On the topic of weirdness: I expect that if what I’m pointing to is a real problem, and paid emails would help the situation, then the benefits from becoming more effective at coordinating internally would massively outweigh reputational risks from increased weirdness.
How would this be an “internal practice”? The only way this would work would be to have people publically post their earn addresses.
I think you underrate the cost of weirdness.
Let’s say there’s a journalist who wants to write a story where he might ask a high-status EA to comment because it falls into their domain expertise.
Then the journalist searches for ways to contact the EA and finds that the EA prefers to get cold approaches via this system. The journalist might think: “This is bad, I don’t have a budget for this, paying sources is what evil people do”. Even when the journalist then finds that there’s a free way to contact the EA, they have their first contact with negative emotional attachment.
While the kind of his status EA that might be contacted this way might get more emails then they prefer, it’s important for them to be easily contacted by outsiders because that allows for valuable interactions to happen.
How would this be an “internal practice”? The only way this would work would be to have people publically post their earn addresses.
“Internal” in the sense of being primarily intended to solve internal coordination purposes and primarily used in messaging within the community.
I think you underrate the cost of weirdness.
You gave a particular example of a causal pathway by which weirdness leads to bad stuff, but it doesn’t really cause me to change my mind because I was already aware of it as a failure mode. What makes you think I underrate the cost in comparison to the benefits of coordination?
While the kind of his status EA that might be contacted this way might get more emails then they prefer, it’s important for them to be easily contacted by outsiders because that allows for valuable interactions to happen.
They’d still have a normal email. Though there is a risk of moving to an equilibrium for non-paid emails get no attention, and I haven’t thought that through in detail.
On the topic of weirdness: I expect that if what I’m pointing to is a real problem, and paid emails would help the situation, then the benefits from becoming more effective at coordinating internally would massively outweigh reputational risks from increased weirdness.
I find it somewhat hard to elucidate the reasons I believe this (though could try if you’d want me to), but some hand-wavy examples are Paul Graham’s thoughts that it’s almost always a mistake for startups to worry about competitors as opposed to focusing on building a good product (see paragraph 4); as well as extremely succesful organisations with pretty weird internal practices (e.g. Bridgewater, Amazon).
How would this be an “internal practice”? The only way this would work would be to have people publically post their earn addresses.
I think you underrate the cost of weirdness.
Let’s say there’s a journalist who wants to write a story where he might ask a high-status EA to comment because it falls into their domain expertise.
Then the journalist searches for ways to contact the EA and finds that the EA prefers to get cold approaches via this system. The journalist might think: “This is bad, I don’t have a budget for this, paying sources is what evil people do”. Even when the journalist then finds that there’s a free way to contact the EA, they have their first contact with negative emotional attachment.
While the kind of his status EA that might be contacted this way might get more emails then they prefer, it’s important for them to be easily contacted by outsiders because that allows for valuable interactions to happen.
“Internal” in the sense of being primarily intended to solve internal coordination purposes and primarily used in messaging within the community.
You gave a particular example of a causal pathway by which weirdness leads to bad stuff, but it doesn’t really cause me to change my mind because I was already aware of it as a failure mode. What makes you think I underrate the cost in comparison to the benefits of coordination?
They’d still have a normal email. Though there is a risk of moving to an equilibrium for non-paid emails get no attention, and I haven’t thought that through in detail.