Yeah, given the GDP-per-capita graph shared by William the Kiwi, and Estonia being the home of one of EA’s most generous donors, I suspect that availability of philanthropic funds may be the bottleneck for local EA growth.
It wouldn’t surprise me if low-GDP countries have many stories like this one or this one, of motivated people struggling to obtain funding due to lack of connections with philanthropists. If true, that would be an unfortunate situation—lower GDP per capita often goes with a lower cost of living, meaning you get more bang for your philanthropic buck, all else equal.
Maybe we need a new sort of “digital nomad EtG/grantmaker EA” who travels around, networking with EAs in the developing world to identify great giving opportunities. This could go well with a cause area like AI alignment which can be done anywhere and could benefit from fresh thinking:
Alignment researchers’ general models of the field are well-calibrated, but the fact that they don’t think the field is on track to solve alignment suggests that additional approaches should be pursued beyond what is currently being undertaken—a view which was also echoed continuously throughout alignment researchers’ free responses. We think this results lends additional credence to pursuing neglected approaches to alignment.
My impression is that Jaan Tallinn’s interest in rationalit- and EA-related projects, going back a long time, was one factor in Estonia.
Yeah, given the GDP-per-capita graph shared by William the Kiwi, and Estonia being the home of one of EA’s most generous donors, I suspect that availability of philanthropic funds may be the bottleneck for local EA growth.
It wouldn’t surprise me if low-GDP countries have many stories like this one or this one, of motivated people struggling to obtain funding due to lack of connections with philanthropists. If true, that would be an unfortunate situation—lower GDP per capita often goes with a lower cost of living, meaning you get more bang for your philanthropic buck, all else equal.
Maybe we need a new sort of “digital nomad EtG/grantmaker EA” who travels around, networking with EAs in the developing world to identify great giving opportunities. This could go well with a cause area like AI alignment which can be done anywhere and could benefit from fresh thinking:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/eToqPAyB4GxDBrrrf/key-takeaways-from-our-ea-and-alignment-research-surveys
As far as I know, Jaan Tallinn has not contributed significant amounts of money towards EA community building in Estonia directly.