None of my principled arguments against “only care about big projects” have convinced anyone, but in practice Google reorganized around that exact policy (“don’t start a project unless it could conceivably have 1b+ users, kill if it’s ever not on track to reach that”) and they haven’t grown an interesting thing since.
My guess is the benefits of immediately aiming high are overwhelmed by the costs of less contact with reality.
the policy was commonly announced when I worked at google (2014), I’m sure anyone else who was there at the time would confirm its existence. In terms of “haven’t grown anything since”, I haven’t kept close track but can’t name one and frequently hear people say the same.
I like the Google Pixels. Well specifically I liked 2 and 3a but my current one (6a) is a bit of a disappointment. My house also uses Google Nest and Chromecast regularly. Tensorflow is okay. But yeah, overall certainly nothing as big as Gmail or Google Maps, never mind their core product.
Google was producing the Android OS and its own flagship phones well before the Pixel, so I consider it to predate my knowledge of the policy (although maybe the policy started before I got there, which I’ve now dated to 4/1/2013)
Please send me links to posts with those arguments you’ve made, as I’ve not read them, though my guess would be that you haven’t convinced anyone because some of the greatest successes in EA started out so small. I remember the same kind of skepticism being widely expressed some projects like that.
Rethink Priorities comes to mind as one major example. The best example is Charity Entrepreneurship. It was not only one of those projects with potential scalability that was doubted. It keeps incubating successful non-profit EA startups for across almost every EA-affiliated cause. CE’s cumulative track record might the best empirical argument against the broad applicability to the EA movement of your own position here.
Your comment makes the most sense to me if you misread my post and are responding to exactly the opposite of my position, but maybe I’m the one misreading you.
None of my principled arguments against “only care about big projects” have convinced anyone, but in practice Google reorganized around that exact policy (“don’t start a project unless it could conceivably have 1b+ users, kill if it’s ever not on track to reach that”) and they haven’t grown an interesting thing since.
My guess is the benefits of immediately aiming high are overwhelmed by the costs of less contact with reality.
Can you link to a source about this?
the policy was commonly announced when I worked at google (2014), I’m sure anyone else who was there at the time would confirm its existence. In terms of “haven’t grown anything since”, I haven’t kept close track but can’t name one and frequently hear people say the same.
I like the Google Pixels. Well specifically I liked 2 and 3a but my current one (6a) is a bit of a disappointment. My house also uses Google Nest and Chromecast regularly. Tensorflow is okay. But yeah, overall certainly nothing as big as Gmail or Google Maps, never mind their core product.
Google was producing the Android OS and its own flagship phones well before the Pixel, so I consider it to predate my knowledge of the policy (although maybe the policy started before I got there, which I’ve now dated to 4/1/2013)
Please send me links to posts with those arguments you’ve made, as I’ve not read them, though my guess would be that you haven’t convinced anyone because some of the greatest successes in EA started out so small. I remember the same kind of skepticism being widely expressed some projects like that.
Rethink Priorities comes to mind as one major example. The best example is Charity Entrepreneurship. It was not only one of those projects with potential scalability that was doubted. It keeps incubating successful non-profit EA startups for across almost every EA-affiliated cause. CE’s cumulative track record might the best empirical argument against the broad applicability to the EA movement of your own position here.
Your comment makes the most sense to me if you misread my post and are responding to exactly the opposite of my position, but maybe I’m the one misreading you.
Upvoted. Thanks for clarifying. The conclusion to your above post was ambiguous to me, though I now understand.