Critique: There are not enough “realistic” topics in EA public discussion
Statement: I’m far from an EA or AI expert, these are all opinions from an 19 years old EA laypeople (which is probably biased or woefully wrong). Welcome to give me any critique in the comments(rather than just downvoting me).
I think compared to the abstract philosophical problems(which of course are useful), there are far not enough discussions on the EA Forum of some realistic topics, for example:
1.Compare earn to give vs direct work
This is one of the most important topic(war) in EA, but very few try to calculate it. And a lot of people can’t explain the reason well why they hold the opinion”Even for an avergae people, doing direct work is better than earn to give $50k-$100k a year”. Some people thinks that there are some PR 90+ talented people that are unfunded. In this case, unless you’re better than these people, you should do earn to give $50k-$100k, I’m not saying this claim is right(I don’t even feel it’s very probable), but if this holds true, this would dramtically change people strategy on career planning. Yet, very few posts compare EtG vs direct work.
2.The limitations of nationality and the importance of immigration
To have impact in the non-EA world(for example, working in frontier AI labs), the most important thing is probably to successfully immigrate to the USA.(which is very difficult). Therefore, people in EA should discuss on the ways to increase immigration probablity(For example, if you’re good at taking tests, you can go to medical school and apply for USA residency, which is easier than immigrating as an AI engineer)
3.The future expected salary of software engineers in the future
80000 hours still list software enginner as a high paying job, which may be a mistake in the AI era. Because CS engineers is going to be one of the first jobs to be replaced. That also means, one shouldn’t choose CS major if his goal is earn to give(unless he’s very talented in CS, he should choose physics/EE/dental or medical school)
4. The importance of choosing right college major
Choosing college major is very important for your career. Some EA said: “You are not your major/education certificate”. But in fact, you kinda are. For example, it’s impossible to become a doctor or dentist to earn to give if you didn’t graduate in medical school, it’s also difficult become an electrical engineer if you didn’t major in EE/physics(Even CS major is hard to enter the EE field now). Therefore, choosing the right college major is extremely crucial(especially if your goal is earn to give). But I have only read two articles talking about college majors in the EA field.
5.Ignoring the competitiveness of jobs in the society
For example, people in AI safety said: go into a frontier AI lab/ an influencial AI governance job, but what’s the probablity of getting into these influencial jobs(which are usually competitive)? I doubt average people would fail to get into these jobs and just go into a small company that’s not influencial to AI safety at all. For these people, maybe the probablity of becoming a doctor and do EtG is higher.
However, there are still some EA resources that disucss on realistic topics(for example “Education matters for Altrusim”, “Advices for students on Earn to give” by Brain Tomasik). But I think definitely there should be more people discussing on these realistic topics on EA. Yes, of course discussing topics like AI alignment, consciousness are very important. But, how can the EA community make impact if actually there are a lot of EA people suffering from unemployment, can’t get fundings and therefore cannot become a full-time researcher or can’t immigrate to the USA?
Solidly great practical questions here, I think I’ll incorporate some of them into things I run. In particular I agree with you that EtG is extremely underprioritised. It is both the genuinely most impactful life path for most people, and also comes with a huge degree of personal flexibility and benefits.
I think I agreed with this until literally a few months ago, given the likelihood of Anthropic employees donating large amounts to EA causes. It doesn’t make EtG a waste of time, but seems to greatly shift the scales.
I don’t think it has shifted the scales yet, uncertainty remains huge on the Anthropic question. Not only on the amount, but I’m sure there will be many impactful cause areas which won’t benefit that will still need more money.
And even if 10 billion (or whatever) does end up coming in, It might change the ETG math less than we’d expect? Would be interested to see someone do some play-math with the numbers....
If there’s SOME chance that any significant money gets directed to mainstream EA orgs for unrestricted use, then surely that shifts the scales somewhat? There’s also the fact that, as others on the forum have pointed out, there’s now a greater need to work on making orgs able to absorb additional funds, making the ‘direct impact’ career pathway more promising/urgent.
But I agree I’d like to see the maths, I’ve got no idea what chances of what amount of money we’re talking about here.
The fundamental thing happening here is that the opportunity cost of an exceptionally talented person taking advice aimed at the average person is vastly higher than the inverse, so people give advice that ensures the exceptionally talented lean into ambition and build these fields, even if many non-exceptional people will try and fail.
People are not good at self-assessment in both directions and the more you caveat and qualify your advice, the less it gets through, so this is the bet to make.
I disagree voted, but I am not disagreeing about this happening—I am disagreeing about it being a good idea.
People who are exceptionally talented should be exceptionally capable of ignoring all the other bad advice they get, and the presence of more advice that is bad for them shouldn’t hurt them. Also they should be capable of understanding EA as a project about “the most good you can do” and be on board with solid, actionable advice for the average person being easily accessible around the place.
One of EA’s biggest failings is its community structures actively causing harm to people interested in EA, and more grounded advice would go a long way towards addressing that.
This doesn’t seem realistic.
Exceptionally capable people are not usually so capable simultaneously in all dimensions.
The distribution for any specific individual is typically very lumpy (as everyone that I’ve heard of who goes to Lighthaven says), so a perfect or near-perfect “bad advice” filter simply doesnt exist for most.
I think my point is that there’s *already* a lot of bad advice out there. The difference between n and n+1 pieces of advice that’s bad for you being present around you shouldn’t be the thing that everything hinges on. If it is, something’s seriously off with your ability to filter and prioritise.
Take the High-Impact Professionals Playbook, for example (one might call this an “official EA advice source for exceptionally talented people”). It’s got sections on
Career
Donations
Workplace initiatives
Trusteeship
Mentoring and Advisory
Network and Influence
Probably, any given person will fit in on one or maybe two of these, and so all the other bits are “bad advice”. However EA assumes you’re competent at basic seeking methodology because how else would you have got interested in EA—or alternatively, tries to teach you basic seeking methodology as a core part of you becoming an EA—so by the time you’ve ended up buying the book, you probably should be capable of dipping in and out of the relevant bits of a book.
If someone is exceptionally talented in capacity, but their seeking methodology is so poor they’d be swayed by whatever advice happens to be immediately around them at any given time, EA probably *doesn’t* want them doing a bunch of the “highest-impact” stuff (particularly in AI) because they’ve got a very substantial possibility of making things worse.
I think your suggestion about talented people’s ability to triage advice is at least partially true. A problem with it is that a smart response to bad or inapplicable advice is to stop listening to the advice-giver entirely. So you only get a few chances to make contact and you shouldn’t spend them on the lower-value content.
These are all really great and underdiscussed points!
On earning to give (E2G), I think it depends on the cause area. For AI safety (AIS), I’ve had a personal experience where an org had so much funding interest that they didn’t consider it worthwhile to make a small effort to increase the chance of a $100k donation. While I’m glad AIS is getting the funding it deserves, that anecdote doesn’t exactly fill me with enthusiasm for E2G for AIS.
In contrast, in animal welfare, that amount would pay 2 full time direct workers’ salaries for a full year, or take a million years of hens’ experiences out of cages. There are other neglected causes (digital minds etc) where that donation would go similarly far. As an E2G-er, donating to these causes makes me feel much more like what I’m doing every day matters. That’s important for staying value-aligned for the long term if you choose E2G.
Wow I would invest 60-100 hours of time even as a founder for an expected value of 100,000 dollars. That’s crazy that org had that much funding!
Yes in the animal welfare and global health space the situation is nothing like that...
Hello Ariel
You’re right that E2G depends on cause area. However, I doubt the saying “AI safety isn’t funding constrainted”, as I see the funding bar is still really high.(and some aspiring AI safety researchers can’t get an EA job). It’s true that some org said they don’t need more money, but they could be too stingy on funding researchers. In the AI s-risks(suffering risks) field, it’s probably more funding constrainted than AI x-risks field. Because, if there are only 1 or 2 major donors in a field, there maybe blind spots of the donor and some great projects aren’t funded. As I know, there are very few indidvidual donors donating > $50000 annually now. In this case, small donors could fill the gap. Imagine if there’s a PR90 researcher unfunded, if you donate to him, your impact would be better than 90% of people in EA. I have a FB post on EA career discussion group to explain deeper of this idea:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18oL5QjUUq/
Thanks Jack! I agree that AIS is still far more funding constrained than it would be in an ideal world, and I still think E2G for AIS is very impactful. I just think other cause areas, including AI s-risks, are more neglected.
Strongly agree on E2G, though I think ‘EA’ could do better at building E2G communities that keep people who are not working in EA engaged with EA.
How many people are actually EtG and take it seriously? By that, I mean people who actually maximize their income (in a non-harmful way), not just do a normal job in a high income country and donate.
The more people actually EtG, the more know-how there might be out there.
People intersted in this topic can also read this: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tMv3KWqcx5oFq27gN/the-contribution-of-average-direct-worker-in-ai-risks-may-be