For the record, I have a few places I think EA is burning >$30m per year, not that AW is actually one of them. Most EAs I speak to seem to have similarly-sized bugbears? Though unsurprisingly they donāt agree about where the money is getting burned..
So from where I stand I donāt recognise your guess of how people respond to that situation. A few things I believe that might help explain the difference:
Most of the money is directed by people who donāt read or otherwise have a fairly low opinion of the forum.
Posting on the forum is ānot for the faint of heartā.
On the occasion that I have dug into past forum prioritisation posts that were well-received, I generally find them seriously flawed or otherwise uncompelling. I have no particular reason to be sad about (1).
People are often aware that thereās an āother sideā that strongly disagrees with their disagreement and will push back hard, so they correctly choose not to waste our collective resources in a mud-slinging match.
I donāt expect to have capacity to engage further here, but if further discussion suggests that one of the above is a particularly surprising claim, I may consider writing it up in more detail in future.
Most EAs I speak to seem to have similarly-sized bugbears?
Maybe I donāt speak to enough EAs, which is possible. Obviously many EAs think our overall allocation isnāt optimal, but I wasnāt aware that many EAs think we are giving tens of millions of dollars to interventions/āareas that do NO good in expectation (which is what I mean by āburning moneyā).
Maybe the burning money point is a bit of a red herring though if the amount youāre burning is relatively small and more good can be done by redirecting other funds, even if they are currently doing some good. I concede this point.
To be honest you might be right overall that people who donāt think our funding allocation is perfect tend not to write on the forum about it. Perhaps they are just focusing on doing the most good by acting within their preferred cause area. Iād love to see more discussion of where marginal funding should go though. And FWIW one example of a post that does cover this and was very well-received was Arielās on the topic of animal welfare vs global health.
For the record, I have a few places I think EA is burning >$30m per year, not that AW is actually one of them. Most EAs I speak to seem to have similarly-sized bugbears? Though unsurprisingly they donāt agree about where the money is getting burned..
So from where I stand I donāt recognise your guess of how people respond to that situation. A few things I believe that might help explain the difference:
Most of the money is directed by people who donāt read or otherwise have a fairly low opinion of the forum.
Posting on the forum is ānot for the faint of heartā.
On the occasion that I have dug into past forum prioritisation posts that were well-received, I generally find them seriously flawed or otherwise uncompelling. I have no particular reason to be sad about (1).
People are often aware that thereās an āother sideā that strongly disagrees with their disagreement and will push back hard, so they correctly choose not to waste our collective resources in a mud-slinging match.
I donāt expect to have capacity to engage further here, but if further discussion suggests that one of the above is a particularly surprising claim, I may consider writing it up in more detail in future.
Maybe I donāt speak to enough EAs, which is possible. Obviously many EAs think our overall allocation isnāt optimal, but I wasnāt aware that many EAs think we are giving tens of millions of dollars to interventions/āareas that do NO good in expectation (which is what I mean by āburning moneyā).
Maybe the burning money point is a bit of a red herring though if the amount youāre burning is relatively small and more good can be done by redirecting other funds, even if they are currently doing some good. I concede this point.
To be honest you might be right overall that people who donāt think our funding allocation is perfect tend not to write on the forum about it. Perhaps they are just focusing on doing the most good by acting within their preferred cause area. Iād love to see more discussion of where marginal funding should go though. And FWIW one example of a post that does cover this and was very well-received was Arielās on the topic of animal welfare vs global health.