Some background thoughts on why I think the middle of the EA talent funnel should focus on thinking:
I currently believe the longterm value of EA is not in scaling up donations to well vetted charities. This is because vetting charities is sort of anti-inductive. If things are going well (and I think this is quite achievable – it only really takes a couple billionaires to care) charities should get vetted and then quickly afterwards get enough funding. This means the only leftover charities will not be well vetted.
So the longterm Earn-to-Give options are:
Actually becoming pretty good at vetting organizations and people
Joining donor lotteries (where you still might have to get good at thinking if you win)
Donating to GiveDirectly (which is maybe actually fine but less exciting)
The world isn’t okay because the problems it faces are actually hard. You need to understand how infrastructure plugs together. You need to understand incentives and unintended consequences. In some cases you need to actually solve unsolved philosophical problems. You need object level domain expertise in whatever field you’re trying to help with.
I think all of these require a general thinking skill that is hard to come by and really needs practice.
(Writing this is making me realize that maybe part of what I wanted with this thread was just an opportunity to sketch out ideas without having to fully justify every claim)
Some background thoughts on why I think the middle of the EA talent funnel should focus on thinking:
I currently believe the longterm value of EA is not in scaling up donations to well vetted charities. This is because vetting charities is sort of anti-inductive. If things are going well (and I think this is quite achievable – it only really takes a couple billionaires to care) charities should get vetted and then quickly afterwards get enough funding. This means the only leftover charities will not be well vetted.
So the longterm Earn-to-Give options are:
Actually becoming pretty good at vetting organizations and people
Joining donor lotteries (where you still might have to get good at thinking if you win)
Donating to GiveDirectly (which is maybe actually fine but less exciting)
The world isn’t okay because the problems it faces are actually hard. You need to understand how infrastructure plugs together. You need to understand incentives and unintended consequences. In some cases you need to actually solve unsolved philosophical problems. You need object level domain expertise in whatever field you’re trying to help with.
I think all of these require a general thinking skill that is hard to come by and really needs practice.
(Writing this is making me realize that maybe part of what I wanted with this thread was just an opportunity to sketch out ideas without having to fully justify every claim)