What academic disciplines are being developed to make the career-switch less risky? I’m also interested in how insurance/pension funds could even begin to be developed.
I think this could be set up by launching a 501(c)(3) as a donor-advised fund and fiscal sponsor and then setting up funds inside the entity that support specific purposes. For example, having a fund that pays UBI for people working on high-impact entrepreneurship.
I welcome anyone to get in touch with me if they’re interested in collaborating on and/or funding such a proposal (estimated setup cost of the entity and necessary legal work: $15,000–$25,000).
I was thinking of the Global Priorities Institute as the clearest example of trying to normalize longtermism and global priorities research in the academia as a discipline. AI Safety is also getting more mainstream over time, some of it as academic work in that field.
EA tackles problems which are more neglected. Some of it is still somewhat high-status (evidence-based development as the main thing that pops to my head). So perhaps that kind of risk is almost unavoidable and can only be mitigated for the next generation (and by then, it might be less neglected)
I would not contribute to insurance for the average EA. I would prefer for the average EA to save a bit of money (“runway”) in advance of making a risky decision.
In particular, I have seen quite a few EAs who have decided not take on any paid work for 1+ years after university and I don’t want to financially support them unless they’re doing something genuinely impactful, in which case I’d give them a grant.
In summary, I’d need a compelling reason to donate my money to middle class people in high income countries instead of literally saving lives, and I haven’t seen one yet.
Asking people who specialise in working on early-stage and risky projects to take-care of themselves with runway may be a bit unreasonable. Even if a truly risky project (in the low-probability of a high-return sense) is well executed, we should still expect it to have an a priori success rate of 1 in 10 or lower. Assuming that it takes six months or so to test the feasibility of a project, then people would need save several years worth of runway if they wanted to be financially comfortable while continuing to pursue projects until one worked out (of course, lots of failed projects may be an indication that they’re not executing well, but lets be charitable and assume they are). This would probably limit serious self-supported EA entrepreneurship to an activity one takes on at a mid-career or later stage (also noted by OPP in relation to charity foundation):
Starting a new company is generally associated with high (financial) risk and high potential reward. But without a solid source of funding, starting a nonprofit means taking high financial risk without high potential reward. Furthermore, some nonprofits (like some for-profits) are best suited to be started by people relatively late in their careers; the difference is that late-career people in the for-profit sector seem more likely to have built up significant savings that they can use as a cushion. This is another reason that funder interest can be the key factor in what nonprofits get started.
Sure, I agree that unvetted UBI for all EAs probably would not be a good use of resources. But I also think there are cases where an UBI-like scheme that funded people to do self directed work on high-risk projects could be a good alternative to providing grants to fund projects, particularly at the early-stage.
Yep, I’d be on board with providing specific people with funding to work on whatever projects they find most valuable. But I’d only be likely to provide that to ~10 people and see what happens, as opposed to what I felt this article was suggesting.
Agree. The interesting question for me is where we expect the cutoff to be—what (personal, not project dependent) conditions make it highly effective to give income to an individual.
This framing makes me notice that it would probably be far from realistic right now, as small initiatives in EA are funding constrained. But this still might be misleading.
I think I’d go further. If an EA organisation or some other EAs aren’t willing to support you in running your project then should you be doing it as you’re main job?
As a side project, sure, but no funding means noone else is convinced of your impact. This seems like a good reason to choose a different path.
What academic disciplines are being developed to make the career-switch less risky? I’m also interested in how insurance/pension funds could even begin to be developed.
I think this could be set up by launching a 501(c)(3) as a donor-advised fund and fiscal sponsor and then setting up funds inside the entity that support specific purposes. For example, having a fund that pays UBI for people working on high-impact entrepreneurship.
I welcome anyone to get in touch with me if they’re interested in collaborating on and/or funding such a proposal (estimated setup cost of the entity and necessary legal work: $15,000–$25,000).
Edit: Was inspired to write an EA Forum post on this!
I was thinking of the Global Priorities Institute as the clearest example of trying to normalize longtermism and global priorities research in the academia as a discipline. AI Safety is also getting more mainstream over time, some of it as academic work in that field.
EA tackles problems which are more neglected. Some of it is still somewhat high-status (evidence-based development as the main thing that pops to my head). So perhaps that kind of risk is almost unavoidable and can only be mitigated for the next generation (and by then, it might be less neglected)
I’d also like to know how someone could go about that kind of insurance/pension fund :)
I would not contribute to insurance for the average EA. I would prefer for the average EA to save a bit of money (“runway”) in advance of making a risky decision.
In particular, I have seen quite a few EAs who have decided not take on any paid work for 1+ years after university and I don’t want to financially support them unless they’re doing something genuinely impactful, in which case I’d give them a grant.
In summary, I’d need a compelling reason to donate my money to middle class people in high income countries instead of literally saving lives, and I haven’t seen one yet.
Asking people who specialise in working on early-stage and risky projects to take-care of themselves with runway may be a bit unreasonable. Even if a truly risky project (in the low-probability of a high-return sense) is well executed, we should still expect it to have an a priori success rate of 1 in 10 or lower. Assuming that it takes six months or so to test the feasibility of a project, then people would need save several years worth of runway if they wanted to be financially comfortable while continuing to pursue projects until one worked out (of course, lots of failed projects may be an indication that they’re not executing well, but lets be charitable and assume they are). This would probably limit serious self-supported EA entrepreneurship to an activity one takes on at a mid-career or later stage (also noted by OPP in relation to charity foundation):
Yes, to be clear, I’m arguing that we should have a robust funding ecosystem. I am opposed to “UBI for EAs”
Sure, I agree that unvetted UBI for all EAs probably would not be a good use of resources. But I also think there are cases where an UBI-like scheme that funded people to do self directed work on high-risk projects could be a good alternative to providing grants to fund projects, particularly at the early-stage.
Yep, I’d be on board with providing specific people with funding to work on whatever projects they find most valuable. But I’d only be likely to provide that to ~10 people and see what happens, as opposed to what I felt this article was suggesting.
Agree. The interesting question for me is where we expect the cutoff to be—what (personal, not project dependent) conditions make it highly effective to give income to an individual.
This framing makes me notice that it would probably be far from realistic right now, as small initiatives in EA are funding constrained. But this still might be misleading.
I think I’d go further. If an EA organisation or some other EAs aren’t willing to support you in running your project then should you be doing it as you’re main job?
As a side project, sure, but no funding means noone else is convinced of your impact. This seems like a good reason to choose a different path.
I agree. And I think “willing to support” should normally include enough money for a bit of savings, both for an emergency fund and your pension.
I think what you are both saying makes total sense, and is probably correct. With that said, it might be the case that
it is much easier to vet people rather than projects
vetting is expensive
we expect some outliers to do a lot of good
financial security is critical for success.
it is technically very hard to set many institutions or to cover many EAs as employees.