This post clearly articulates a lot of the related thoughts I’ve been having and discussing with other organizers; well done. I will add my quickly dashed off thoughts, coming in particular from the perspective of a EA group organizer:
1. The time/ money trade off is real, particularly for mostly volunteer-led groups where volunteer capacity is our main bottleneck. Nonetheless, in my view being cognizant of trade offs when allocating resources is core to EA, and it is a real loss when we just vaguely gesture at the time/money trade off and spend money without really thinking deeply about its best use. I advocate taking a rule utilitarian approach to this—even if in any given situation it might be more time that it is “worth” to really think hard about whether spending funds on something is the best use of those funds—even within a more narrow framework like a group’s overall goals—it is still worth doing as a rule. This also reinforces the norms of talking explicitly about trade offs, cause prioritization, and thinking strategically.
2. This is anecdotal of course, but I have directly seen people express discomfort when our group spends money on, e.g., paying for food and drinks or renting a “nice” space for an event. Attendees have directly said in feedback following these events that they are uncomfortable spending this money, and it doesn’t seem to align with our EA values. Is this discomfort enough to have tangible consequences like they stop being engaged? Unclear. Moreover, I think it is quite possible that having a “nicer” event may still be justified by attracting more people, more types of people, and/or having the people there have a better time. I’ve advocated collecting data about, for instance, how many people come to similar events, one that is catered and one that is not. Such data collection of course also takes time and energy. In general I am pretty skeptical that the marginal dollar spent on food and particularly alcohol at an event is doing much good but without any data this view is very loosely held.
3. FWIW, Matt Yglesias has expressed something in this vein on the 80k podcast:
Matthew Yglesias: I was interested when I started hearing about people I know going to effective altruism conferences. I thought to myself, that actually doesn’t sound very effective altruism-y. I always associate effective altruism with ideas like, “Maybe don’t do the conference, just give the money — that airfare could do a lot of good in the world.”
This post clearly articulates a lot of the related thoughts I’ve been having and discussing with other organizers; well done. I will add my quickly dashed off thoughts, coming in particular from the perspective of a EA group organizer:
1. The time/ money trade off is real, particularly for mostly volunteer-led groups where volunteer capacity is our main bottleneck. Nonetheless, in my view being cognizant of trade offs when allocating resources is core to EA, and it is a real loss when we just vaguely gesture at the time/money trade off and spend money without really thinking deeply about its best use. I advocate taking a rule utilitarian approach to this—even if in any given situation it might be more time that it is “worth” to really think hard about whether spending funds on something is the best use of those funds—even within a more narrow framework like a group’s overall goals—it is still worth doing as a rule. This also reinforces the norms of talking explicitly about trade offs, cause prioritization, and thinking strategically.
2. This is anecdotal of course, but I have directly seen people express discomfort when our group spends money on, e.g., paying for food and drinks or renting a “nice” space for an event. Attendees have directly said in feedback following these events that they are uncomfortable spending this money, and it doesn’t seem to align with our EA values. Is this discomfort enough to have tangible consequences like they stop being engaged? Unclear. Moreover, I think it is quite possible that having a “nicer” event may still be justified by attracting more people, more types of people, and/or having the people there have a better time. I’ve advocated collecting data about, for instance, how many people come to similar events, one that is catered and one that is not. Such data collection of course also takes time and energy. In general I am pretty skeptical that the marginal dollar spent on food and particularly alcohol at an event is doing much good but without any data this view is very loosely held.
3. FWIW, Matt Yglesias has expressed something in this vein on the 80k podcast: