The strongest reason to have a community norm against doing this is that it’s easier to be unbiased in assessing other organisations.
I’d guess that a number of the people working at organizations take jobs there precisely because they believe they are the most effective organizations. In those cases there is no room for alleging bias. Moreover, there’s still room for bias with external organizations. If I work at ACE I’m biased in favor of the charities I reviewed. If I work at FHI I’m biased in favor of MIRI because we do some stuff together. And so on.
Also note that people in an organization have inside information that outsiders lack. Are corporate employees banned from trading in their own stock because there is worry over them being optimistically biased about their own company’s prospects? No, it’s because such positions provide an unusual advantage in financial markets.
It might help to be more specific about what we mean by ‘norms’. Obviously no one is going to ban people from donating to their employer. The first thing I would do as an organization or as a donor would be to get a third party to circumvent the ban. So what’s left… social stigma? How? Why? If there is worry about bias in donations, just tell people—hey, here’s some reasons to be cautious before you donate to your employer. Just give them the reasons you are using as an argument for the norm. Norms just supervene on people’s opinions. If people see this idea and think it’s powerful and share it with their friends, you have the norm. If they don’t, then you don’t have the norm.
You can argue for all kinds of norms pushing in various directions based on allegations of cognitive bias (e.g. people who grew up poor should not donate to Givewell charities because their life experiences will bias them, vegans should not donate for animal relief because their diet will bias them, etc), but actually demonstrating the problem is another matter. We don’t know if biases significantly apply to this case. Donating money is a serious, occasional, major financial decision being conducted by people who are already trying to be very rational, so it’s a very strange domain for one to introduce paternalism.
Finally, there’s more personal value in being aligned with your workplace. Employees who donate are likely to experience having a greater stake and greater motivation for the organization.
Moreover, there’s still room for bias with external organizations. If I work at ACE I’m biased in favor of the charities I reviewed. If I work at FHI I’m biased in favor of MIRI because we do some stuff together. And so on.
I agree with this, but I’m a bit less concerned about it because I think that there is less pressure for bias than from the daily interactions in the workplace, and less possibility of setting bad precedent by acting on such bias.
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is that it’s not clear overall you are biased in favour of the org you work for based on experience—you also know everything that’s bad which isn’t obvious to outsiders. I usually have a more negative view of things I’m more familiar with (though try to debias by realising everything I don’t know well is probably bad in ways I can’t see as well).
That’s clearly true as well. There is strong conventional wisdom to essentially ‘never meet your heroes’. My personal experience is that going to actually work with an organization tends to lower one’s level of attraction and enamoring for that organization.
There’s still room for bias, so why not take action? Why draw the line there and not here? Why not make up a norm against donating to related charities? And a norm against people who grew up in poverty donating to poverty charities? A norm against people donating to charities within their city?
Why not make a norm against volunteering? Lots of EA organizations have volunteers. Perhaps volunteering is bad because this will create a conflict of interest when former volunteers seek employment.
I’d guess that a number of the people working at organizations take jobs there precisely because they believe they are the most effective organizations. In those cases there is no room for alleging bias.
I think I’m coming at this from a basically different perspective. I’m really not trying to make allegations of anyone being biased. I’m in favour of removing a conflict of interest, for basically the same reasons this comes up in other domains (e.g. recusing someone from a selection panel when they are related to a candidate): there might be bias, there might be pressure towards bias, and there might be the appearance of bias.
The particular point of expecting it to be somewhat frequent that people want to work for and donate to the same org for totally legitimate reasons I agree with and made in the post.
I think I’m coming at this from a basically different perspective. I’m really not trying to make allegations of anyone being biased. I’m in favour of removing a conflict of interest, for basically the same reasons this comes up in other domains (e.g. recusing someone from a selection panel when they are related to a candidate): there might be bias, there might be pressure towards bias, and there might be the appearance of bias.
Sure, there MIGHT be bias. So what? This type of ‘conflict of interest’ is totally speculative. It’s not existed for other nonprofit organizations where people have made donations to their employer. It’s not existed for employees working overtime. It doesn’t exist for the military (fairly commonplace for individuals to cover unit expenses there). I’ve never heard anything about this worry from inside or outside EA. You need to have a solid case before deciding that something is a problem. Right now you’re trying to find a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist, and what’s worse is you think that it should determine the long run culture of the movement.
I’d guess that a number of the people working at organizations take jobs there precisely because they believe they are the most effective organizations. In those cases there is no room for alleging bias. Moreover, there’s still room for bias with external organizations. If I work at ACE I’m biased in favor of the charities I reviewed. If I work at FHI I’m biased in favor of MIRI because we do some stuff together. And so on.
Also note that people in an organization have inside information that outsiders lack. Are corporate employees banned from trading in their own stock because there is worry over them being optimistically biased about their own company’s prospects? No, it’s because such positions provide an unusual advantage in financial markets.
It might help to be more specific about what we mean by ‘norms’. Obviously no one is going to ban people from donating to their employer. The first thing I would do as an organization or as a donor would be to get a third party to circumvent the ban. So what’s left… social stigma? How? Why? If there is worry about bias in donations, just tell people—hey, here’s some reasons to be cautious before you donate to your employer. Just give them the reasons you are using as an argument for the norm. Norms just supervene on people’s opinions. If people see this idea and think it’s powerful and share it with their friends, you have the norm. If they don’t, then you don’t have the norm.
You can argue for all kinds of norms pushing in various directions based on allegations of cognitive bias (e.g. people who grew up poor should not donate to Givewell charities because their life experiences will bias them, vegans should not donate for animal relief because their diet will bias them, etc), but actually demonstrating the problem is another matter. We don’t know if biases significantly apply to this case. Donating money is a serious, occasional, major financial decision being conducted by people who are already trying to be very rational, so it’s a very strange domain for one to introduce paternalism.
Finally, there’s more personal value in being aligned with your workplace. Employees who donate are likely to experience having a greater stake and greater motivation for the organization.
I agree with this, but I’m a bit less concerned about it because I think that there is less pressure for bias than from the daily interactions in the workplace, and less possibility of setting bad precedent by acting on such bias.
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is that it’s not clear overall you are biased in favour of the org you work for based on experience—you also know everything that’s bad which isn’t obvious to outsiders. I usually have a more negative view of things I’m more familiar with (though try to debias by realising everything I don’t know well is probably bad in ways I can’t see as well).
That’s clearly true as well. There is strong conventional wisdom to essentially ‘never meet your heroes’. My personal experience is that going to actually work with an organization tends to lower one’s level of attraction and enamoring for that organization.
There’s still room for bias, so why not take action? Why draw the line there and not here? Why not make up a norm against donating to related charities? And a norm against people who grew up in poverty donating to poverty charities? A norm against people donating to charities within their city?
Why not make a norm against volunteering? Lots of EA organizations have volunteers. Perhaps volunteering is bad because this will create a conflict of interest when former volunteers seek employment.
I think I’m coming at this from a basically different perspective. I’m really not trying to make allegations of anyone being biased. I’m in favour of removing a conflict of interest, for basically the same reasons this comes up in other domains (e.g. recusing someone from a selection panel when they are related to a candidate): there might be bias, there might be pressure towards bias, and there might be the appearance of bias.
The particular point of expecting it to be somewhat frequent that people want to work for and donate to the same org for totally legitimate reasons I agree with and made in the post.
Sure, there MIGHT be bias. So what? This type of ‘conflict of interest’ is totally speculative. It’s not existed for other nonprofit organizations where people have made donations to their employer. It’s not existed for employees working overtime. It doesn’t exist for the military (fairly commonplace for individuals to cover unit expenses there). I’ve never heard anything about this worry from inside or outside EA. You need to have a solid case before deciding that something is a problem. Right now you’re trying to find a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist, and what’s worse is you think that it should determine the long run culture of the movement.