While it’s definitely a potential issue, I don’t think it’s a guaranteed issue. For example, with a more distributed grantmaking system, grantmakers could agree to not fund projects that have consensus around potential harms, but fund projects that align with their specific worldviews that other funders may not be interested in funding but do not believe have significant downside risks. That structure was part of the initial design intent of the first EA Angel Group (not to be confused with the EA Angel Group that is currently operating).
I see, just pointing out a specific example for readers! You mention the “hypothesis that relatively centralised funding is indeed best shouldn’t be discarded prematurely.” Do you think it’s concerning that EA hasn’t (to my understanding) tried decentralized funding at any scale?
Obviously there is a big opportunity cost to not trying something that could vastly outperform something we currently do—that’s more or less true by definition. But the question is whether we could (or rather—whether there is a decent chance that we would) see such a vast outperformance.
There’s evidence to suggest that decentralized decision making can outperform centralized decision making; for example with prediction markets and crowdsourcing. I think it’s problematic in general to assume that centralized thinking and institutions are better than decentralized thinking and institutions, especially if that reasoning is based on the status quo. I was asking this series of questions because by wording that centralized funding was a “hypothesis,” I thought you would support testing other hypotheses by default.
I don’t think there’s evidence that centralised or decentralised decision-making is in general better than the other. It has to be decided on a case-by-case-basis.
I think this discussion is too abstract and that to determine whether EA grant-making should be more decentralised one needs to get into way more empirical detail. I just wanted to raise a consideration the OP didn’t mention in my top-level comment.
I agree! I was trying to highlight that because we’re not sure that centralized funding is better or not, it would be a high priority to test other mechanisms, especially if there’s reason to believe other mechanisms could result in significantly different outcomes.
While it’s definitely a potential issue, I don’t think it’s a guaranteed issue. For example, with a more distributed grantmaking system, grantmakers could agree to not fund projects that have consensus around potential harms, but fund projects that align with their specific worldviews that other funders may not be interested in funding but do not believe have significant downside risks. That structure was part of the initial design intent of the first EA Angel Group (not to be confused with the EA Angel Group that is currently operating).
Yes, cf. my ending:
I see, just pointing out a specific example for readers! You mention the “hypothesis that relatively centralised funding is indeed best shouldn’t be discarded prematurely.” Do you think it’s concerning that EA hasn’t (to my understanding) tried decentralized funding at any scale?
I haven’t studied EA grant-making in detail so can’t say with any confidence, but if you ask me I’d say I’m not concerned, no.
Isn’t there a very considerably potential opportunity cost by not trying out funding systems that could vastly outperform the current funding system?
Obviously there is a big opportunity cost to not trying something that could vastly outperform something we currently do—that’s more or less true by definition. But the question is whether we could (or rather—whether there is a decent chance that we would) see such a vast outperformance.
There’s evidence to suggest that decentralized decision making can outperform centralized decision making; for example with prediction markets and crowdsourcing. I think it’s problematic in general to assume that centralized thinking and institutions are better than decentralized thinking and institutions, especially if that reasoning is based on the status quo. I was asking this series of questions because by wording that centralized funding was a “hypothesis,” I thought you would support testing other hypotheses by default.
I don’t think there’s evidence that centralised or decentralised decision-making is in general better than the other. It has to be decided on a case-by-case-basis.
I think this discussion is too abstract and that to determine whether EA grant-making should be more decentralised one needs to get into way more empirical detail. I just wanted to raise a consideration the OP didn’t mention in my top-level comment.
I agree! I was trying to highlight that because we’re not sure that centralized funding is better or not, it would be a high priority to test other mechanisms, especially if there’s reason to believe other mechanisms could result in significantly different outcomes.