The post doesn’t make an argument for large EA organizations, it makes an argument that EAs[1] are just broadly more impactful than they appear.
The fact that EAs might be 50x more impactful, does not imply that we should “add more people than is standard” to an EA organization, because exactly the logic applies if those people joined a smaller organization, created a new one, or started a personal project.
Another way of saying this: Ben West is saying that EAs are worth (50x) more than they appear at CEA. But they are worth 50x to any EA org.
(I don’t think this is true but 🏈Something something motivated reasoning[2]🏈.)
This argument probably requires EA to be especially focused on internalizing externalities, otherwise it applies to for-profit orgs, e.g. making Reddit larger too.
This key condition is missing in the OP, but I think EAs do internalize externalities much much more, so it works.
My guess is that a reply to my comment above would be:
“Ok, fine, but this rationalizes more effective, better managed, and larger teams for higher impact, since we’re earlier on the “curve of returns to labor” than it appears and can accept more labor and capital.
Furthermore, I can, and have been, provisioning this management and setting these conditions, so the argument applies and strong EAs should join my awesome team.
Also, hasn’t it been a few months since your last forum ban?”
This is true. One reply to this reply, is that this implies EA organizations should be systemically larger than other organizations (due to the OP’s reasoning of internalizing externalities and other conditions, see footnote 1 in above comment).
This is interesting, but doesn’t immediately doesn’t match our intuition or the general size of EA orgs, which are small (but maybe this is masked by the limited supply of high quality EA talent).
If Ben West’s logic in the OP holds, this might have other implications that are important or interesting (again this is relying on EAs differentially supporting externalities).
No one has said it, but the main critique is:
The post doesn’t make an argument for large EA organizations, it makes an argument that EAs[1] are just broadly more impactful than they appear.
The fact that EAs might be 50x more impactful, does not imply that we should “add more people than is standard” to an EA organization, because exactly the logic applies if those people joined a smaller organization, created a new one, or started a personal project.
Another way of saying this: Ben West is saying that EAs are worth (50x) more than they appear at CEA. But they are worth 50x to any EA org.
(I don’t think this is true but 🏈Something something motivated reasoning[2]🏈.)
This argument probably requires EA to be especially focused on internalizing externalities, otherwise it applies to for-profit orgs, e.g. making Reddit larger too.
This key condition is missing in the OP, but I think EAs do internalize externalities much much more, so it works.
My guess is that a reply to my comment above would be:
“Ok, fine, but this rationalizes more effective, better managed, and larger teams for higher impact, since we’re earlier on the “curve of returns to labor” than it appears and can accept more labor and capital.
Furthermore, I can, and have been, provisioning this management and setting these conditions, so the argument applies and strong EAs should join my awesome team.
Also, hasn’t it been a few months since your last forum ban?”
This is true. One reply to this reply, is that this implies EA organizations should be systemically larger than other organizations (due to the OP’s reasoning of internalizing externalities and other conditions, see footnote 1 in above comment).
This is interesting, but doesn’t immediately doesn’t match our intuition or the general size of EA orgs, which are small (but maybe this is masked by the limited supply of high quality EA talent).
If Ben West’s logic in the OP holds, this might have other implications that are important or interesting (again this is relying on EAs differentially supporting externalities).