I think ever since EA has become more of an “expected value maximisation” movement rather than a “doing good based on high quality evidence” movement, it has been quite plausible for EA activity overall, or community building specifically, to turn out to be net-negative in retrospect, but I think the expected value of community building remains extremely high.
I support more emphasis on thin EA and the development of a sort of rule of thumb for what a good ratio of meta spending vs object level impact spending would be.
Strongly agree that it is surprising that some of Carla Zoe Kremer’s reforms haven’t been implemented. Frankly, I would guess the reason is that too many leadership EAs are overconfident in their decision making and are much too focused on “rowing” instead of “steering” in Holden Karnofsky’s terms.
“ Social movements are likely to overvalue efforts to increase the power of their movement and undervalue their goals actually being accomplished, and EA is not immune to this failure mode.” Why do you think this, it is mostly intuition?
My view of other social movements is that they undervalue efforts to increase power which is why most are unsuccessful. I credit a lot of EA’s success in terms of object level impact to a healthy degree of focus on increasing power as a means to increasing impact.
“ Social movements are likely to overvalue efforts to increase the power of their movement and undervalue their goals actually being accomplished, and EA is not immune to this failure mode.”
While I am unaware of any actual studies supporting it (indeed, the nature of the problem makes it rather resistant to study), that statement sounds like a rephrasing or redevelopment of what’s sometimes known as Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.
Your last line, if I’m understanding you correctly, is to suggest that this is a good thing because of the nature of those in the second category in EA. One can imagine situations where this would be the case, such as Plato’s philosopher-kings worthy of trust.
I think ever since EA has become more of an “expected value maximisation” movement rather than a “doing good based on high quality evidence” movement, it has been quite plausible for EA activity overall, or community building specifically, to turn out to be net-negative in retrospect, but I think the expected value of community building remains extremely high.
I support more emphasis on thin EA and the development of a sort of rule of thumb for what a good ratio of meta spending vs object level impact spending would be.
Strongly agree that it is surprising that some of Carla Zoe Kremer’s reforms haven’t been implemented. Frankly, I would guess the reason is that too many leadership EAs are overconfident in their decision making and are much too focused on “rowing” instead of “steering” in Holden Karnofsky’s terms.
“ Social movements are likely to overvalue efforts to increase the power of their movement and undervalue their goals actually being accomplished, and EA is not immune to this failure mode.” Why do you think this, it is mostly intuition?
My view of other social movements is that they undervalue efforts to increase power which is why most are unsuccessful. I credit a lot of EA’s success in terms of object level impact to a healthy degree of focus on increasing power as a means to increasing impact.
While I am unaware of any actual studies supporting it (indeed, the nature of the problem makes it rather resistant to study), that statement sounds like a rephrasing or redevelopment of what’s sometimes known as Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
Your last line, if I’m understanding you correctly, is to suggest that this is a good thing because of the nature of those in the second category in EA. One can imagine situations where this would be the case, such as Plato’s philosopher-kings worthy of trust.