I discovered EA well after my university years, which maybe gives me a different perspective. It sounds to me like both you and your group member share a fundamental misconception of what EA is, what questions are the central ones EA seeks to answer. You seem to be viewing it as a set of organizations from which to get funding/jobs. And like, there is a more or less associated set of organizations which provide a small number of people with funding and jobs, but that’s not central to EA, and if that is your motivation for being part of EA, then you’ve missed what EA is fundamentally about. Most EAs will never receive a check from an EA org, and if your interest in EA is based on the expectation that you will, then you are not the kind of person we should want in EA. EA is, at its core, a set of ideas about how we should deploy whatever resources (our time and our money) that we choose to devote to benefiting strangers. Some of those are object level ideas (we can have the greatest impact on people far away in time and/or space), some are more meta level (the ITN framework), but they are about how we give, not how we get. If you think that you can have more impact in the near term than the long term, we can debate that within EA, but ultimately as long as you are genuinely trying to answer that question and base your giving decisions on it, you are doing EA. You can allocate your giving to near term causes and that is fine. But if you expect EAs who disagree with you to spread their giving in some even way, rather than allocating their giving to the causes they think are most effective, then you are expecting those EAs to do something other than EA. EA isn’t about spreading giving in any particular way across cause areas, it is about identifying the most effective cause areas and interventions and allocating giving there. The only reason we have more than one cause area is because we don’t all agree on which ones are most effective.
Talented people getting jobs or funding is a major theory of impact for EA meta orgs, and that objective can be seen in their activities. I don’t think it is problematic that people seem to be viewing career-related stuff as a major part of the EA meta. Indeed, I would submit that we want people to know that EA has career opportunities. For instance, if someone is interested in AI safety, we want them to know that they could find a position or funding to work in that area. Deciding to engage involves opportunity costs, so it’s reasonable for people to consider whether community involvement would help them achieve their altruistic goals.
Given that, we also need to take reasonable steps so that “[p]eople passionate about education policy, conservation, or other lower-prioritised areas” know fairly early that certain important forms of engagement are not realistically open to people working in these areas. And the post describes more than the absence of funding or jobs—if people feel that they won’t get value out of going to conferences because too much of the content is geared toward a few cause areas, they should be made aware of that in advance as well.
For instance, if someone is interested in AI safety, we want them to know that they could find a position or funding to work in that area.
But that isn’t true, never has been, and never will be. Most people who are interested in AI safety will never find paid work in the field, and we should not lead them to expect otherwise. There was a brief moment when FTX funding made it seem like everyone could get funding for anything, but that moment is gone, and it’s never coming back. The economics of this are pretty similar to a church—yes there are a few paid positions, but not many, and most members will never hold one. When there is a member who seems particularly well suited to the paid work, yes, it makes sense to suggest it to them. But we need to be realistic with newcomers that they will probably never get a check from EA, and the ones who leave because of that weren’t really EAs to begin with. The point of a local EA org, whether university based or not, isn’t to funnel people into careers at EA orgs, it’s to teach them ideas that they can apply in their lives outside of EA orgs. Lets not loose sight of that.
I discovered EA well after my university years, which maybe gives me a different perspective. It sounds to me like both you and your group member share a fundamental misconception of what EA is, what questions are the central ones EA seeks to answer. You seem to be viewing it as a set of organizations from which to get funding/jobs. And like, there is a more or less associated set of organizations which provide a small number of people with funding and jobs, but that’s not central to EA, and if that is your motivation for being part of EA, then you’ve missed what EA is fundamentally about. Most EAs will never receive a check from an EA org, and if your interest in EA is based on the expectation that you will, then you are not the kind of person we should want in EA. EA is, at its core, a set of ideas about how we should deploy whatever resources (our time and our money) that we choose to devote to benefiting strangers. Some of those are object level ideas (we can have the greatest impact on people far away in time and/or space), some are more meta level (the ITN framework), but they are about how we give, not how we get. If you think that you can have more impact in the near term than the long term, we can debate that within EA, but ultimately as long as you are genuinely trying to answer that question and base your giving decisions on it, you are doing EA. You can allocate your giving to near term causes and that is fine. But if you expect EAs who disagree with you to spread their giving in some even way, rather than allocating their giving to the causes they think are most effective, then you are expecting those EAs to do something other than EA. EA isn’t about spreading giving in any particular way across cause areas, it is about identifying the most effective cause areas and interventions and allocating giving there. The only reason we have more than one cause area is because we don’t all agree on which ones are most effective.
Talented people getting jobs or funding is a major theory of impact for EA meta orgs, and that objective can be seen in their activities. I don’t think it is problematic that people seem to be viewing career-related stuff as a major part of the EA meta. Indeed, I would submit that we want people to know that EA has career opportunities. For instance, if someone is interested in AI safety, we want them to know that they could find a position or funding to work in that area. Deciding to engage involves opportunity costs, so it’s reasonable for people to consider whether community involvement would help them achieve their altruistic goals.
Given that, we also need to take reasonable steps so that “[p]eople passionate about education policy, conservation, or other lower-prioritised areas” know fairly early that certain important forms of engagement are not realistically open to people working in these areas. And the post describes more than the absence of funding or jobs—if people feel that they won’t get value out of going to conferences because too much of the content is geared toward a few cause areas, they should be made aware of that in advance as well.
But that isn’t true, never has been, and never will be. Most people who are interested in AI safety will never find paid work in the field, and we should not lead them to expect otherwise. There was a brief moment when FTX funding made it seem like everyone could get funding for anything, but that moment is gone, and it’s never coming back. The economics of this are pretty similar to a church—yes there are a few paid positions, but not many, and most members will never hold one. When there is a member who seems particularly well suited to the paid work, yes, it makes sense to suggest it to them. But we need to be realistic with newcomers that they will probably never get a check from EA, and the ones who leave because of that weren’t really EAs to begin with. The point of a local EA org, whether university based or not, isn’t to funnel people into careers at EA orgs, it’s to teach them ideas that they can apply in their lives outside of EA orgs. Lets not loose sight of that.