I’m happy that people are pushing back on some of these grants, and even happier that Habryka is responding to graciously. However, I’m concerned that some comments are bordering on unhelpfully personal.
I’d suggest that, when criticising a particular project, commentors should try to explain the rule or policy that would help grant-makers avoid the same problem in the future. That should also help us avoid making things personal.
Examples I stole from other comments and reworded:
-”I’m skeptical of the grant to X because I think grantmakers should recuse themselves from granting to their friends.” (I saw this criticism but don’t actually know who it’s referring to.)
-”I don’t think any EA Funds should be given to printing books that haven’t been professionally edited.”
-”I think that people like Lauren should have funds available after they burn out, but I don’t think the Long-Term Future Fund is the right source of post-burnout funds.”
I agree with this, but also think that people should feel free to express any system-1 level reactions they have to these grants. In my experience it can often be quite hard to formalize a critique into a concrete, operationalized set of policy changes, even if the critique itself is good and valid, and I don’t think I want to force all commenters to fully formalize their beliefs before they can express them here.
I do think the end goal of the conversation should be a set of policies that the LTF-Fund can implement.
I think it’s good on the margin for people to be able to express opinions without needing to formalize them into recommendations for the reason stated here. I think the overall conversation happening here is very important.
I do still feel pretty sad looking at the comments here — some of the commenters seem to not have a model of what they’re incentivizing.
They remind me of the stereotype of a parent who’s kid has moved away and grown up, and doesn’t call very often. And periodically the kid does call, but the first thing they hear is the parent complaining “why don’t you ever call me?”, which makes the kid less likely to call home.
These are actual hard problems, that we’re slowly addressing by building network infrastructure. The current system is not optimal or fair, but progress won’t go faster by complaining about it.
It can potentially go faster via improvements in strategy, and re-allocating resources. But each of those improvements will come in a tradeoff. You could hire more grantmakers full-time, but those grantmakers are generally working full-time on something else comparably important.
This writeup is unusually thorough, and Habryka has been unusually willing to engage with comments and complaints. But I think Habryka has higher-than-average willingness to deal with that.
When I imagine future people considering
a) whether to be a grantmaker,
b) whether to write up their reasons publicly
c) whether to engage with comments on those reasons
I predict that some of the comments on this thread to make all of those less likely (in escalating order). It also potentially makes grantees less likely to consent to public discussion of their evaluation, since it might get ridiculed in the comments.
Because EA is vetting constrained, I think public discussion of grant-reasoning is particularly important. It’s one of the mechanisms that’ll give people a sense of what projects will get funded and what goes into a grantmaking process, and get a lot of what’s currently ‘insider knowledge’ more publicly accessible.
As a potential grant recipient (not in this round) I might be biased, but I feel like there is a clear answer to this. No one is able to level up without criticism, and the quality of your decisions will often be bottlenecked by the amount of feedback you receive.
Negative feedback isn’t inherently painful. This is only true if there is an alief that failure is not acceptable. Of course the truth is that failure is necessary for progress, and if you truly understand this, negative feedback feels good. Even if it’s in bad faith.
Given that grantmakers are essentially at the steering wheel of EA, we can’t afford for those people to not internalize this. They need to know all the criticism to make a good decision, they should cherish it.
Of course we can help them get this state of mind by celebrating their willingness to open up to scrutiny, along with the scrutiny
I think on a post with 100+ comments the quality of decisions is more likely to be bottlenecked by the quality of feedback than the quantity. Being able to explain why you think something is a bad idea usually results in higher quality feedback, which I think will result in better decisions than just getting a lot of quick intuition-based feedback.
I’m happy that people are pushing back on some of these grants, and even happier that Habryka is responding to graciously. However, I’m concerned that some comments are bordering on unhelpfully personal.
I’d suggest that, when criticising a particular project, commentors should try to explain the rule or policy that would help grant-makers avoid the same problem in the future. That should also help us avoid making things personal.
Examples I stole from other comments and reworded:
-”I’m skeptical of the grant to X because I think grantmakers should recuse themselves from granting to their friends.” (I saw this criticism but don’t actually know who it’s referring to.)
-”I don’t think any EA Funds should be given to printing books that haven’t been professionally edited.”
-”I think that people like Lauren should have funds available after they burn out, but I don’t think the Long-Term Future Fund is the right source of post-burnout funds.”
I agree with this, but also think that people should feel free to express any system-1 level reactions they have to these grants. In my experience it can often be quite hard to formalize a critique into a concrete, operationalized set of policy changes, even if the critique itself is good and valid, and I don’t think I want to force all commenters to fully formalize their beliefs before they can express them here.
I do think the end goal of the conversation should be a set of policies that the LTF-Fund can implement.
I have a weird mix of feelings and guesses here.
I think it’s good on the margin for people to be able to express opinions without needing to formalize them into recommendations for the reason stated here. I think the overall conversation happening here is very important.
I do still feel pretty sad looking at the comments here — some of the commenters seem to not have a model of what they’re incentivizing.
They remind me of the stereotype of a parent who’s kid has moved away and grown up, and doesn’t call very often. And periodically the kid does call, but the first thing they hear is the parent complaining “why don’t you ever call me?”, which makes the kid less likely to call home.
EA is vetting constrained.
EA is network constrained.
These are actual hard problems, that we’re slowly addressing by building network infrastructure. The current system is not optimal or fair, but progress won’t go faster by complaining about it.
It can potentially go faster via improvements in strategy, and re-allocating resources. But each of those improvements will come in a tradeoff. You could hire more grantmakers full-time, but those grantmakers are generally working full-time on something else comparably important.
This writeup is unusually thorough, and Habryka has been unusually willing to engage with comments and complaints. But I think Habryka has higher-than-average willingness to deal with that.
When I imagine future people considering
a) whether to be a grantmaker,
b) whether to write up their reasons publicly
c) whether to engage with comments on those reasons
I predict that some of the comments on this thread to make all of those less likely (in escalating order). It also potentially makes grantees less likely to consent to public discussion of their evaluation, since it might get ridiculed in the comments.
Because EA is vetting constrained, I think public discussion of grant-reasoning is particularly important. It’s one of the mechanisms that’ll give people a sense of what projects will get funded and what goes into a grantmaking process, and get a lot of what’s currently ‘insider knowledge’ more publicly accessible.
As a potential grant recipient (not in this round) I might be biased, but I feel like there is a clear answer to this. No one is able to level up without criticism, and the quality of your decisions will often be bottlenecked by the amount of feedback you receive.
Negative feedback isn’t inherently painful. This is only true if there is an alief that failure is not acceptable. Of course the truth is that failure is necessary for progress, and if you truly understand this, negative feedback feels good. Even if it’s in bad faith.
Given that grantmakers are essentially at the steering wheel of EA, we can’t afford for those people to not internalize this. They need to know all the criticism to make a good decision, they should cherish it.
Of course we can help them get this state of mind by celebrating their willingness to open up to scrutiny, along with the scrutiny
I think on a post with 100+ comments the quality of decisions is more likely to be bottlenecked by the quality of feedback than the quantity. Being able to explain why you think something is a bad idea usually results in higher quality feedback, which I think will result in better decisions than just getting a lot of quick intuition-based feedback.