“Structural capital is the ability of the holder to absorb resources (e.g. people or money) and turn them into useful things”. What useful things has EA produced (exclusive of fundraising and converting more EAs)? I think e.g. the outcomes around developing world health interventions are really great, but it’s not clear to me how much of that is counterfactually attributable to EA; would the Gates foundation or somebody else have picked it up anyways?
Competent management: it feels like excellent management and managers are in short supply; there are a lot of people who do direct work (research, community work), but few managers and even fewer execs on the level of “VP or director at top series-A Silicon Valley startup”
Well written code: maybe the comparison to SV is especially harsh here, but I’ve been thinking that EA needs better software (still WIP). Software is an incredibly high-leverage activity, and I’d claim that eg most of the world’s productivity gains in the last two decades can be attributed to software; but EA draws from an philosophical/academic tradition and thus wayyy overvalues “blogging” over “coding”
Fleshing out the argument more:
“Structural capital is the ability of the holder to absorb resources (e.g. people or money) and turn them into useful things”. What useful things has EA produced (exclusive of fundraising and converting more EAs)? I think e.g. the outcomes around developing world health interventions are really great, but it’s not clear to me how much of that is counterfactually attributable to EA; would the Gates foundation or somebody else have picked it up anyways?
Competent management: it feels like excellent management and managers are in short supply; there are a lot of people who do direct work (research, community work), but few managers and even fewer execs on the level of “VP or director at top series-A Silicon Valley startup”
Well written code: maybe the comparison to SV is especially harsh here, but I’ve been thinking that EA needs better software (still WIP). Software is an incredibly high-leverage activity, and I’d claim that eg most of the world’s productivity gains in the last two decades can be attributed to software; but EA draws from an philosophical/academic tradition and thus wayyy overvalues “blogging” over “coding”