Great points, thanks David. I especially like the compare and contrast between personal connections and academic credentials. I think probably you’re more experienced with academia and non-EA philanthropy than I am, so your empirical views are different. But I also think that even if EA is better than these other communities, we should still be thinking about (1) keeping it that way, and (2) maybe getting even less reliant. This is part of what I was saying with:
None of this is unique to EA. While I think EA is particularly guilty of some of these issues, in general I could aim this criticism in any direction and hit someone guilty of it. But “everyone else does it” is not in and of itself a reason to accept it. We claim to be doing something really difficult and important, so we should try to be as good as possible.
I think your observations may be counterevidence to anyone saying that EA should become more reliant on personal connections. Since you think (possibly correctly) that other major philanthropy is more reliant on personal connections than EA is, and I assume we agree that EA philanthropy is better than most other major philanthropy.
Great points, thanks David. I especially like the compare and contrast between personal connections and academic credentials. I think probably you’re more experienced with academia and non-EA philanthropy than I am, so your empirical views are different. But I also think that even if EA is better than these other communities, we should still be thinking about (1) keeping it that way, and (2) maybe getting even less reliant. This is part of what I was saying with:
I think your observations may be counterevidence to anyone saying that EA should become more reliant on personal connections. Since you think (possibly correctly) that other major philanthropy is more reliant on personal connections than EA is, and I assume we agree that EA philanthropy is better than most other major philanthropy.