Here are some additional links or points that may be of use to some readers. Some of these things are EA Wiki pages; in those cases, I’m sharing them primarily for their bibliographies and the collection of tagged posts.
“The underlying logic is that a) your time is valuable and b) receiving funding makes you more likely to follow through in a high-quality way.”
That’s indeed part of it.
But another big part of it is the fact that money can be useful for people!
I think a lot of EA community members are failing to make good time-money tradeoffs, either because they undervalue their time or because they’re genuinely somewhat funding constrained (even just in the sense that they have less than 2 years’ runway and so are being understandably cautious). More money can help with that.
So this can be relevant even if someone is earning enough / has enough savings that they don’t “really need” more money, and that more money would have little marginal benefits for the person’s own happiness/wellbeing.
And there’s also perhaps the fact that the community having a norm of funding good work at a fairly generous level may incentivise more people to do similar good work.
But that’s not my primary reasoning, partly because I think things along the lines of status and a desire to be impactful are probably stronger incentives for many of the relevant people.
Here are some additional links or points that may be of use to some readers. Some of these things are EA Wiki pages; in those cases, I’m sharing them primarily for their bibliographies and the collection of tagged posts.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/effective-altruism-megaprojects
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/J7PsetipHFoj2Mv7R/notes-on-ea-related-research-writing-testing-fit-learning
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MsNpJBzv5YhdfNHc9/a-central-directory-for-open-research-questions
“The underlying logic is that a) your time is valuable and b) receiving funding makes you more likely to follow through in a high-quality way.”
That’s indeed part of it.
But another big part of it is the fact that money can be useful for people!
I think a lot of EA community members are failing to make good time-money tradeoffs, either because they undervalue their time or because they’re genuinely somewhat funding constrained (even just in the sense that they have less than 2 years’ runway and so are being understandably cautious). More money can help with that.
So this can be relevant even if someone is earning enough / has enough savings that they don’t “really need” more money, and that more money would have little marginal benefits for the person’s own happiness/wellbeing.
And there’s also perhaps the fact that the community having a norm of funding good work at a fairly generous level may incentivise more people to do similar good work.
But that’s not my primary reasoning, partly because I think things along the lines of status and a desire to be impactful are probably stronger incentives for many of the relevant people.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/g86DhzTNQmzo3nhLE/what-are-your-favourite-ways-to-buy-time
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/time-money-tradeoffs
Readings and notes on how to get useful input from busy people