I’m hesitant about this because I think it would be costly to implement, in terms of time and attention, and because I think it’s very weird and could negatively affect our reputation.
Putting that to one side, I’m trying to think through what the social norms would be around this for a few examples:
-If I emailed 80,000 Hours with a career question and £20, should I expect them to definitely respond? Does this lead to a market for private career coaching? On the other hand, what if I sent them a £500 email and they never responded—couldn’t I be rightfully upset?
-If Julia Wise were prioritising paid emails in her role regarding community health, is she more likely to miss emails from people on the periphery of EA or who have less money, who are potentially very vulnerable?
-Would this system represent a power shift toward people with more money, because they can more easily pay large amounts?
(FYI, my understanding is that you only pay if you get a response, so I don’t think the example of people feeling entitled to a response from 80,000 Hours applies)
I think the way to answer the question is: “given the distribution of equilibria we expect following this change, what are the expected costs and benefits, and how does that compare with the costs and benefits under the current equilibrium?” (as well as considering strategic heuristics like avoiding irreversible actions and unilateralist action.)
I don’t update much on your comment since it feels like it’s just pointing out a bunch of costs under a particular new equilibrium, without engaging enough with how likely this is or what the benefits would be. [1]
For example:
-If Julia Wise were prioritising paid emails in her role regarding community health, is she more likely to miss emails from people on the periphery of EA or who have less money, who are potentially very vulnerable?
Here, by assumption, Julia Wise already gets so many emails that she misses some/has to prioritise. So the question is: what gets prioritised currently, and would get prioritised under the new system? There would likely be a shift towards people with more money being more able to get their issues heard—but I’d expect it to be very small (e.g. initial email costs of $5-$25 might be enough). It might also allow her to find out about stuff she otherwise wouldn’t (“I don’t know if this is worth your time, though it might be, and if it wasn’t, here’s $10 to offset the attention cost”).
Though to be clear, I’ve not thought a lot about community health matters, and it’s not the area where I would pilot this.
[1] To be clear, I’m not claiming you should do the entire analysis, this would be an isolated demand for rigor. Just to engage more with opposing points and say why they’re not convincing.
I guess I don’t experience major problems with email (sending or receiving), so I don’t see very significant benefits. I just read your post as very costly ways to achieve marginal gains.
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.
I’m hesitant about this because I think it would be costly to implement, in terms of time and attention, and because I think it’s very weird and could negatively affect our reputation.
Putting that to one side, I’m trying to think through what the social norms would be around this for a few examples:
-If I emailed 80,000 Hours with a career question and £20, should I expect them to definitely respond? Does this lead to a market for private career coaching? On the other hand, what if I sent them a £500 email and they never responded—couldn’t I be rightfully upset?
-If Julia Wise were prioritising paid emails in her role regarding community health, is she more likely to miss emails from people on the periphery of EA or who have less money, who are potentially very vulnerable?
-Would this system represent a power shift toward people with more money, because they can more easily pay large amounts?
(FYI, my understanding is that you only pay if you get a response, so I don’t think the example of people feeling entitled to a response from 80,000 Hours applies)
I think the way to answer the question is: “given the distribution of equilibria we expect following this change, what are the expected costs and benefits, and how does that compare with the costs and benefits under the current equilibrium?” (as well as considering strategic heuristics like avoiding irreversible actions and unilateralist action.)
I don’t update much on your comment since it feels like it’s just pointing out a bunch of costs under a particular new equilibrium, without engaging enough with how likely this is or what the benefits would be. [1]
For example:
Here, by assumption, Julia Wise already gets so many emails that she misses some/has to prioritise. So the question is: what gets prioritised currently, and would get prioritised under the new system? There would likely be a shift towards people with more money being more able to get their issues heard—but I’d expect it to be very small (e.g. initial email costs of $5-$25 might be enough). It might also allow her to find out about stuff she otherwise wouldn’t (“I don’t know if this is worth your time, though it might be, and if it wasn’t, here’s $10 to offset the attention cost”).
Though to be clear, I’ve not thought a lot about community health matters, and it’s not the area where I would pilot this.
[1] To be clear, I’m not claiming you should do the entire analysis, this would be an isolated demand for rigor. Just to engage more with opposing points and say why they’re not convincing.
I guess I don’t experience major problems with email (sending or receiving), so I don’t see very significant benefits. I just read your post as very costly ways to achieve marginal gains.
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.