So what to do? I’d like to note that some of the knee jerk reactions when hearing of the problem are examples of things not to do.
This seems overly quick to rule out a large class of potential responses. Assuming there are (or will be) more “vultures,” it’s not clear to me that the arguments against these “things not to do” are solid. I have these hesitations (among others) [edited for clarity and to add the last two]:
“The rationale for giving out high risk grants stands and hasn’t changed.”
Sure, but the average level of risk has increased. So accepting the same level of risk means being more selective.
“decreasing the riskiness of the grants just means we backslide into becoming like any other risk averse institution.”
Even if we put aside the previous point, riskiness can go down without becoming as low as that of typical risk-averse institutions.
“Increasing purity tests. [...] As a community that values good epidemics, having a purity test on whether or not this person agrees with the EA consensus on [insert topic here] is a death blow to the current very good MO.”
There are other costly signals the community could use.
“So not funding young people means this type of talent and potential is wasted. Let’s not do that.”
Just because something has downsides doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it; maybe it’s worth it to waste some talent to avoid many vultures. (I’m not saying that’s the case, just that more consideration would be helpful.)
This seems overly quick to rule out a large class of potential responses. Assuming there are (or will be) more “vultures,” it’s not clear to me that the arguments against these “things not to do” are solid. I have these hesitations (among others) [edited for clarity and to add the last two]:
“The rationale for giving out high risk grants stands and hasn’t changed.”
Sure, but the average level of risk has increased. So accepting the same level of risk means being more selective.
“decreasing the riskiness of the grants just means we backslide into becoming like any other risk averse institution.”
Even if we put aside the previous point, riskiness can go down without becoming as low as that of typical risk-averse institutions.
“Increasing purity tests. [...] As a community that values good epidemics, having a purity test on whether or not this person agrees with the EA consensus on [insert topic here] is a death blow to the current very good MO.”
There are other costly signals the community could use.
“So not funding young people means this type of talent and potential is wasted. Let’s not do that.”
Just because something has downsides doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it; maybe it’s worth it to waste some talent to avoid many vultures. (I’m not saying that’s the case, just that more consideration would be helpful.)
Thanks for this comment, Mauricio. I always appreciate you trying to dive deeper – and I think it’s quite important here. I largely agree with you.