A couple of thoughts I’d add (as another trustee):
3. Demand for the hotel has been increasing more or less linearly (until we hit current funding difficulties). As long as that continues, the projects will tend to get better.
This seems like a standard trajectory for meta-charities: for eg I doubt 80k’s early career shifts looked anywhere near as high value as the average one does now. I should know—I *was* one of them, back when their ‘career consultation’ was ‘speculating in a pub about earning to give’ (and I was a far worse prospect than any 80k advisee or hotel resident today!)
Meanwhile it’s easy to scorn such projects as novel-writing, but have we forgotten this? For better or worse, if Eliezer hadn’t written that book the rationality and EA communities would look very different now.
6. This might be true as a psychological explanation, but, ceteris paribus, it’s actually a reason *to* donate, since it (by definition) makes the hotel a more neglected cause.
A couple of thoughts I’d add (as another trustee):
3. Demand for the hotel has been increasing more or less linearly (until we hit current funding difficulties). As long as that continues, the projects will tend to get better.
This seems like a standard trajectory for meta-charities: for eg I doubt 80k’s early career shifts looked anywhere near as high value as the average one does now. I should know—I *was* one of them, back when their ‘career consultation’ was ‘speculating in a pub about earning to give’ (and I was a far worse prospect than any 80k advisee or hotel resident today!)
Meanwhile it’s easy to scorn such projects as novel-writing, but have we forgotten this? For better or worse, if Eliezer hadn’t written that book the rationality and EA communities would look very different now.
6. This might be true as a psychological explanation, but, ceteris paribus, it’s actually a reason *to* donate, since it (by definition) makes the hotel a more neglected cause.