The following arguments are ideas and have not been thoroughly researched. They may not reflect my actual views. Counterarguments are not mentioned because the OP is “mainly interested in seeing critiques.” I may post counterarguments after the reward deadline has passed.
Claim to argue against: “$172,000 to the EA Hotel has at least as much EV as $172,000 distributed randomly to grantees from EA Meta Fund grantees or EA grants grantees.”
Argument 1: The EA Hotel has a low counterfactually-adjusted impact
Out of 19 residents, 15 would be doing the same work counterfactually, but the hotel allows them to do, on average, 2.2 times more EA work—as opposed to working a part time job to self-fund, or burning more runway.
This datapoint supports the view that most EA Hotel residents would be doing the same work whether or not they stay at the hotel. The claim that “the hotel allows them to do, on average, 2.2 times more EA work” could be incorrect. To gain more certainty about this, the EA Hotel should track what residents that are not accepted actually end up doing instead.
EA Hotel residents have many options to consider to do the same work while not staying at the hotel. For example, depending on the time and location requirements of the work, they could do some combination of: (1) part-time work to finance their living expenses, (2) living with parents, friends, or another location with near-zero living expenses, or (3) living in very low-cost housing that resembles the cost of the EA Hotel.
If someone pursues option (2), the EA Hotel is negative EV because someone can choose a free option instead of the EA Hotel, which consumes community funds.
If someone pursues options (1) and (3), they might only have to work a very limited amount of time. For example, I believe I recently heard of someone that was able to find a one bedroom living arrangement in Berkeley, CA in a large house for $500 a month, although they have to share a bathroom with many people. So someone might only need to do paid work 25% of the time and can do EA work 75% of the time. This suggests that the “2.2 times more EA work” figure greatly overstates the benefit of the EA Hotel in terms of reducing living expenses. Pursing options (1) and (3) seems to be feasible for the vast majority of people.
If direct funding allows people to pursue option (3) and secure low-cost housing, and if the cost is around the same as the EA Hotel, there may be no need for the EA Hotel itself to exist. The question becomes what is the counterfactually-adjusted impact of funding living expenses at the EA Hotel compared to option (3)? Adjustments should be made for things like missing out on the benefits of living elsewhere than Blackpool as well as relocation time and expenses which would further reduce counterfactual impact. The EA Hotel community certainly provides benefits, although coworking out of REACH may provide similar benefits.
Argument 2: The EA Hotel should charge users directly instead of raising funding
Rather than fundraising from EAs, the hotel should try to directly charge people who are benefiting from their services and community, which is an argument against donating to the hotel.
There doesn’t seem to be a need to fund people who can afford the hotel. It’s not clear what proportion of people fall under this category, but considering that it only takes 13 weeks of work at $15/hour to pay $7,900 for a one year stay at the hotel, it is possible that majority of residents can already afford to stay at the hotel.
For people who cannot afford the EA Hotel, applicants to funding organizations like EA Grants can include that they are requesting funding for living expenses and indicate EA Hotel expenses as part of their requested grant funding. EA Grants evaluators and other funders may be better equipped to evaluate the EV of projects people are working on as opposed to EA Hotel staff. If EA Grants can already cover this, there is no need to donate to the EA Hotel.
Argument 3: Funding projects has a higher impact than funding living expenses
I assume that EA Grants funds applicants’ project expenses as well as their personal salary and living expenses. This could be higher impact than solely funding living expenses. Working at the EA Hotel with an unfunded project may be quite unproductive, particularly if the project requires funding to get anywhere. Seeking early-stage EA project funding seems to require waiting for long periods of time (perhaps months) for funders to get back to you rather than working full-time trying to acquire funding.
Argument 4: People should not donate to the EA Hotel until they improve their impact metrics and reporting
The EV estimation for the EA Hotel is highly mathematical and commenters have expressed that it is difficult to follow. Actual impact reporting appears to consist of testimonials which are hard to evaluate. It’s even trickier to evaluate the counterfactually-adjusted impact.
1. The same work, yes, but at a much slower rate (factoring in the need to work outside jobs to support themselves; the haste consideration might also come into play), or burning runway at a faster rate than the EA Hotel is spending on them (if you take the view that conserving EA money in general is a plus, then this is a win). Regarding your point (3) as stated in the original blog post, we are open to funding people’s living expenses in other places if they are comparable to what they are for hotel guests. No one has yet taken us up on this though. And it also requires a high level of trust that people won’t just spend more money somewhere else and so therefore work for a shorter amount of time for the cost.
As you mention, the additional community benefits are likely to be considerable. Co-working out of REACH might give some of them, but is also likely to be a lot more expensive, and there isn’t that much space at REACH for people to do this. Also living together generally allows for a much greater degree of social interaction and a more close-knit supportive community.
2. This cost saving for all involved (EA Grants, EA Grantees) requires the hotel to exist though. And it won’t if it doesn’t bring in enough early stage funding to become more established. Also, it’s worth considering that fact that it’s unlikely the hotel would’ve got off the ground at all had we charged everyone from the outset.
Note that we request people who have salaries or >2 years of runway to pay cost price.
3. What project expenses are you imagining that don’t include salary? (I say this as a salary is usually spent on living costs and if living costs are provided the need for it is a lot lower). The hotel allows for the cheap granting—and purchasing—of runway for EA projects.
The EV post might look like a lot of scary maths on the face of it, but it’s really not that complicated. It’s just an attempt to explicitly factor out the different considerations that go into estimating the EV of the EA Hotel. However, I understand that gut feelings tend to dominate such estimates. It can be useful to sanity check your gut instincts by doing such an explicit calculation, but equally it’s the mathematical model that often needs adjusting (or throwing out) if it doesn’t give you an answer close to your intuitive estimate.
The following arguments are ideas and have not been thoroughly researched. They may not reflect my actual views. Counterarguments are not mentioned because the OP is “mainly interested in seeing critiques.” I may post counterarguments after the reward deadline has passed.
Claim to argue against: “$172,000 to the EA Hotel has at least as much EV as $172,000 distributed randomly to grantees from EA Meta Fund grantees or EA grants grantees.”
Argument 1: The EA Hotel has a low counterfactually-adjusted impact
In this post, the EA Hotel states:
This datapoint supports the view that most EA Hotel residents would be doing the same work whether or not they stay at the hotel. The claim that “the hotel allows them to do, on average, 2.2 times more EA work” could be incorrect. To gain more certainty about this, the EA Hotel should track what residents that are not accepted actually end up doing instead.
EA Hotel residents have many options to consider to do the same work while not staying at the hotel. For example, depending on the time and location requirements of the work, they could do some combination of: (1) part-time work to finance their living expenses, (2) living with parents, friends, or another location with near-zero living expenses, or (3) living in very low-cost housing that resembles the cost of the EA Hotel.
If someone pursues option (2), the EA Hotel is negative EV because someone can choose a free option instead of the EA Hotel, which consumes community funds.
If someone pursues options (1) and (3), they might only have to work a very limited amount of time. For example, I believe I recently heard of someone that was able to find a one bedroom living arrangement in Berkeley, CA in a large house for $500 a month, although they have to share a bathroom with many people. So someone might only need to do paid work 25% of the time and can do EA work 75% of the time. This suggests that the “2.2 times more EA work” figure greatly overstates the benefit of the EA Hotel in terms of reducing living expenses. Pursing options (1) and (3) seems to be feasible for the vast majority of people.
If direct funding allows people to pursue option (3) and secure low-cost housing, and if the cost is around the same as the EA Hotel, there may be no need for the EA Hotel itself to exist. The question becomes what is the counterfactually-adjusted impact of funding living expenses at the EA Hotel compared to option (3)? Adjustments should be made for things like missing out on the benefits of living elsewhere than Blackpool as well as relocation time and expenses which would further reduce counterfactual impact. The EA Hotel community certainly provides benefits, although coworking out of REACH may provide similar benefits.
Argument 2: The EA Hotel should charge users directly instead of raising funding
Rather than fundraising from EAs, the hotel should try to directly charge people who are benefiting from their services and community, which is an argument against donating to the hotel.
There doesn’t seem to be a need to fund people who can afford the hotel. It’s not clear what proportion of people fall under this category, but considering that it only takes 13 weeks of work at $15/hour to pay $7,900 for a one year stay at the hotel, it is possible that majority of residents can already afford to stay at the hotel.
For people who cannot afford the EA Hotel, applicants to funding organizations like EA Grants can include that they are requesting funding for living expenses and indicate EA Hotel expenses as part of their requested grant funding. EA Grants evaluators and other funders may be better equipped to evaluate the EV of projects people are working on as opposed to EA Hotel staff. If EA Grants can already cover this, there is no need to donate to the EA Hotel.
Argument 3: Funding projects has a higher impact than funding living expenses
I assume that EA Grants funds applicants’ project expenses as well as their personal salary and living expenses. This could be higher impact than solely funding living expenses. Working at the EA Hotel with an unfunded project may be quite unproductive, particularly if the project requires funding to get anywhere. Seeking early-stage EA project funding seems to require waiting for long periods of time (perhaps months) for funders to get back to you rather than working full-time trying to acquire funding.
Argument 4: People should not donate to the EA Hotel until they improve their impact metrics and reporting
The EV estimation for the EA Hotel is highly mathematical and commenters have expressed that it is difficult to follow. Actual impact reporting appears to consist of testimonials which are hard to evaluate. It’s even trickier to evaluate the counterfactually-adjusted impact.
1. The same work, yes, but at a much slower rate (factoring in the need to work outside jobs to support themselves; the haste consideration might also come into play), or burning runway at a faster rate than the EA Hotel is spending on them (if you take the view that conserving EA money in general is a plus, then this is a win). Regarding your point (3) as stated in the original blog post, we are open to funding people’s living expenses in other places if they are comparable to what they are for hotel guests. No one has yet taken us up on this though. And it also requires a high level of trust that people won’t just spend more money somewhere else and so therefore work for a shorter amount of time for the cost.
As you mention, the additional community benefits are likely to be considerable. Co-working out of REACH might give some of them, but is also likely to be a lot more expensive, and there isn’t that much space at REACH for people to do this. Also living together generally allows for a much greater degree of social interaction and a more close-knit supportive community.
2. This cost saving for all involved (EA Grants, EA Grantees) requires the hotel to exist though. And it won’t if it doesn’t bring in enough early stage funding to become more established. Also, it’s worth considering that fact that it’s unlikely the hotel would’ve got off the ground at all had we charged everyone from the outset.
Note that we request people who have salaries or >2 years of runway to pay cost price.
3. What project expenses are you imagining that don’t include salary? (I say this as a salary is usually spent on living costs and if living costs are provided the need for it is a lot lower). The hotel allows for the cheap granting—and purchasing—of runway for EA projects.
4. See here and here for a start.
The EV post might look like a lot of scary maths on the face of it, but it’s really not that complicated. It’s just an attempt to explicitly factor out the different considerations that go into estimating the EV of the EA Hotel. However, I understand that gut feelings tend to dominate such estimates. It can be useful to sanity check your gut instincts by doing such an explicit calculation, but equally it’s the mathematical model that often needs adjusting (or throwing out) if it doesn’t give you an answer close to your intuitive estimate.