Seems like writing blog posts is another possibility. A good fraction of the most prominent EAs appear to have achieved their prominence through writing.
Aha! This made it click for me. I was confused by this whole issue where people can’t get jobs at prestigious EA orgs. Something felt backwards about it.
Let’s say you want to solve some problem in the world and you conclude that the most effective way for you to push on the problem is to take the open research position at organization X.
But you find out that there’s someone even better for that position than you who will take it. Splendid! Now your hands are free to take the only slightly less effective position at organization Y! It’s as if you got a clone for free—now we’re surely getting closer to the solution of the problem than you originally expected!
But again, you find out someone better suited will be taking the position instead of you. Marvelous! So many people are working on the problem; as someone who just wants the problem solved (right?), you couldn’t wish for anything better! Off to the next task on the to-do list—hopefully someone is already taking care of that one as well!
…But, weirdly enough, as people get rejected from position after position, they get more and more frustrated and sullen. How so?
I think it makes more sense to me if, instead of “how can I maximize the amount of progress made on the most important problem”, I model people as asking “how can I achieve prominence in the EA community?” Then, of course, if it’s someone else achieving prominence instead of you, you’re going to get frustrated instead of delighted.
Does this make sense to anyone else or have I read too much Robin Hanson?
I’m broadly sympathetic to this view, though I think another possibility is that people want to maximise personal impact, in a particular sense, and that this leads to optimising for felt personal impact more than actually optimising for amount of overall good produced.
For example, in the context of charitable donations, people seem to strongly prefer that their donation specifically goes to impact producing things rather than overhead that ‘merely’ supports impact producing things and that someone else’s donation goes to cover the overhead. (Gneezy et al, 2014) But, of course, in principle, these scenarios are exactly functionally equivalent.
In the direct work case, I imagine that this kind of intrinsic preference for specifically personal impact, a bias towards over-estimating the importance of impact which an individual themselves brings about and signalling/status considerations/extraneous motivations may all play a role.
I don’t think you read too much Robin Hanson, it clarifies a lot of things :)
In some sense, I don’t even think these people are wrong to be frustrated. You have to satisfy your own needs before you can effectively help others. One of these needs just happens to be the need to feel relevant. And like everything else, this is a systemic problem. EA should try to make people feel relevant if and only if they’re doing good. If doing good doesn’t get you recognition unless you’re in a prestigious organisation, then we have to fix that.
EA should try to make people feel relevant if and only if they’re doing good.
I would even say something like “iff they’re making an honest attempt at doing good”, because the kids are suffering from enough crippling anxiety as it is :)
Regarding applying to EA organizations, I think we can simply say that the applicants are doing good by applying. Many of the orgs have explicitly said they want lots of applicants—the applicants aren’t wasting the orgs’ time, but helping them get better candidates (in addition to learning a lot through the process, etc).
Good post.
Seems like writing blog posts is another possibility. A good fraction of the most prominent EAs appear to have achieved their prominence through writing.
Aha! This made it click for me. I was confused by this whole issue where people can’t get jobs at prestigious EA orgs. Something felt backwards about it.
Let’s say you want to solve some problem in the world and you conclude that the most effective way for you to push on the problem is to take the open research position at organization X.
But you find out that there’s someone even better for that position than you who will take it. Splendid! Now your hands are free to take the only slightly less effective position at organization Y! It’s as if you got a clone for free—now we’re surely getting closer to the solution of the problem than you originally expected!
But again, you find out someone better suited will be taking the position instead of you. Marvelous! So many people are working on the problem; as someone who just wants the problem solved (right?), you couldn’t wish for anything better! Off to the next task on the to-do list—hopefully someone is already taking care of that one as well!
…But, weirdly enough, as people get rejected from position after position, they get more and more frustrated and sullen. How so?
I think it makes more sense to me if, instead of “how can I maximize the amount of progress made on the most important problem”, I model people as asking “how can I achieve prominence in the EA community?” Then, of course, if it’s someone else achieving prominence instead of you, you’re going to get frustrated instead of delighted.
Does this make sense to anyone else or have I read too much Robin Hanson?
I’m broadly sympathetic to this view, though I think another possibility is that people want to maximise personal impact, in a particular sense, and that this leads to optimising for felt personal impact more than actually optimising for amount of overall good produced.
For example, in the context of charitable donations, people seem to strongly prefer that their donation specifically goes to impact producing things rather than overhead that ‘merely’ supports impact producing things and that someone else’s donation goes to cover the overhead. (Gneezy et al, 2014) But, of course, in principle, these scenarios are exactly functionally equivalent.
In the direct work case, I imagine that this kind of intrinsic preference for specifically personal impact, a bias towards over-estimating the importance of impact which an individual themselves brings about and signalling/status considerations/extraneous motivations may all play a role.
I don’t think you read too much Robin Hanson, it clarifies a lot of things :)
In some sense, I don’t even think these people are wrong to be frustrated. You have to satisfy your own needs before you can effectively help others. One of these needs just happens to be the need to feel relevant. And like everything else, this is a systemic problem. EA should try to make people feel relevant if and only if they’re doing good. If doing good doesn’t get you recognition unless you’re in a prestigious organisation, then we have to fix that.
Yes, makes sense.
I would even say something like “iff they’re making an honest attempt at doing good”, because the kids are suffering from enough crippling anxiety as it is :)
Regarding applying to EA organizations, I think we can simply say that the applicants are doing good by applying. Many of the orgs have explicitly said they want lots of applicants—the applicants aren’t wasting the orgs’ time, but helping them get better candidates (in addition to learning a lot through the process, etc).
Yup. See @sdspikes comment above.