I expect most submissions will take <10 hours to write over the course of 1-3 days.
If memory serves, it took me ~40 hours to write each of theseretrospectives (maybe over the course of a month); these were by far the most useful reflections for me to improve my community-building efforts.
Thanks for mentioning this, Rohin! I agree that longer write-ups and retrospectives can be valuable. And if someone determines that it’s valuable for them to spend 40 hours on a write-up, I’d encourage them to do so.
For this contest, I don’t want the “norm” or “expectation” to be a 20+ hour write-up. I’m expecting many submissions that take the form “here’s an idea that I was already thinking about, and now this contest nudged me to sit down and write it up” or “I sat down and spent a few hours reflecting on X, and here’s what I learned.”
This is partially motivated by finm’s comment here:
I’m a bit worried that contests with large prizes can have distortionary effects. That is, they might pull EAs towards using their time in ways which are not altruistically/impartially best. This would happen when an EA switches her marginal time to some contest with a big prize, where she otherwise would have been doing something expected to be more impactful (e.g. because she’s a better fit for it), but which doesn’t stand to win her as much money or acclaim.
Most importantly, I think people entering this contest should ask themselves if spending marginal hours on their entries would be a good use of their time (relative to their counterfactual). My guess is that most entrants would benefit from reflecting for 1-10 hours, and a smaller subset would benefit from reflecting for 10-100 hours.
Eh, I’m just pretty happy to claim that many contests can in fact push people to do more valuable things with their time than they would have done otherwise. It’s not that hard to think of considerations that most EAs haven’t thought about.
Also, by this logic, should we also not have any posts that give advice to EAs? After all, they might pull EAs towards following that advice, even when that’s not altruistically / impartially best.
Maybe the idea is that once there’s money involved, it is individually rational for EAs to pursue the money from contests instead of doing what is best, and this is community-irrational? That seems surprising; if that were the situation, then why aren’t the EAs just pursuing a normal job which would get more money?
Maybe the idea is that it isn’t the money, it’s the prestige from the contest that’s motivating? That seems plausible.
Maybe the idea is that EAs can just ignore advice if it’s bad, but they will irrationally be more persuaded when there’s money and prestige attached (as in a contest)? That also seems plausible.
Okay, I’m more convinced of distortionary effects, though I’m still pretty keen on “yeah it’s not hard to find cases where individual EAs could do better, because you thought of a consideration that they didn’t”.
My guess is that most entrants would benefit from reflecting for 1-10 hours, and a smaller subset would benefit from reflecting for 10-100 hours.
For this contest I was most compelled by the benefits to other organizers, and for that I think I would be a lot more excited about the 10-100 hour reflections.
If memory serves, it took me ~40 hours to write each of these retrospectives (maybe over the course of a month); these were by far the most useful reflections for me to improve my community-building efforts.
Thanks for mentioning this, Rohin! I agree that longer write-ups and retrospectives can be valuable. And if someone determines that it’s valuable for them to spend 40 hours on a write-up, I’d encourage them to do so.
For this contest, I don’t want the “norm” or “expectation” to be a 20+ hour write-up. I’m expecting many submissions that take the form “here’s an idea that I was already thinking about, and now this contest nudged me to sit down and write it up” or “I sat down and spent a few hours reflecting on X, and here’s what I learned.”
This is partially motivated by finm’s comment here:
Most importantly, I think people entering this contest should ask themselves if spending marginal hours on their entries would be a good use of their time (relative to their counterfactual). My guess is that most entrants would benefit from reflecting for 1-10 hours, and a smaller subset would benefit from reflecting for 10-100 hours.
Eh, I’m just pretty happy to claim that many contests can in fact push people to do more valuable things with their time than they would have done otherwise. It’s not that hard to think of considerations that most EAs haven’t thought about.
Also, by this logic, should we also not have any posts that give advice to EAs? After all, they might pull EAs towards following that advice, even when that’s not altruistically / impartially best.
Maybe the idea is that once there’s money involved, it is individually rational for EAs to pursue the money from contests instead of doing what is best, and this is community-irrational? That seems surprising; if that were the situation, then why aren’t the EAs just pursuing a normal job which would get more money?
Maybe the idea is that it isn’t the money, it’s the prestige from the contest that’s motivating? That seems plausible.
Maybe the idea is that EAs can just ignore advice if it’s bad, but they will irrationally be more persuaded when there’s money and prestige attached (as in a contest)? That also seems plausible.
Okay, I’m more convinced of distortionary effects, though I’m still pretty keen on “yeah it’s not hard to find cases where individual EAs could do better, because you thought of a consideration that they didn’t”.
For this contest I was most compelled by the benefits to other organizers, and for that I think I would be a lot more excited about the 10-100 hour reflections.