I kind of skimmed this post, so hopefully I am not making of fool pf myself but I think you didnāt really address a key point which is raised by ācriticsā and that are the challenges associated with the tendency for centralization in EA.
There are basically two to three handful of people who control massive amounts of wealth, many of which are interweaved in a web of difficult to untangle relationships ranging from friendly to romantic. The denser this web is, the more difficult it is for people to understand what is going on. Are rejections or grants based on emotion or merit? Itās simply difficult to say the more complex the interactions are.
I think having friendships and relationships is great if the people involved are happy but we have to develop appropriate means for dealing with the complexity of it all. For instance, in cooperatives relationships are often very highly valued and central to the whole experience of being part of the cooperative. There are formalized mechanisms in place to afford systematic discussion of relationships and negotiation of mutually acceptable forms of organization. In EA, we are lacking this kind of structure. While some participatory islands might exist, there are often streamlined but opaque processes in place that allow a few people to make huge decisions affecting countless people with very limited involvement from the community at large (or the people affected for that matter). This becomes pretty tricky to justify as āEAā if you cannot demonstrate that the decisions being made are āabove reproachā and not influenced by romantic relationships, in-group favoritism or the like.
In sum, I think I broadly agree that having friendly or even romantic relationships within the EA community can also have a good side but I am very skeptical that our current ways of organizing can handle all the complexity that is entailed by strong versions of this. If we want deeper and more relationships within the community, we should adapt our spaces and institutions to be ready for that. We owe it to ourselves and others to figure out how we can behave responsibly in this context.
Yeah, this seems very reasonable. Iād be in favour of less centralization and more transparency. It does seem like there are issues where grantmakers have to decide about whether to give a grant to present or former partners or metamours, or close friends. Maybe there could be a system where peopleās grant proposals must always be assessed by someone who doesnāt live in the same hub as them (if they live in a hub).
Iām not really sure this particularly applies here though. I think power being concentrated is not a runoff effect of their being dense relationship clusters within EA, and instead that not having systems of diffuse decision making just is the key problem for the issue of centrality that you mention. Sure, there are probably some cases where friendships have allowed people to bypass more formal and open means of communicating about decisions between orgs, but I still think the effect that has on perpetuating this system is minimal at best.
But to run with your comment a bit further, what do you think might be the best way to solve the centrality issue of EA?
I kind of skimmed this post, so hopefully I am not making of fool pf myself but I think you didnāt really address a key point which is raised by ācriticsā and that are the challenges associated with the tendency for centralization in EA.
There are basically two to three handful of people who control massive amounts of wealth, many of which are interweaved in a web of difficult to untangle relationships ranging from friendly to romantic. The denser this web is, the more difficult it is for people to understand what is going on. Are rejections or grants based on emotion or merit? Itās simply difficult to say the more complex the interactions are.
I think having friendships and relationships is great if the people involved are happy but we have to develop appropriate means for dealing with the complexity of it all. For instance, in cooperatives relationships are often very highly valued and central to the whole experience of being part of the cooperative. There are formalized mechanisms in place to afford systematic discussion of relationships and negotiation of mutually acceptable forms of organization. In EA, we are lacking this kind of structure. While some participatory islands might exist, there are often streamlined but opaque processes in place that allow a few people to make huge decisions affecting countless people with very limited involvement from the community at large (or the people affected for that matter). This becomes pretty tricky to justify as āEAā if you cannot demonstrate that the decisions being made are āabove reproachā and not influenced by romantic relationships, in-group favoritism or the like.
In sum, I think I broadly agree that having friendly or even romantic relationships within the EA community can also have a good side but I am very skeptical that our current ways of organizing can handle all the complexity that is entailed by strong versions of this. If we want deeper and more relationships within the community, we should adapt our spaces and institutions to be ready for that. We owe it to ourselves and others to figure out how we can behave responsibly in this context.
Yeah, this seems very reasonable. Iād be in favour of less centralization and more transparency. It does seem like there are issues where grantmakers have to decide about whether to give a grant to present or former partners or metamours, or close friends. Maybe there could be a system where peopleās grant proposals must always be assessed by someone who doesnāt live in the same hub as them (if they live in a hub).
Iām not really sure this particularly applies here though. I think power being concentrated is not a runoff effect of their being dense relationship clusters within EA, and instead that not having systems of diffuse decision making just is the key problem for the issue of centrality that you mention. Sure, there are probably some cases where friendships have allowed people to bypass more formal and open means of communicating about decisions between orgs, but I still think the effect that has on perpetuating this system is minimal at best.
But to run with your comment a bit further, what do you think might be the best way to solve the centrality issue of EA?