The reason Eliezer gets paid so much is because a donor specifically requested it. The express purpose of the donation was to make Eliezer rich enough that he could afford to say “actually AI risk isn’t a big deal” and shut down MIRI without putting himself in a difficult financial situation.
(I don’t know about Nate’s salary but $235K looks pretty reasonable to me? That’s less than a mid-level software engineer makes.)
Edit Feb 2: Apparently the donation I was thinking of is separate from Eliezer’s salary, see his comment
Copying from my other comment:
The reason Eliezer gets paid so much is because a donor specifically requested it. The express purpose of the donation was to make Eliezer rich enough that he could afford to say “actually AI risk isn’t a big deal” and shut down MIRI without putting himself in a difficult financial situation.(I don’t know about Nate’s salary but $235K looks pretty reasonable to me? That’s less than a mid-level software engineer makes.)
Edit Feb 2: Apparently the donation I was thinking of is separate from Eliezer’s salary, see his comment