Take a snapshot from some time in the past (e.g. date of OP), and award $100 for each karma point to all EA Forum holders. This could be extended and scaled as appropriate to the AI Alignment Forum and perhaps r/EffectiveAltruism and other places as seen fit. As a one-off, this can’t be gamed. It might encourage more participation going forward, but it should be made clear that there should be no expectation of a repeat. Ideally, the money would be no strings attached. It would be interesting to see how it is spent, and—assuming a lot of it is regranted or spent on direct work[1]-- perhaps could serve as an ultimate example of decentralised grant making in the EA community (so high VoI?). EA Forum karma seems like a good proxy for positive participation in the EA community, although I understand that many people make great contributions but aren’t active on the Forum. It would be left as an exercise to altruistic karma holders to remedy any injustices.
[Note that this is only a semi-serious proposal, based on a common strategy in the crypto community -- which FTX is a big player in—for rewarding holders of coins and tokens in order to encourage investment and participation (and gain attention). As the proposer, I waive my right to any airdrops should this or something like it actually happen.]
If there isn’t much regranting or spending on direct work, then this could be evidence for financial insecurity in the community. (Or worse, a lack of altruism when it actually comes down to having money to spend.)
I appreciate the honesty. [Note the rest of this is not directed at Khorton; more to the people upvoting her comment]. But I’m disheartened by the fact that this comment has got high karma. It looks pretty bad from an outside perspective that such selfish use of a windfall is celebrated by effective altruists. And also from an inside perspective—it makes me wonder how altruistic most EAs actually are. I mean, I hope most of us would at least give the standard GWWC 10% away (and maybe that is implicit, but it isn’t to an outsider reading this—and a lot of outsiders probably are reading this given the attention that the FTX Future Fund is getting).
Where are the comments saying “I’d fund X”, ”..start Y”, ”..do independent research on Z”!? Maybe it’s just that no one is taking this seriously—and I get it, it was meant partly as an amusing play on the crypto airdrop phenomenon—but it’s still a bit sad to see such cynicism around altruism being promoted on the EA Forum.
If EAs can’t be expected to do EA things with large unexpected windfalls without there being strings attached, then I question the integrity of the movement.
You might argue that EA is no longer funding constrained (so therefore it’s fine to be selfish), but funding saturation is not evenly distributed.
Khorton buying a nice house and meeting her GWWC pledge seem perfectly compatible, and suggesting that her planning to do this casts significant doubt on the integrity of the movement seems both over the top and unkind, and I don’t think the ‘I’m directing my complaining at upvoters not khorton’ does much to mitigate that.
For the record, I’m not saying that “house + GWWC pledge” is lacking in integrity, I’m saying that “house” alone is (for an EA) (and that’s what it looks like to an outsider who won’t know about Khorton taking the GWWC pledge).
I doubt the people who upvoted this comment are encouraging me (although maybe they are!). I think it’s more likely that they think it was a valuable piece of information.
I guess I’m reading more into it. To me it looks something like: “Haha, Greg is so naive to think that rank and file EAs can be trusted to do good things if we give them free money, no strings attached. See, this is the kind of thing we should expect.” Possibly with the additional: “And why not? EA is no longer funding constrained, and there isn’t much that non-expert, small-to-medium donors can do with money now” [both quotes would come with more courteous, careful phrasing, and caveats, in real life of course. I’ve written it how I have because I’m somewhat emotionally invested; my apologies.].
And outsiders looking on might be thinking “See, these so-called ‘effective altruists’ are no different than the rest of us when it really comes down to it. The most upvoted comment on a thread about an airdrop is one about spending the cash on a house!”
There are some serious incentives issues here where the EAF users with the most karma (and thus most incentive to gain from this proposal) are also the ones with most strong upvote power. :O
Slightly disappointed that this has ended up on negative karma. I think it’s at least triggered some somewhat fruitful discussion. I do think a broad-based retroactive funding of public good in the EA community would be good; especially in terms of it’s knock-on effects for the next generation of projects. Mediation of this via crypto and impact certificates seems promising, even if a direct airdrop based on an imprecise metric such as EA Forum karma isn’t the way to go.
If one point of karma was worth on average more than $100 donated to EA charities, then posting on the EA forum would be so preposterously effective that my 1300 karma points accrued this year would be worth ~$130,000 to the movement, massively outweighing any donations I could hope to make to EA charities, also seemingly outweighing the impact of many other forms of direct work (since most EA salaries are lower than $130K/year) and equivalent to saving more than 25 lives just by commenting. It would also imply that CEA is massively underinvesting in support for the Forum.
On the other hand, if karma points were worth only $1 of donations to EA charities, then everyone would be completely wasting their time here (depending on how long it takes you to write comments, conceivably doing less good than you could do by donating 10% of your income after working an extra hour at minimum wage, etc), and CEA would be massively overinvesting by spending more money on supporting the Forum than the value it actually produces.
Realistically I think Karma points are probably worth $20-$30 “on average”. But the average is dragged upwards by a small number of extremely valuable posts. From an inside-view perspective, I think my participation on the Forum has been decently helpful to folks, but I probably haven’t discovered any totally revolutionary insights that will become foundational for EA causes going forward. So I figure if folks like me want to try to quantify their Forum contributions despite all those valid objections I linked, they should figure each karma point to be worth ~$10.
Interesting analysis. The airdrop wouldn’t need to be based on the estimated value of karma points though. I was thinking of it more in terms of a mechanism for decentralising (grant making) power in the EA movement. $100 was chosen to make the sums allocated to people significant in a way that $10 probably wouldn’t be (e.g. if it was $10, most people wouldn’t really get enough to fund or start new projects, quit their job and do independent research, etc).
Nuño’s list probably means that there should be some attempt to apply adjustments to scores. But this does open a can of worms.
Are there any other promising proxies for EA impact that could be used for an airdrop?
Maybe instead of airdropping something that can be directly exchanged for cash (in which case many people would just buy a house with their $600K), we airdrop a resource that is somehow restricted such that it has to be a donation? A Forum-Karma-based airdrop seems like it would be an awesome way to kick off an impact certificates program—people could use their KarmaCoin to invest in impact certificates, with the promise that if you invest wisely, down the road the certificates for the most impactful projects might get bought by a mega-donor like OpenPhil, and that’s how you’d ultimately get a cash payout.
Sounds good! I wonder what loopholes could emerge though? Most cryptos end up with a market value even if they don’t intend to have one. I suppose KarmaCoin could be timelocked somehow. It makes it more difficult to trade, but people can still make IOU contracts.
I’d be afraid of playing around with the karma system. I think the EA Forum / Lesswrong might become the high-quality-discussion-social-media of the future, and I wouldn’t make changes to the karma system without at least considering how the change impact that vision
Ok, so LessWrong are actually doing this(!) - but for a week going forward from April Fool’s Day—rather than retroactively, and for $1/karma point (rather than $100).
Airdrop for EA Forum karma holders
Empowering Exceptional People, Effective Altruism
Take a snapshot from some time in the past (e.g. date of OP), and award $100 for each karma point to all EA Forum holders. This could be extended and scaled as appropriate to the AI Alignment Forum and perhaps r/EffectiveAltruism and other places as seen fit. As a one-off, this can’t be gamed. It might encourage more participation going forward, but it should be made clear that there should be no expectation of a repeat. Ideally, the money would be no strings attached. It would be interesting to see how it is spent, and—assuming a lot of it is regranted or spent on direct work[1]-- perhaps could serve as an ultimate example of decentralised grant making in the EA community (so high VoI?). EA Forum karma seems like a good proxy for positive participation in the EA community, although I understand that many people make great contributions but aren’t active on the Forum. It would be left as an exercise to altruistic karma holders to remedy any injustices.
[Note that this is only a semi-serious proposal, based on a common strategy in the crypto community -- which FTX is a big player in—for rewarding holders of coins and tokens in order to encourage investment and participation (and gain attention). As the proposer, I waive my right to any airdrops should this or something like it actually happen.]
If there isn’t much regranting or spending on direct work, then this could be evidence for financial insecurity in the community. (Or worse, a lack of altruism when it actually comes down to having money to spend.)
I have 6611 karma and if y’all gave me $600k no strings attached, I’m not gonna lie I would buy a really nice house.
And now an extra $1.5k worth of house on top of that!
I appreciate the honesty. [Note the rest of this is not directed at Khorton; more to the people upvoting her comment]. But I’m disheartened by the fact that this comment has got high karma. It looks pretty bad from an outside perspective that such selfish use of a windfall is celebrated by effective altruists. And also from an inside perspective—it makes me wonder how altruistic most EAs actually are. I mean, I hope most of us would at least give the standard GWWC 10% away (and maybe that is implicit, but it isn’t to an outsider reading this—and a lot of outsiders probably are reading this given the attention that the FTX Future Fund is getting).
Where are the comments saying “I’d fund X”, ”..start Y”, ”..do independent research on Z”!? Maybe it’s just that no one is taking this seriously—and I get it, it was meant partly as an amusing play on the crypto airdrop phenomenon—but it’s still a bit sad to see such cynicism around altruism being promoted on the EA Forum.
If EAs can’t be expected to do EA things with large unexpected windfalls without there being strings attached, then I question the integrity of the movement.
You might argue that EA is no longer funding constrained (so therefore it’s fine to be selfish), but funding saturation is not evenly distributed.
Khorton buying a nice house and meeting her GWWC pledge seem perfectly compatible, and suggesting that her planning to do this casts significant doubt on the integrity of the movement seems both over the top and unkind, and I don’t think the ‘I’m directing my complaining at upvoters not khorton’ does much to mitigate that.
For the record, I’m not saying that “house + GWWC pledge” is lacking in integrity, I’m saying that “house” alone is (for an EA) (and that’s what it looks like to an outsider who won’t know about Khorton taking the GWWC pledge).
I doubt the people who upvoted this comment are encouraging me (although maybe they are!). I think it’s more likely that they think it was a valuable piece of information.
I guess I’m reading more into it. To me it looks something like: “Haha, Greg is so naive to think that rank and file EAs can be trusted to do good things if we give them free money, no strings attached. See, this is the kind of thing we should expect.” Possibly with the additional: “And why not? EA is no longer funding constrained, and there isn’t much that non-expert, small-to-medium donors can do with money now” [both quotes would come with more courteous, careful phrasing, and caveats, in real life of course. I’ve written it how I have because I’m somewhat emotionally invested; my apologies.].
And outsiders looking on might be thinking “See, these so-called ‘effective altruists’ are no different than the rest of us when it really comes down to it. The most upvoted comment on a thread about an airdrop is one about spending the cash on a house!”
There are some serious incentives issues here where the EAF users with the most karma (and thus most incentive to gain from this proposal) are also the ones with most strong upvote power. :O
Inspired by this, I am reading all the suggestions from the bottom (from least-karma)
Yes. FTX: please try to ignore the karma on the proposal comment when considering it!
Slightly disappointed that this has ended up on negative karma. I think it’s at least triggered some somewhat fruitful discussion. I do think a broad-based retroactive funding of public good in the EA community would be good; especially in terms of it’s knock-on effects for the next generation of projects. Mediation of this via crypto and impact certificates seems promising, even if a direct airdrop based on an imprecise metric such as EA Forum karma isn’t the way to go.
Even putting aside Nuno’s list of pretty serious issues preventing karma from correlating well with impact, I think $100 is way too high a value for current-day EA karma points (maybe it could be appropriate for Karma points earned years ago in the Forum’s infancy).
If one point of karma was worth on average more than $100 donated to EA charities, then posting on the EA forum would be so preposterously effective that my 1300 karma points accrued this year would be worth ~$130,000 to the movement, massively outweighing any donations I could hope to make to EA charities, also seemingly outweighing the impact of many other forms of direct work (since most EA salaries are lower than $130K/year) and equivalent to saving more than 25 lives just by commenting. It would also imply that CEA is massively underinvesting in support for the Forum.
On the other hand, if karma points were worth only $1 of donations to EA charities, then everyone would be completely wasting their time here (depending on how long it takes you to write comments, conceivably doing less good than you could do by donating 10% of your income after working an extra hour at minimum wage, etc), and CEA would be massively overinvesting by spending more money on supporting the Forum than the value it actually produces.
Realistically I think Karma points are probably worth $20-$30 “on average”. But the average is dragged upwards by a small number of extremely valuable posts. From an inside-view perspective, I think my participation on the Forum has been decently helpful to folks, but I probably haven’t discovered any totally revolutionary insights that will become foundational for EA causes going forward. So I figure if folks like me want to try to quantify their Forum contributions despite all those valid objections I linked, they should figure each karma point to be worth ~$10.
Interesting analysis. The airdrop wouldn’t need to be based on the estimated value of karma points though. I was thinking of it more in terms of a mechanism for decentralising (grant making) power in the EA movement. $100 was chosen to make the sums allocated to people significant in a way that $10 probably wouldn’t be (e.g. if it was $10, most people wouldn’t really get enough to fund or start new projects, quit their job and do independent research, etc).
Nuño’s list probably means that there should be some attempt to apply adjustments to scores. But this does open a can of worms.
Are there any other promising proxies for EA impact that could be used for an airdrop?
Maybe instead of airdropping something that can be directly exchanged for cash (in which case many people would just buy a house with their $600K), we airdrop a resource that is somehow restricted such that it has to be a donation? A Forum-Karma-based airdrop seems like it would be an awesome way to kick off an impact certificates program—people could use their KarmaCoin to invest in impact certificates, with the promise that if you invest wisely, down the road the certificates for the most impactful projects might get bought by a mega-donor like OpenPhil, and that’s how you’d ultimately get a cash payout.
Sounds good! I wonder what loopholes could emerge though? Most cryptos end up with a market value even if they don’t intend to have one. I suppose KarmaCoin could be timelocked somehow. It makes it more difficult to trade, but people can still make IOU contracts.
I’d be afraid of playing around with the karma system. I think the EA Forum / Lesswrong might become the high-quality-discussion-social-media of the future, and I wouldn’t make changes to the karma system without at least considering how the change impact that vision
It wouldn’t be a change. It’s a one-off reward for past activity (a retro-active funding of public good as it were :))
Ok, so LessWrong are actually doing this(!) - but for a week going forward from April Fool’s Day—rather than retroactively, and for $1/karma point (rather than $100).
Note that there are some forum users who have posted highly upvoted posts and comments under different pseudonymous accounts. :-)
Yes. Perhaps we need to add Metamask support to the Forum :)