Thanks for writing this, Will. I appreciate the honesty and ambition. Thank you for all you do and I hope you have people around you who love and support you.
I like the framing of judicious ambition. My key question around this and the related longtermism discussion is something like, What is the EA community for?
A democractic funding body?
A talent pool?
Community support?
Error checkers?
Are we the democratic body that makes funding decisions? No and I don’t want us to be. Doing the most good likely involves decisions that the median EA will disagree with. I would like to trial forecasting funding outcomes and voting systems, but I don’t assume that EA should be democratic. The question is what actually does the most good.
Are we a body of talented professionals who work on lower wages than they otherwise would? Yes, but I think we are more than that. Fundamentally it’s our work that is undervalued, rather than us. Animals, the global poor and future generations cannot pay to save their own lives, so we won’t be properly remunerated, except by the joy we take from doing it.
Are we community support for one another? Yes, and I think in regard to this dramatic shift in EA’s fortunes that’s particularly important. It is weird to move from scarcity to abundance. I wasn’t around in the EArly days, but I was working on cash-strapped community projects and it is good to take that discussion seriously.
Are we error checkers for community decisions? Maayybee. For me, this is one where we could do better. Currently, you either get sent the important google docs or you don’t. While I don’t think the community should make decisions, there is a lot of value in allowing them to look over them. But largely I don’t think the technology required to synthesise and correct huge amounts of information as an informal community exists yet. But given the potential value, it is worth looking into.
What is the EA community for? And what infrastructure is worth building in order to ensure that function as we scale as this post describes?
I think talent pool doesn’t /quite/ capture things like entrepreneurs and field builders and people who are building things.
Error checkers is good, but also something like finding cause x isn’t quite error checking. It’s more like avoiding the risk of omission kind of stuff / rethinking fundamental assumptions.
I think my problem with this question, which I’ve been thinking about in maybe different ways for many years, is that there isn’t a binary between community member and [core ea decision maker / etc.] - it’s very much a continuum and people occupy multiple roles at once. This becomes complicated because you can’t quite set boundaries the same way.
For example, if a community member starts their own grantmaking foundation, are they still a community members or a decision maker? Does it only count if they know the right people or are in a certain cause area? How do their responsibilities change (or not change)?
I see a big role of the community as being the facilitator of coordination. Tight coordination might enable more and better projects to be done, with less redundancy. It might also reduce beneficial competition & diversity of projects and ideas if people don’t pursue good projects because someone else is already in that space. Career advising seems like a good example of where different approaches can usefully coexist.
Thanks for writing this, Will. I appreciate the honesty and ambition. Thank you for all you do and I hope you have people around you who love and support you.
I like the framing of judicious ambition. My key question around this and the related longtermism discussion is something like, What is the EA community for?
A democractic funding body?
A talent pool?
Community support?
Error checkers?
Are we the democratic body that makes funding decisions? No and I don’t want us to be. Doing the most good likely involves decisions that the median EA will disagree with. I would like to trial forecasting funding outcomes and voting systems, but I don’t assume that EA should be democratic. The question is what actually does the most good.
Are we a body of talented professionals who work on lower wages than they otherwise would? Yes, but I think we are more than that. Fundamentally it’s our work that is undervalued, rather than us. Animals, the global poor and future generations cannot pay to save their own lives, so we won’t be properly remunerated, except by the joy we take from doing it.
Are we community support for one another? Yes, and I think in regard to this dramatic shift in EA’s fortunes that’s particularly important. It is weird to move from scarcity to abundance. I wasn’t around in the EArly days, but I was working on cash-strapped community projects and it is good to take that discussion seriously.
Are we error checkers for community decisions? Maayybee. For me, this is one where we could do better. Currently, you either get sent the important google docs or you don’t. While I don’t think the community should make decisions, there is a lot of value in allowing them to look over them. But largely I don’t think the technology required to synthesise and correct huge amounts of information as an informal community exists yet. But given the potential value, it is worth looking into.
What is the EA community for? And what infrastructure is worth building in order to ensure that function as we scale as this post describes?
I think this could be a standalone post
(fwiw strongly agree! Even in it’s current form I think it would start a really interesting / valuable discussion)
Yeah, I thought I’d test the waters then write it up if people thought it was valuable.
Do you have any other frames for what the community might be?
I think talent pool doesn’t /quite/ capture things like entrepreneurs and field builders and people who are building things.
Error checkers is good, but also something like finding cause x isn’t quite error checking. It’s more like avoiding the risk of omission kind of stuff / rethinking fundamental assumptions.
I think my problem with this question, which I’ve been thinking about in maybe different ways for many years, is that there isn’t a binary between community member and [core ea decision maker / etc.] - it’s very much a continuum and people occupy multiple roles at once. This becomes complicated because you can’t quite set boundaries the same way.
For example, if a community member starts their own grantmaking foundation, are they still a community members or a decision maker? Does it only count if they know the right people or are in a certain cause area? How do their responsibilities change (or not change)?
Researchers? People who develop and test different approaches to doing good at a rapid pace
Strongly agree as well!
I see a big role of the community as being the facilitator of coordination. Tight coordination might enable more and better projects to be done, with less redundancy. It might also reduce beneficial competition & diversity of projects and ideas if people don’t pursue good projects because someone else is already in that space. Career advising seems like a good example of where different approaches can usefully coexist.