There are so many important unanswered questions relevant to EA charitable giving. Maybe an effective meta-EA charity idea would be a place where EAs could pose research questions they want answered, and they offer money based on how much they would be willing to give to have their question answered with a certain quality.
I feel inclined to say that we should crowdsource or research for those answers and save our money on important causes. For instance, LessWrong did a whole series of interviews with computer scientists asking them about AI risks just by emailing them (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Interview_series_on_risks_from_AI). Experts are pretty damn expensive.
That being said, I do think we have a bit of a problem with major conclusions regarding artificial intelligence, economics, etc being drawn by people who lack graduate education and field recognition in those fields. Being an amateur interdisciplinary thinker is nice, but we have a surplus of those people in EA. Maybe we can do more movement building in targeted intellectual communities.
I wasn’t thinking that the money would go towards hiring experts. Rather, something like: “I’ll donate $X to GiveDirectly if someone changes my view on this important question that will decide whether I want to donate my money to Org 1 or Org 2.”
That is a great question you posted on Reddit!
There are so many important unanswered questions relevant to EA charitable giving. Maybe an effective meta-EA charity idea would be a place where EAs could pose research questions they want answered, and they offer money based on how much they would be willing to give to have their question answered with a certain quality.
I feel inclined to say that we should crowdsource or research for those answers and save our money on important causes. For instance, LessWrong did a whole series of interviews with computer scientists asking them about AI risks just by emailing them (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Interview_series_on_risks_from_AI). Experts are pretty damn expensive.
That being said, I do think we have a bit of a problem with major conclusions regarding artificial intelligence, economics, etc being drawn by people who lack graduate education and field recognition in those fields. Being an amateur interdisciplinary thinker is nice, but we have a surplus of those people in EA. Maybe we can do more movement building in targeted intellectual communities.
I wasn’t thinking that the money would go towards hiring experts. Rather, something like: “I’ll donate $X to GiveDirectly if someone changes my view on this important question that will decide whether I want to donate my money to Org 1 or Org 2.”