I’m excited to see the EAIF share more about their reasoning and priorities. Thank you for doing this!
I’m going to give a few quick takes– happy to chat further about any of these. TLDR: I recommend (1) getting rid of the “principles-first” phrase & (2) issuing more calls for proposals focused on the specific projects you want to see (regardless of whether or not they fit neatly into an umbrella term like “principles-first”).
After skimming the post for 5 minutes, I couldn’t find a clear/succinct definition of what “principles-first” actually means. I think it means something like “focus more on epistemics and core reasoning” and “focus less on specific cause areas”. But then some of the examples of the projects that Caleb is excited about are basically just like “get people together to think about a specific cause area– but not one of the mainstream ones, like one of the more neglected ones.”
I find the “principles-first” frame a bit icky at first glance. Something about it feels… idk… just weird and preachy or something. Ok, what’s actually going on there?
Maybe part of it is that it seems to imply that people who end up focusing on specific cause areas are not “principles-first” people, or like in the extreme case they’re not “good EAs”. And then it paints a picture for me where a “good EA” is one who spends a bunch of time doing “deep reasoning”, instead of doing cause-area-specific work. Logically, it’s pretty clear to me that this isn’t what the posters are trying to say, but I feel like that’s part of where the system 1 “ick” feeling is coming from.
I worry that the term “principles-first EA” might lead to a bunch of weird status things and a bunch of unhelpful debates. For me, the frame naturally invokes questions like “what principles?” and “who gets to decide what those principles are?” and all sorts of “what does it truly mean to be an EA?” kinds of questions. Maybe the posters think that, on the margin, more people should be asking these questions. But I think that should be argued for separately– if EAIF adopts this phrase as their guiding phrase, I suspect a lot of people will end up thinking “I need to understand what EAIF thinks the principles of EA are and then do those things”.
Personally, I don’t think the EAIF needs to have some sort of “overarching term” that summarizes what it is prioritizing. I think it’s quite common for grantmaking organizations to just say “hey, here’s a call for proposals with some examples of things we’re excited about.”
Personally, I’m very excited about the projects that Caleb listed in the appendix. Some of these don’t really seem to me to fall neatly under the “principles-first” label (a bunch of them just seem like “let’s do deconfusion work or make progress in specific areas that are important and highly neglected.”
Historically, my impression is that EAIF hasn’t really done many calls for proposals relating to specific topics. It has been more like “hey anyone with any sort of meta idea can apply.” I’m getting the sense from this post that Caleb wants EAIF to have a clearer focus. Personally, I would encourage EAIF to do more “calls for proposals” focused on specific projects that they want to see happen in the world. As an example, EAIF could say something like “we are interested in seeing proposals about acausal trade and ethics of digital minds. Here are some examples of things you could do.”
I think there are a lot of “generally smart and agentic people” around who don’t really know what to do, and some guidance from grantmakers along the lines of “here are some projects that we want to see people apply to” could considerably lower the amount of agency/activation energy/confidence/inside-viewness that such people need.
On the flip side, we’d want to avoid a world in which people basically just blindly defer to grantmakers. I don’t suspect calls for proposals to contribute to that too much, and I also suspect there’s a longer conversation that could be had about how to avoid these negative cultural externalities.
I’m excited to see the EAIF share more about their reasoning and priorities. Thank you for doing this!
I’m going to give a few quick takes– happy to chat further about any of these. TLDR: I recommend (1) getting rid of the “principles-first” phrase & (2) issuing more calls for proposals focused on the specific projects you want to see (regardless of whether or not they fit neatly into an umbrella term like “principles-first”).
After skimming the post for 5 minutes, I couldn’t find a clear/succinct definition of what “principles-first” actually means. I think it means something like “focus more on epistemics and core reasoning” and “focus less on specific cause areas”. But then some of the examples of the projects that Caleb is excited about are basically just like “get people together to think about a specific cause area– but not one of the mainstream ones, like one of the more neglected ones.”
I find the “principles-first” frame a bit icky at first glance. Something about it feels… idk… just weird and preachy or something. Ok, what’s actually going on there?
Maybe part of it is that it seems to imply that people who end up focusing on specific cause areas are not “principles-first” people, or like in the extreme case they’re not “good EAs”. And then it paints a picture for me where a “good EA” is one who spends a bunch of time doing “deep reasoning”, instead of doing cause-area-specific work. Logically, it’s pretty clear to me that this isn’t what the posters are trying to say, but I feel like that’s part of where the system 1 “ick” feeling is coming from.
I worry that the term “principles-first EA” might lead to a bunch of weird status things and a bunch of unhelpful debates. For me, the frame naturally invokes questions like “what principles?” and “who gets to decide what those principles are?” and all sorts of “what does it truly mean to be an EA?” kinds of questions. Maybe the posters think that, on the margin, more people should be asking these questions. But I think that should be argued for separately– if EAIF adopts this phrase as their guiding phrase, I suspect a lot of people will end up thinking “I need to understand what EAIF thinks the principles of EA are and then do those things”.
Personally, I don’t think the EAIF needs to have some sort of “overarching term” that summarizes what it is prioritizing. I think it’s quite common for grantmaking organizations to just say “hey, here’s a call for proposals with some examples of things we’re excited about.”
Personally, I’m very excited about the projects that Caleb listed in the appendix. Some of these don’t really seem to me to fall neatly under the “principles-first” label (a bunch of them just seem like “let’s do deconfusion work or make progress in specific areas that are important and highly neglected.”
Historically, my impression is that EAIF hasn’t really done many calls for proposals relating to specific topics. It has been more like “hey anyone with any sort of meta idea can apply.” I’m getting the sense from this post that Caleb wants EAIF to have a clearer focus. Personally, I would encourage EAIF to do more “calls for proposals” focused on specific projects that they want to see happen in the world. As an example, EAIF could say something like “we are interested in seeing proposals about acausal trade and ethics of digital minds. Here are some examples of things you could do.”
I think there are a lot of “generally smart and agentic people” around who don’t really know what to do, and some guidance from grantmakers along the lines of “here are some projects that we want to see people apply to” could considerably lower the amount of agency/activation energy/confidence/inside-viewness that such people need.
On the flip side, we’d want to avoid a world in which people basically just blindly defer to grantmakers. I don’t suspect calls for proposals to contribute to that too much, and I also suspect there’s a longer conversation that could be had about how to avoid these negative cultural externalities.
Just noting that this is EAIF, not LTFF.
(Oops, fixed!)