Something that I find quite difficult is the fact that all of these things are true, but hard to âfeelâ true at the same time:
We have increased available funding by an order of magnitude over the past decade and increased the rate at which that funding is being deployed
We donât want lack of funds to be the reason that people donât do important and ambitious things; and yet
We are still extremely funding constrained in most cases
Youâre experiencing a bit of #1 and #2 right now. And I think that the huge upsides to that is (a) weâre have good a shot of doing a lot more good; and (b) EA is less likely to be the pursuit of the already privileged (e.g. those who can afford to fly to a conference in SF or London or quit their job to pursue something that the world doesnât compensate for its value).
Iâm glad that access to funding hasnât been a barrier for your pursuit of doing a lot of good.
Regarding #3.
It still stings every time I hear the funding situation talked about as if itâs perpetually solved.
Iâm glad that a promising AI safety researcher is likely to find the funding they need to switch careers and some of the top projects are able to absorb that talent without needing to beg for funding from everyday donors...
But I still feel very deeply the opportunity cost of not funding more bednets while AMF still has a funding gap. I sometimes struggle to sleep based on the fact that we havenât yet transferred at least 1 trillion dollars to the extreme poor to double their income and get them above the extreme poverty line. I still feel very deeply the anxiety of being unprepared for the next superpandemic and that we donât have nearly have enough resources for the kinds of megaprojects needed to build resilience. And I havenât even touched on animals and how far we could go if we had the resources.
people were writing plans on a whiteboard for how we could spend the effectively-infinite amount of money we could ask for.
Itâs a common exercise when doing ambitious brainstorming to start with the premise of âif money was no objectâ and then later come back through the ideas and think about feasibility. Turning off the critical brain can sometimes help with creativity and this is one way of doing that.
Iâve run sessions like this within EA and also within other organisations/âcommunities. However, as a facilitator itâs always important to be clear that youâre not giving people the impression that there are no constraints, but that you donât want them to think about the constraints while being ambitious and creative.
Thanks for sharing your experiences here Sam.
Something that I find quite difficult is the fact that all of these things are true, but hard to âfeelâ true at the same time:
We have increased available funding by an order of magnitude over the past decade and increased the rate at which that funding is being deployed
We donât want lack of funds to be the reason that people donât do important and ambitious things; and yet
We are still extremely funding constrained in most cases
Youâre experiencing a bit of #1 and #2 right now. And I think that the huge upsides to that is (a) weâre have good a shot of doing a lot more good; and (b) EA is less likely to be the pursuit of the already privileged (e.g. those who can afford to fly to a conference in SF or London or quit their job to pursue something that the world doesnât compensate for its value).
Iâm glad that access to funding hasnât been a barrier for your pursuit of doing a lot of good.
Regarding #3.
It still stings every time I hear the funding situation talked about as if itâs perpetually solved.
Iâm glad that a promising AI safety researcher is likely to find the funding they need to switch careers and some of the top projects are able to absorb that talent without needing to beg for funding from everyday donors...
But I still feel very deeply the opportunity cost of not funding more bednets while AMF still has a funding gap. I sometimes struggle to sleep based on the fact that we havenât yet transferred at least 1 trillion dollars to the extreme poor to double their income and get them above the extreme poverty line. I still feel very deeply the anxiety of being unprepared for the next superpandemic and that we donât have nearly have enough resources for the kinds of megaprojects needed to build resilience. And I havenât even touched on animals and how far we could go if we had the resources.
Iâm going to write about this soon.
Itâs a common exercise when doing ambitious brainstorming to start with the premise of âif money was no objectâ and then later come back through the ideas and think about feasibility. Turning off the critical brain can sometimes help with creativity and this is one way of doing that.
Iâve run sessions like this within EA and also within other organisations/âcommunities. However, as a facilitator itâs always important to be clear that youâre not giving people the impression that there are no constraints, but that you donât want them to think about the constraints while being ambitious and creative.
Anyone getting these vibes from Lukeâs comment? :>
https://ââourworldindata.org/ââmuch-better-awful-can-be-better
I did write about this, but decided to mostly write it in poem format followed by a postscript.