Thanks! I agree that we are already (kind of) doing most of these things. So the question is whether further centralisation is tractable (and desirable). Like I say, it seems to me the big thing is if there’s someone, or some group of people, who really wants to make that further centralisation to happen. (E.g. I don’t think I’d be the right person even if I wanted to do it.)
Some things I didn’t understand from your bullet-point list:
Having most of the resources come from one place
By “resources” do you primarily mean funding? (I’ll assume yes.)
Declaring that a certain type of resource is the “official” resource which we “recommend”
Here, by “resource” do you here mean information (books, etc)? (I’ll assume yes.)
Stop publishing critical info publicly, relying on whisper networks to get the word out about things
This doesn’t clearly map onto “centralised” vs “decentralised” to me?
Of your list, the first two bullet-points seem non-desirable to me in a totally ideal world. But of course having lots of funding from OP is much, much better than not having the funding at all!
The second two bullet points seem good to have, even if EA were more decentralised than it is now.
Yeah, sorry, I wrote the comment quickly and “resources” was overloaded. My first reference to resources was intended to be money; the second was information like career guides and such.
I think the critical-info-in-private thing is actually super impactful towards centralization, because when the info leaks, the “decentralized people” have a high-salience moment where they realize that what’s happening privately isn’t what they thought was happening publicly, they feel slightly lied-to or betrayed, lose perceived empowerment and engagement.
Thanks! I agree that we are already (kind of) doing most of these things. So the question is whether further centralisation is tractable (and desirable). Like I say, it seems to me the big thing is if there’s someone, or some group of people, who really wants to make that further centralisation to happen. (E.g. I don’t think I’d be the right person even if I wanted to do it.)
Some things I didn’t understand from your bullet-point list:
By “resources” do you primarily mean funding? (I’ll assume yes.)
Here, by “resource” do you here mean information (books, etc)? (I’ll assume yes.)
This doesn’t clearly map onto “centralised” vs “decentralised” to me?
Of your list, the first two bullet-points seem non-desirable to me in a totally ideal world. But of course having lots of funding from OP is much, much better than not having the funding at all!
The second two bullet points seem good to have, even if EA were more decentralised than it is now.
Yeah, sorry, I wrote the comment quickly and “resources” was overloaded. My first reference to resources was intended to be money; the second was information like career guides and such.
I think the critical-info-in-private thing is actually super impactful towards centralization, because when the info leaks, the “decentralized people” have a high-salience moment where they realize that what’s happening privately isn’t what they thought was happening publicly, they feel slightly lied-to or betrayed, lose perceived empowerment and engagement.