I would consider starting some kind of “major achievement” prize scheme.
Roughly, the idea I have in mind is to give large no-strings-attached lump sums to individuals who have:
(a) done exceptionally valuable work at non-trivial personal cost (e.g. massive salary sacrifice)
(b) a high likelihood of continuing to do extremely valuable work.
The aims would be:
(i) to help such figures become personally “set for life” in the way that successful startup founders sometimes do.
(ii) to improve the personal incentive structure faced by people considering EA careers.
This idea is very half baked. A couple quick comments:
On (i): I’m surprised how often I meet people doing very valuable work who seem to have significant personal finance issues that (a) distract them and (b) mean that they don’t buy time aggressively enough. Perhaps more importantly, I suspect that (c) personal financial security enables people to take riskier bets on their inside views, in a way that is valuably generative and/or error-correcting; also that (d) people who are doing very valuable work often have lists of good ideas for turning $$$ into good outcomes, so giving these people greater financial security would be one merit-based means of increasing the number of EA-sympathetic angel investors.
On (ii): I have no idea if this would actually work out well. In theory, it’d make the personal incentives look a bit more like they do in for-profit entrepreneurship, i.e. small chance of large financial upside if you do well. In practice I could imagine a well known prize scheme causing various sorts of trouble.
E.g. I see major PR risks to this kind of thing (“effective altruists conclude that the most effective use of money is to make themselves rich”) and internal risk of resentment or even corruption scandals. I’ve not looked into how science prizes fare on this kind of thing.
On (i): one possible counter is that IIRC there’s some evidence for a “personal wealth sweet spot” in entrepreneurship. I think the story is supposed to be that too little financial security means you can’t afford the risks, but too much security (both financial and status) makes you too complacent and lazy. My guess is that the complacency thing happens for many but not all people. Maybe one can filter for this.
On (1): Have you encouraged any of these people to apply for existing sources of funding within EA? Did any of them do so successfully?
On (3): The most prominent EA-run “major achievement prize” is the Future of Life Award, which has been won by people well outside of EA. That’s one way to avoid bad press — and perhaps some extremely impactful people would become more interested in EA as a result of winning a prize? (Though I expect you’d want to target mid-career people, rather than people who have already done their life’s work in the style of the FLA.)
In some cases yes, but only when they were working on specific projects that I expected to be legible and palatable to EA funders. Are there places I should be sending people who I think are very promising to be considered for very low strings personal development / freedom-to-explore type funding?
The Infrastructure and LTF Funds have both (I think) made grants of the “help someone develop/save money” variety, mostly for students and new academics, but also in a couple of cases for people who were trying to pick up particular skills.
I also think it’s perfectly valid for people to post questions about this kind of thing on the Forum — “I’m doing work X, which I think is very valuable, but I don’t see an obvious way to get it funded to the point where I’d be financially secure — any suggestions?”
I would consider starting some kind of “major achievement” prize scheme.
Roughly, the idea I have in mind is to give large no-strings-attached lump sums to individuals who have:
(a) done exceptionally valuable work at non-trivial personal cost (e.g. massive salary sacrifice)
(b) a high likelihood of continuing to do extremely valuable work.
The aims would be:
(i) to help such figures become personally “set for life” in the way that successful startup founders sometimes do.
(ii) to improve the personal incentive structure faced by people considering EA careers.
This idea is very half baked. A couple quick comments:
On (i): I’m surprised how often I meet people doing very valuable work who seem to have significant personal finance issues that (a) distract them and (b) mean that they don’t buy time aggressively enough. Perhaps more importantly, I suspect that (c) personal financial security enables people to take riskier bets on their inside views, in a way that is valuably generative and/or error-correcting; also that (d) people who are doing very valuable work often have lists of good ideas for turning $$$ into good outcomes, so giving these people greater financial security would be one merit-based means of increasing the number of EA-sympathetic angel investors.
On (ii): I have no idea if this would actually work out well. In theory, it’d make the personal incentives look a bit more like they do in for-profit entrepreneurship, i.e. small chance of large financial upside if you do well. In practice I could imagine a well known prize scheme causing various sorts of trouble.
E.g. I see major PR risks to this kind of thing (“effective altruists conclude that the most effective use of money is to make themselves rich”) and internal risk of resentment or even corruption scandals. I’ve not looked into how science prizes fare on this kind of thing.
On (i): one possible counter is that IIRC there’s some evidence for a “personal wealth sweet spot” in entrepreneurship. I think the story is supposed to be that too little financial security means you can’t afford the risks, but too much security (both financial and status) makes you too complacent and lazy. My guess is that the complacency thing happens for many but not all people. Maybe one can filter for this.
On (1): Have you encouraged any of these people to apply for existing sources of funding within EA? Did any of them do so successfully?
On (3): The most prominent EA-run “major achievement prize” is the Future of Life Award, which has been won by people well outside of EA. That’s one way to avoid bad press — and perhaps some extremely impactful people would become more interested in EA as a result of winning a prize? (Though I expect you’d want to target mid-career people, rather than people who have already done their life’s work in the style of the FLA.)
In some cases yes, but only when they were working on specific projects that I expected to be legible and palatable to EA funders. Are there places I should be sending people who I think are very promising to be considered for very low strings personal development / freedom-to-explore type funding?
The Infrastructure and LTF Funds have both (I think) made grants of the “help someone develop/save money” variety, mostly for students and new academics, but also in a couple of cases for people who were trying to pick up particular skills.
I also think it’s perfectly valid for people to post questions about this kind of thing on the Forum — “I’m doing work X, which I think is very valuable, but I don’t see an obvious way to get it funded to the point where I’d be financially secure — any suggestions?”