You mention that far meta concerns with high expected value deserve lots of scrutiny, and this seems correct. I guess that you could use a multi-level model to penalize the most meta of concerns, and calculate new expected values for different things that you might fund, but maybe even that wouldn’t be sufficient.
It seems like funding a given meta activity on the margin should be given less consideration (i.e. your calculated expected value for funding that thing should be further revised downwards) if x % of charitable funds being spent by EA’s are already going to meta causes, and more consideration if only e.g. 0.5 * x % of charitable funds being spent by EA’s are already going to meta causes. This makes since because of reputational effects—it looks weird to new EA’s if too much is being spent on meta projects.
You mention that far meta concerns with high expected value deserve lots of scrutiny, and this seems correct. I guess that you could use a multi-level model to penalize the most meta of concerns, and calculate new expected values for different things that you might fund, but maybe even that wouldn’t be sufficient.
It seems like funding a given meta activity on the margin should be given less consideration (i.e. your calculated expected value for funding that thing should be further revised downwards) if x % of charitable funds being spent by EA’s are already going to meta causes, and more consideration if only e.g. 0.5 * x % of charitable funds being spent by EA’s are already going to meta causes. This makes since because of reputational effects—it looks weird to new EA’s if too much is being spent on meta projects.