I like this comment because it does a great job of illustrating how socioeconomic status influences the risks one can take. Consider the juxtaposition of these two statements:
(from the comment)
Maybe this is mainly targeted at undergraduate students, who are more likely to have a few months of time over the summer with no commitments. But in that case how do they have the money to do what is basically an extended vacation? Most students aren’t earning much/any money.
Maybe this is only targeted at students who have wealthy families willing to fund expensive adventures.
(from the OP)
It’s unclear from the outside:
How easy it is to start a project and how secure this is relative to starting ambitious things outside of EA. Funding, advisors, a high-trust community, and social prestige are available...Looking at what scale EA projects in the bay operate at disperses false notions of limits and helps shoot for the correct level of ambition
Even once you know these things intellectually, it’s hard to act in accordance with them before knowing them viscerally, e.g., viscerally feel secure in starting an ambitious project. Coming to Berkeley really helps with that.
Let’s say that for a typical motivated early-career EA, there’s a 60% chance that moving to the Bay will result in desirable full-time employment within one month. (I have no idea if that’s the correct number, just taking a wild guess.) From an expected-value standpoint, that seems like a great deal! Of course you would do that! But for someone who’s resource-constrained, that 40% combined with the high living costs are really big red flags. What happens if things don’t work out? What happens is that you’ve now blown all your savings and are up shit creek, and if you didn’t embed yourself in the community well enough during that time to get a job, you probably don’t have enough good friends to help you out of a financial hole either. So do you make the leap? Without a safety net or an upfront commitment, it’s so much harder to opt for high-upside but riskier pathways, and that in turn ends up impacting the composition of the community.
In theory, there is funding specifically to cover exactly the scenarios you are worried about (“40%”), for promising AI safety people going to the Bay Area.
If there is a systemic gap, the funders would very much like to know and people should comment (or PM and concerns can be referred if appropriate).
I like this comment because it does a great job of illustrating how socioeconomic status influences the risks one can take. Consider the juxtaposition of these two statements:
(from the comment)
(from the OP)
Let’s say that for a typical motivated early-career EA, there’s a 60% chance that moving to the Bay will result in desirable full-time employment within one month. (I have no idea if that’s the correct number, just taking a wild guess.) From an expected-value standpoint, that seems like a great deal! Of course you would do that! But for someone who’s resource-constrained, that 40% combined with the high living costs are really big red flags. What happens if things don’t work out? What happens is that you’ve now blown all your savings and are up shit creek, and if you didn’t embed yourself in the community well enough during that time to get a job, you probably don’t have enough good friends to help you out of a financial hole either. So do you make the leap? Without a safety net or an upfront commitment, it’s so much harder to opt for high-upside but riskier pathways, and that in turn ends up impacting the composition of the community.
In theory, there is funding specifically to cover exactly the scenarios you are worried about (“40%”), for promising AI safety people going to the Bay Area.
If there is a systemic gap, the funders would very much like to know and people should comment (or PM and concerns can be referred if appropriate).