“More generally, I think what underlies these ideas of using lower salaries as a costly signal of value-alignment is the tacit assumption that value-alignment is a relatively cohesive, unidimensional trait. But I think that assumption isn’t quite right—as stated, our factor analyses rather suggested there are two core psychological traits defining positive inclinations to effective altruism (expansive altruism and effectiveness-focus), which aren’t that strongly related. (And I wouldn’t be surprised if we found further sub-facets if we did more extensive research on this.)”
I agree with the last sentence of this—there are probably at least as many sub-facets as there are distinct tenets of effective altruism, and only most or all of them coming together in the same person is sufficient for making someone aligned. Two facets is too few, and, echoing David, I do not think that the effectiveness-focus and expansive altruism measures are valid measures of actual psychological constructs (though these constructs may nevertheless exist). My view is that these measures should only be used for prediction, or reconstructed from scratch.
I am less sure the final part of the following:
“I think it’s better for EA recruiters to try to gauge, e.g. inclinations towards cause-neutrality, willingness to overcome motivated reasoning, and other important effective altruist traits, directly, rather than to try to infer them via their willingness to accept a lower salary—since those inferences will typically not have a high degree of accuracy.”
This depends, I think, on how difficult it is to ape effective altruism. As effective altruism becomes more popular and more materials are available to figure out the sorts of things walking-talking EAs say and think, I would speculate that aping effective altruism becomes easier. In this case, if you care about selecting for alignment, a willingness to take on a lower salary could be an important independent source of complimentary evidence.
“More generally, I think what underlies these ideas of using lower salaries as a costly signal of value-alignment is the tacit assumption that value-alignment is a relatively cohesive, unidimensional trait. But I think that assumption isn’t quite right—as stated, our factor analyses rather suggested there are two core psychological traits defining positive inclinations to effective altruism (expansive altruism and effectiveness-focus), which aren’t that strongly related. (And I wouldn’t be surprised if we found further sub-facets if we did more extensive research on this.)”
I agree with the last sentence of this—there are probably at least as many sub-facets as there are distinct tenets of effective altruism, and only most or all of them coming together in the same person is sufficient for making someone aligned. Two facets is too few, and, echoing David, I do not think that the effectiveness-focus and expansive altruism measures are valid measures of actual psychological constructs (though these constructs may nevertheless exist). My view is that these measures should only be used for prediction, or reconstructed from scratch.
I am less sure the final part of the following:
“I think it’s better for EA recruiters to try to gauge, e.g. inclinations towards cause-neutrality, willingness to overcome motivated reasoning, and other important effective altruist traits, directly, rather than to try to infer them via their willingness to accept a lower salary—since those inferences will typically not have a high degree of accuracy.”
This depends, I think, on how difficult it is to ape effective altruism. As effective altruism becomes more popular and more materials are available to figure out the sorts of things walking-talking EAs say and think, I would speculate that aping effective altruism becomes easier. In this case, if you care about selecting for alignment, a willingness to take on a lower salary could be an important independent source of complimentary evidence.