For about a year now I’ve had a post kicking around in my head that there’s no EA interest in putting numerical bounds on the value of, for example, a strong tenant movement, the end of mass incarceration, a strong labor movement, the end of the drug war, the end of war in general.
If you do get to writing the post you probably want to include that mass incarceration was something Open Phil looked into in detail and spent $130M on before deciding in 2021 that money to GiveWell top charities went farther. I’d be very interested to read the post!
power-flattering answers that want you to make a lot of money and donate it to EA,
Making money to donate hasn’t been a top recommendation within EA for about five years: it still makes sense for some people, but not most.
When you say “donating to EA” that’s ambiguous between “donating it to building the EA movement” and “donating it to charities that EAs think are doing a lot of good”. If you mean the latter I agree with you (ex: see what donation opportunities GWWC marks as “top rated”).
while making 0 effort to convince your friends or society
When people go into this full time we tend to say they work in community building. But that implies more of an “our goal is to get people to become EAs” than is quite right—things like the 80k podcast are often more about spreading ideas than about growing the movement. And a lot of EAs do this individually as well: I’ve written hundreds of posts on EA that are mostly read by my friends, and had a lot of in-person conversations about the ideas.
Let’s say you had a billion dollars to address “pandemic risk” in the world. Could you actually meaningfully reduce pandemic risk? … This is a class issue, like it or not, and dumping a billion dollars into it won’t solve class.
Does emotion not guide deworming initiatives? Or are EAs just happy to make a number go up? I can’t tell
Personally my donations to deworming haven’t been guided by my emotional reaction to parasites. My emotions are just not a very good guide to what most needs doing! I’m emotionally similarly affected by harm to a thousand people as a million: my emotions just aren’t able to handle scale. Emotions matter for motivation, but they’re not much help (and can hurt) in prioritization.
You also write both:
EA should’ve been happy to take his money but assumed it was going to collapse.
And then later on:
I like the callout of “theories of change” and “Funding bodies should within 6 months publish lists of sources they will not accept money from, regardless of legality”. Poisonous funders are, IMO: …99.9% of crypto
If you do get to writing the post you probably want to include that mass incarceration was something Open Phil looked into in detail and spent $130M on before deciding in 2021 that money to GiveWell top charities went farther. I’d be very interested to read the post!
Making money to donate hasn’t been a top recommendation within EA for about five years: it still makes sense for some people, but not most.
When you say “donating to EA” that’s ambiguous between “donating it to building the EA movement” and “donating it to charities that EAs think are doing a lot of good”. If you mean the latter I agree with you (ex: see what donation opportunities GWWC marks as “top rated”).
When people go into this full time we tend to say they work in community building. But that implies more of an “our goal is to get people to become EAs” than is quite right—things like the 80k podcast are often more about spreading ideas than about growing the movement. And a lot of EAs do this individually as well: I’ve written hundreds of posts on EA that are mostly read by my friends, and had a lot of in-person conversations about the ideas.
Effectively addressing risk from future pandemics wouldn’t look like “spend a lot more money on the things we are already doing”. Instead it would be things like the projects listed in Concrete Biosecurity Projects (some of which could be big) or Delay, Detect, Defend: Preparing for a Future in which Thousands Can Release New Pandemics. (Disclosure: I work for a project that’s on both those lists).
Personally my donations to deworming haven’t been guided by my emotional reaction to parasites. My emotions are just not a very good guide to what most needs doing! I’m emotionally similarly affected by harm to a thousand people as a million: my emotions just aren’t able to handle scale. Emotions matter for motivation, but they’re not much help (and can hurt) in prioritization.
You also write both:
And then later on:
These seem like they’re in conflict?