1. EA researchers are doing a great job. Much kudos to them. Fully agree with you on that. I think this is mostly a coordination issue.
3. Agree a messy funding situation is a problem. Not so sure there is that big huge gap between groups funded by EA Funds and groups funded by OpenPhil.
4. Maybe we should worry less about “groups doing a bad job at these topics could be net negative”. I am not a big donor so find this hard to judge this well. Also I am all for funding well evidenced projects (see my skepticism below about funding “smart young people”). But I am not convinced that we should be that worried that research on this will lead to harm, except in a few very specific cases. Poor research will likely just be ignored. Also most Foundations vet staff more carefully than they vet projects they fund.
5-6. Agree research leaders are rare (hopefully this inspires them). Disagree that junior researchers are rare. You said: “We only have so many strong EA researchers, and fewer people capable of leading teams and obtaining funding.” + “It seems really difficult to convince committed researchers to change fields” Very good points. That said I think Rethink Priories have been positively surprised at how many very high quality applicants they have had for research roles. So maybe junior researchers are there. My hope this post inspires some people to set up more organisations working in this space.
7. Not so sure about “more bets on smart young people”. Not sure I agree. I tend to prefer giving to or hiring people with experience or evidence of traction. But I don’t have a strong view and would change my mind if there was good evidence on this. There might also be ways to test less experienced people before funding the, like through a “Charity Entrepreneurship” type fellowship scheme.
8. I’d love to have more of your views on what an “EA researcher/funding coordination” looks like as I could maybe make it happen. I am a Trustee of EA London. EA London is already doing a lot of global coordination of EA work (especially under COVID). I have been thinking and talking to David (EA London staff) about scaling this up, hiring a second person etc. If you have a clear vision of what this might look like or what it could add I would consider pushing more on this.
9. Rethink Priorities is OK. I have donated to them in the past but might stop as not sure they are making much headway on the issue listed here. Peter said “I think we definitely do “Beyond speculation (practical longtermism) … So far we’ve mainly been favoring within-cause intervention prioritization”.
10. Good luck with your work on forecasting efforts.
4. I haven’t investigated this much myself, I was relaying what I know from donors (I don’t donate myself). I’ve heard a few times that OpenPhil and some of the donors behind EA Funds are quite worried about negative effects. My impression is that the reason for some of this is simple, but there are some more complicated reasons that go into the thinking here that haven’t been written up fully. I think Oliver Habryka has a bunch of views here.
5-6. I didn’t mean to imply that junior researchers are “rare”, just that they are limited in number (which is obvious). My impression is that there’s currently a bottleneck to give the very junior researchers experience and reputability, which is unfortunate. This is evidenced by Rethink’s round. I think there may be a fair amount of variation in these researchers though; that only a few are really the kinds who could pioneer a new area (this requires a lot of skills and special career risks).
7. I’m also really unsure about this. Though to be fair, I’m unsure about a lot of things. To be clear though, I think that there are probably rather few people this would be a good fit for.
I’m really curious just how impressive the original EA founders were compared to all the new EAs. There are way more young EAs now than there were in the early days, so theoretically we should expect that some will be in many ways more competent than the original EA founders, minus in experience of course.
Part of me wonders: if we don’t see a few obvious candidates for young EA researchers as influential as the founders were, in the next few years, maybe something is going quite wrong. My guess is that we should aim to resemble other groups that are very meritocratic in terms of general leadership and research.
8. Happy to discuss in person. They would take a while to organize and write up.
The very simple thing here is that to me, we really could use “funding work” of all types. OpenPhil still employs a very limited headcount given their resources, and EA Funds is mostly made up of volunteers. Distributing money well is a lot of work, and there currently aren’t many resources going into this.
One big challenge is that not many people are trusted to do this work, in part because of the expected negative impacts of funding bad things. So there’s a small group trusted to do this work, and a smaller subset of them interested in spending time doing it.
I would love to see more groups help coordinate, especially if they could be accepted by the major donors and community. I think there’s a high bar here, but if you can be over it, it can be very valuable.
I’d also recommend talking to the team at EA Funds, which is currently growing.
9. This could be worth discussing more further. RP is still quite early and developing. If you have suggestions about how it could improve, I’d be excited to have discussions on that. I could imagine us helping change it in positive directions going forward.
Tank you Ozzie. Very very helpful. To respond.
1. EA researchers are doing a great job. Much kudos to them. Fully agree with you on that. I think this is mostly a coordination issue.
3. Agree a messy funding situation is a problem. Not so sure there is that big huge gap between groups funded by EA Funds and groups funded by OpenPhil.
4. Maybe we should worry less about “groups doing a bad job at these topics could be net negative”. I am not a big donor so find this hard to judge this well. Also I am all for funding well evidenced projects (see my skepticism below about funding “smart young people”). But I am not convinced that we should be that worried that research on this will lead to harm, except in a few very specific cases. Poor research will likely just be ignored. Also most Foundations vet staff more carefully than they vet projects they fund.
5-6. Agree research leaders are rare (hopefully this inspires them). Disagree that junior researchers are rare. You said: “We only have so many strong EA researchers, and fewer people capable of leading teams and obtaining funding.” + “It seems really difficult to convince committed researchers to change fields” Very good points. That said I think Rethink Priories have been positively surprised at how many very high quality applicants they have had for research roles. So maybe junior researchers are there. My hope this post inspires some people to set up more organisations working in this space.
7. Not so sure about “more bets on smart young people”. Not sure I agree. I tend to prefer giving to or hiring people with experience or evidence of traction. But I don’t have a strong view and would change my mind if there was good evidence on this. There might also be ways to test less experienced people before funding the, like through a “Charity Entrepreneurship” type fellowship scheme.
8. I’d love to have more of your views on what an “EA researcher/funding coordination” looks like as I could maybe make it happen. I am a Trustee of EA London. EA London is already doing a lot of global coordination of EA work (especially under COVID). I have been thinking and talking to David (EA London staff) about scaling this up, hiring a second person etc. If you have a clear vision of what this might look like or what it could add I would consider pushing more on this.
9. Rethink Priorities is OK. I have donated to them in the past but might stop as not sure they are making much headway on the issue listed here. Peter said “I think we definitely do “Beyond speculation (practical longtermism) … So far we’ve mainly been favoring within-cause intervention prioritization”.
10. Good luck with your work on forecasting efforts.
Thanks for the response!
Quick responses:
4. I haven’t investigated this much myself, I was relaying what I know from donors (I don’t donate myself). I’ve heard a few times that OpenPhil and some of the donors behind EA Funds are quite worried about negative effects. My impression is that the reason for some of this is simple, but there are some more complicated reasons that go into the thinking here that haven’t been written up fully. I think Oliver Habryka has a bunch of views here.
5-6. I didn’t mean to imply that junior researchers are “rare”, just that they are limited in number (which is obvious). My impression is that there’s currently a bottleneck to give the very junior researchers experience and reputability, which is unfortunate. This is evidenced by Rethink’s round. I think there may be a fair amount of variation in these researchers though; that only a few are really the kinds who could pioneer a new area (this requires a lot of skills and special career risks).
7. I’m also really unsure about this. Though to be fair, I’m unsure about a lot of things. To be clear though, I think that there are probably rather few people this would be a good fit for.
I’m really curious just how impressive the original EA founders were compared to all the new EAs. There are way more young EAs now than there were in the early days, so theoretically we should expect that some will be in many ways more competent than the original EA founders, minus in experience of course.
Part of me wonders: if we don’t see a few obvious candidates for young EA researchers as influential as the founders were, in the next few years, maybe something is going quite wrong. My guess is that we should aim to resemble other groups that are very meritocratic in terms of general leadership and research.
8. Happy to discuss in person. They would take a while to organize and write up.
The very simple thing here is that to me, we really could use “funding work” of all types. OpenPhil still employs a very limited headcount given their resources, and EA Funds is mostly made up of volunteers. Distributing money well is a lot of work, and there currently aren’t many resources going into this.
One big challenge is that not many people are trusted to do this work, in part because of the expected negative impacts of funding bad things. So there’s a small group trusted to do this work, and a smaller subset of them interested in spending time doing it.
I would love to see more groups help coordinate, especially if they could be accepted by the major donors and community. I think there’s a high bar here, but if you can be over it, it can be very valuable.
I’d also recommend talking to the team at EA Funds, which is currently growing.
9. This could be worth discussing more further. RP is still quite early and developing. If you have suggestions about how it could improve, I’d be excited to have discussions on that. I could imagine us helping change it in positive directions going forward.
10. Thanks!