB isn’t well-funded. If AI safety was underfunded, the main forms of AI safety work would be cheap too.
Seems perfectly reasonable that the 80k podcast, etc. should consider entertainment, non-EA engagement, and similar considerations. That said, an unintended consequence might be that people like me get the wrong impression that more experienced folks have concluded that MB isn’t super important/neglected/tractable.
Yeah, the 10 vs 4 utils/dollar example might have been misleading and I agree with your point. One thought: perhaps this might be a sort of coordination problem, where it isn’t rational for an individual to fund MB in isolation, but everyone would prefer that everyone give more funding to MB if they could coordinate. Haven’t given this idea much thought though.
Good point that non-MB work has a sort of MB ‘externality.’ This has to be balanced against the obvious ways that MB helps direct causes.
Probably shouldn’t have used the Future Perfect example, as it was fallacious to think that funding was its main constraint. Thanks for the correction.