Thanks for sharing your piece, Sam. Thereâs a critical insight here that impact-maximizers might miss if they pattern-match âtreat community as intrinsically valuableâ to âprioritize feelings over outcomes.â The actual claim is deeply pragmatic: authentic relationships are instrumentally superior for maximizing long-run expected impact.
Our current model optimizes for legible short-term proxies (fellowship completions, cause-area conversions) that fit neatly in grant reports but poorly predict what matters: whoâs still contributing meaningfully in 5-10 years, whoâs thinking independently rather than deferring, and whoâs building things that wouldnât exist otherwise. In expected-value terms, 20 people with genuine conviction working for a decade dominate 100 people weakly deferring for two yearsâespecially when those 20 bring epistemic diversity and new ideas for impact rather than reproducing consensus.
If weâre serious about maximizing impact, we should at least question whether our current metrics actually maximize it. What would it look like to measure success differentlyâtracking 36-month retention, independent project initiation, or comfort disagreeing with group consensus? If authentic community building could produce superior long-term outcomes (as history and successful movements suggest), then resisting it isnât principled; itâs optimizing the wrong proxies. Iâm curious what others think: are we measuring the right things, or are we leaving impact on the table?
The thing that made utilitarian ethics click for me was the idea that often the problems stem from the proxies for impact rather than the impact itself and that nth order indirect effects of your direct actions should still be factored into the moral calculus of your decisions.
I also think a portfolio of proxies is useful in the space because of the moral uncertainty about what the most important things to track are. Even if fellowship completions were a strong metric (which I am very sceptical of), I think at least trying my social-first approach could give lots of valuable insights!
Thanks for sharing your piece, Sam. Thereâs a critical insight here that impact-maximizers might miss if they pattern-match âtreat community as intrinsically valuableâ to âprioritize feelings over outcomes.â The actual claim is deeply pragmatic: authentic relationships are instrumentally superior for maximizing long-run expected impact.
Our current model optimizes for legible short-term proxies (fellowship completions, cause-area conversions) that fit neatly in grant reports but poorly predict what matters: whoâs still contributing meaningfully in 5-10 years, whoâs thinking independently rather than deferring, and whoâs building things that wouldnât exist otherwise. In expected-value terms, 20 people with genuine conviction working for a decade dominate 100 people weakly deferring for two yearsâespecially when those 20 bring epistemic diversity and new ideas for impact rather than reproducing consensus.
If weâre serious about maximizing impact, we should at least question whether our current metrics actually maximize it. What would it look like to measure success differentlyâtracking 36-month retention, independent project initiation, or comfort disagreeing with group consensus? If authentic community building could produce superior long-term outcomes (as history and successful movements suggest), then resisting it isnât principled; itâs optimizing the wrong proxies. Iâm curious what others think: are we measuring the right things, or are we leaving impact on the table?
Thanks for this Brad, I totally agree!
The thing that made utilitarian ethics click for me was the idea that often the problems stem from the proxies for impact rather than the impact itself and that nth order indirect effects of your direct actions should still be factored into the moral calculus of your decisions.
I also think a portfolio of proxies is useful in the space because of the moral uncertainty about what the most important things to track are. Even if fellowship completions were a strong metric (which I am very sceptical of), I think at least trying my social-first approach could give lots of valuable insights!