Reading this post is very uncomfortable in an uncanny valley sort of way. A lot of things said is true and needs to be said, but the all over feeling of the post is off.
I think most of the problem comes from blurring the line between how EA functions in practice for people who are close to money and the rest of us.
Like, sure EA is a do-ocracy, and I can do what ever I want, and no-one is sopping me. But also, every local community organiser I talk to talks about how CEA is controlling and that their funding comes with lots of strings attached. Which I guess is ok, since it’s their money. No one is stopping anyone from getting their own funding, and doing their own thing.
Except for the fact that 80k (and other though leaders? I’m not sure who works where), have told the community for years, that funding is solved and no one else should worry about giving to EA, which has stifled all alternative funding in the community.
Talking from my time in EA NTNU, my experience was indeed the complete opposite. Funding and follow up from CEA was excellent, kind and thoughtful. There were virtually zero strings attached and at no point did I feel like they were controlling.
The feelings of other organisers might differ of course, but I’ve not heard about this from anyone personally, and I did talk to quite a lot of student group leaders around 2017-2019.
I wasn’t sure about the ‘do-ocracy’ thing either. Of course, it’s true that no one’s stopping you from starting whatever project you want—I mean, EA concerns the activities of private citizens. But, unless you have ‘buy-in’ from one of the listed ‘senior EAs’, it is very hard to get traction or funding for your project (I speak from experience). In that sense, EA feels quite like a big, conventional organisation.
But, unless you have ‘buy-in’ from one of the listed ‘senior EAs’, it is very hard to get traction or funding for your project
I think there is a steelman of your argument which seems more plausible to me, but taken at face value this statement just seems clearly false?
E.g. there are >650 group organizers – how many of them do you think have met the people on that “senior EA’s” list even once? I haven’t even met everyone on the list, despite being on it!
When I think of highly centralized “conventional organizations” I think of Marissa Mayer at Google personally choosing the fonts of new projects and forcing everyone to queue outside her office because even executives weren’t allowed to make decisions without her in-person approval. This seems extremely far from how EA works?
Yeah, I guess I mean genuinely new projects, rather than new tokens of the same type of project (eg group organisers are running the same thing in different places).
As MacAskill points out, it’s pretty hard to run $1m+/yr project (or even less, tbh) without Open Philanthropy supporting it.
But, no, I’m not thinking about centralisation in terms of micro management, so I don’t follow your comment. You can have centralised power without micromanagent.
What does it mean to have centralized power without micromanagement? Like I could theoretically force a group organizer to use a different font, I just choose not to?
To take one of the top examples in the post’s centralization continuum, presumably the US military counts as having a highly centralized power structure despite the President and Secretary of Defense not micromanaging. People lower on the food chain exercise power delegated and re-delegated from those two, but they are the ultimate fount of power.
They have the right to control—and responsibility to supervise—the powers they have delegated downward. With some uncommon arguable exceptions like military judges, one in the military has or exercises power independently of POTUS and SECDEF. And people know that if they use their delegated power in ways that would anger those higher up, they won’t have that power for too much longer.
That’s how power ordinarily works in larger centralized contexts; big-company CEOs
refusing to delegate font-approval authority is very much the exception.
Thanks! Just to double check: this is agreeing with my example, right? Like you are pointing out that the US military is centralized because POTUS could theoretically tell a random private what to eat for lunch (but chooses not to), similar to how I could theoretically[1] force a group organizer to use a different font (I just choose not to)?
If so: I would be surprised if the average private says things like “I’m eating potatoes for lunch because it’s impossible to do projects without buy-in from POTUS”? I agree there some technical sense in which that’s true, but a new recruit who oriented to their work by thinking they can only do stuff by convincing POTUS would probably struggle to navigate the military, similar to how I claim that an EA who believes they can only do stuff by convincing “senior EAs” is going to struggle to navigate EA (even under the assumption that EA is as centralized as the military).
Whether you could get someone nominally ‘under’ you to do an arbitrary thing is not a good proxy for power.
CEA is a regular hierarchical company, but it would still go very poorly if you decided to, on a power trip, tell one of your employees what to eat for lunch. This mostly doesn’t matter, though, because that is a goal you are very unlikely to have.
As a co-organizer of the Boston Meetup, if you sent me an email demanding that we serve potatoes at the next gathering, I would be very confused. But you could get CEA’s groups team to come up with guidance on meetup food, heavily influence that process, and I could then receive an email advocating serving potatoes from people I trusted and who I was pretty sure had thought about it a lot more than I had. Which would have a decent chance of resulting in potatoes at the next meetup.
Power is always, in a technical sense, indirect: no one is pulling levers inside other people’s heads to get them to do things. There is always some amount of inspiration, persuasion, threat, or other intermediary. Sometimes this is formalized, sometimes “soft”, but that mostly only matters for legibility. Maybe a better measurement for power is something like, if there’s something important about the way things are currently done that you want to change, how likely and how much are you able to cause that change?
By that measure, OP has a tremendous amount of power: through a combination of employing highly respected people and having control over the funding of most EA work they can make large and deep changes to how the EA movement grows and what work is carried out under its banner.
Thanks! This feels like a reasonable definition, but seems different from what Michael was talking about? He said:
unless you have ‘buy-in’ from one of the listed ‘senior EAs’, it is very hard to get traction or funding for your project (I speak from experience). In that sense, EA feels quite like a big, conventional organisation.
If CEA tried to push some dietary standard I’m pretty sure there would be a ton of complaints and blowback. But even if we somehow kept going through all of that, I’m pretty sure you would still be able to run a potato-less meet up, which doesn’t feel consistent with the “need buy-in” claim.
(Whereas in “big, conventional organizations” if the CEO says “the cafeteria is going to serve potatoes” then the chefs don’t have much of a choice.)
Reading this post is very uncomfortable in an uncanny valley sort of way. A lot of things said is true and needs to be said, but the all over feeling of the post is off.
I think most of the problem comes from blurring the line between how EA functions in practice for people who are close to money and the rest of us.
Like, sure EA is a do-ocracy, and I can do what ever I want, and no-one is sopping me. But also, every local community organiser I talk to talks about how CEA is controlling and that their funding comes with lots of strings attached. Which I guess is ok, since it’s their money. No one is stopping anyone from getting their own funding, and doing their own thing.
Except for the fact that 80k (and other though leaders? I’m not sure who works where), have told the community for years, that funding is solved and no one else should worry about giving to EA, which has stifled all alternative funding in the community.
(Just wanted to add a counter datapoint: I have been a local community organizer for several years and this has not been my experience.)
Talking from my time in EA NTNU, my experience was indeed the complete opposite. Funding and follow up from CEA was excellent, kind and thoughtful. There were virtually zero strings attached and at no point did I feel like they were controlling.
The feelings of other organisers might differ of course, but I’ve not heard about this from anyone personally, and I did talk to quite a lot of student group leaders around 2017-2019.
Again, this is just my experience.
I wasn’t sure about the ‘do-ocracy’ thing either. Of course, it’s true that no one’s stopping you from starting whatever project you want—I mean, EA concerns the activities of private citizens. But, unless you have ‘buy-in’ from one of the listed ‘senior EAs’, it is very hard to get traction or funding for your project (I speak from experience). In that sense, EA feels quite like a big, conventional organisation.
I think there is a steelman of your argument which seems more plausible to me, but taken at face value this statement just seems clearly false?
E.g. there are >650 group organizers – how many of them do you think have met the people on that “senior EA’s” list even once? I haven’t even met everyone on the list, despite being on it!
When I think of highly centralized “conventional organizations” I think of Marissa Mayer at Google personally choosing the fonts of new projects and forcing everyone to queue outside her office because even executives weren’t allowed to make decisions without her in-person approval. This seems extremely far from how EA works?
Yeah, I guess I mean genuinely new projects, rather than new tokens of the same type of project (eg group organisers are running the same thing in different places).
As MacAskill points out, it’s pretty hard to run $1m+/yr project (or even less, tbh) without Open Philanthropy supporting it.
But, no, I’m not thinking about centralisation in terms of micro management, so I don’t follow your comment. You can have centralised power without micromanagent.
What does it mean to have centralized power without micromanagement? Like I could theoretically force a group organizer to use a different font, I just choose not to?
To take one of the top examples in the post’s centralization continuum, presumably the US military counts as having a highly centralized power structure despite the President and Secretary of Defense not micromanaging. People lower on the food chain exercise power delegated and re-delegated from those two, but they are the ultimate fount of power.
They have the right to control—and responsibility to supervise—the powers they have delegated downward. With some uncommon arguable exceptions like military judges, one in the military has or exercises power independently of POTUS and SECDEF. And people know that if they use their delegated power in ways that would anger those higher up, they won’t have that power for too much longer.
That’s how power ordinarily works in larger centralized contexts; big-company CEOs refusing to delegate font-approval authority is very much the exception.
Thanks! Just to double check: this is agreeing with my example, right? Like you are pointing out that the US military is centralized because POTUS could theoretically tell a random private what to eat for lunch (but chooses not to), similar to how I could theoretically[1] force a group organizer to use a different font (I just choose not to)?
If so: I would be surprised if the average private says things like “I’m eating potatoes for lunch because it’s impossible to do projects without buy-in from POTUS”? I agree there some technical sense in which that’s true, but a new recruit who oriented to their work by thinking they can only do stuff by convincing POTUS would probably struggle to navigate the military, similar to how I claim that an EA who believes they can only do stuff by convincing “senior EAs” is going to struggle to navigate EA (even under the assumption that EA is as centralized as the military).
I actually don’t think I could do this
Whether you could get someone nominally ‘under’ you to do an arbitrary thing is not a good proxy for power.
CEA is a regular hierarchical company, but it would still go very poorly if you decided to, on a power trip, tell one of your employees what to eat for lunch. This mostly doesn’t matter, though, because that is a goal you are very unlikely to have.
As a co-organizer of the Boston Meetup, if you sent me an email demanding that we serve potatoes at the next gathering, I would be very confused. But you could get CEA’s groups team to come up with guidance on meetup food, heavily influence that process, and I could then receive an email advocating serving potatoes from people I trusted and who I was pretty sure had thought about it a lot more than I had. Which would have a decent chance of resulting in potatoes at the next meetup.
Power is always, in a technical sense, indirect: no one is pulling levers inside other people’s heads to get them to do things. There is always some amount of inspiration, persuasion, threat, or other intermediary. Sometimes this is formalized, sometimes “soft”, but that mostly only matters for legibility. Maybe a better measurement for power is something like, if there’s something important about the way things are currently done that you want to change, how likely and how much are you able to cause that change?
By that measure, OP has a tremendous amount of power: through a combination of employing highly respected people and having control over the funding of most EA work they can make large and deep changes to how the EA movement grows and what work is carried out under its banner.
Thanks! This feels like a reasonable definition, but seems different from what Michael was talking about? He said:
If CEA tried to push some dietary standard I’m pretty sure there would be a ton of complaints and blowback. But even if we somehow kept going through all of that, I’m pretty sure you would still be able to run a potato-less meet up, which doesn’t feel consistent with the “need buy-in” claim.
(Whereas in “big, conventional organizations” if the CEO says “the cafeteria is going to serve potatoes” then the chefs don’t have much of a choice.)