I’m going to break your rules a bit and instead start by critiquing the proposition:
$X to the EA Hotel has at least as much EV as $X to the most promising person at the Hotel.
It may not be easy to fund individuals, but if someone wanted to give, say, $10,000, what’s to stop them from looking at the Hotel’s guest list, picking the best-sounding project, and offering money directly to the person behind it? (Then, if that person doesn’t need/want the money, they move to the next-best person, and so on.)
This may burn time on vetting, but it’s at least easier than vetting everyone at the Hotel to get a sense for its average impact.
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You could also try to estimate the Hotel’s value as a tool for creating networks—boosting research productivity by giving people an easier way to start conversations and help with one another’s work. If that’s the case, the comparison to EA Meta grantees becomes more apt.
That said, there are a lot of Meta grantees, and trying to find the “best” of them is difficult by any measure. So people may end up wanting to fund organizations with longer histories (like LEAN or The Life You Can Save), or organizations with an extremely good “best-case” scenario (like the Center for Election Science or Sparrow). It’s hard to think of which sub-factor the EA Hotel is “best at” compared to all those other organizations.
Just to give one example: For $10,000, I could fund Giving Games where several hundred people are introduced to EA and make their first “EA-aligned” donation, or pay for 1.3 years of EA Hotel time. Those are very different things, and I could imagine at least 50% of potential meta donors thinking that the first option is better.
If the rest of those donors then compare the Hotel to the next project on the list, and the next… well, there aren’t many people who make large donations to individual meta projects, and it’s not surprising if only a small fraction of that already-small pool lands on the Hotel as their “final answer”.
(This model is too simple, of course, since many donors give to multiple organizations. The most important point is that the Hotel has a lot of competition, and may not stand out enough compared to all the other options.)
In answer to your first point, see my reply to Moses here.
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Regarding your second point—comparing with other Meta opportunities—one might also want to consider that many Meta projects have goals of bringing more people into the community. We need to then cater for these people. The EA Hotel can help do that, and fill an important gap.
I’m going to break your rules a bit and instead start by critiquing the proposition:
$X to the EA Hotel has at least as much EV as $X to the most promising person at the Hotel.
It may not be easy to fund individuals, but if someone wanted to give, say, $10,000, what’s to stop them from looking at the Hotel’s guest list, picking the best-sounding project, and offering money directly to the person behind it? (Then, if that person doesn’t need/want the money, they move to the next-best person, and so on.)
This may burn time on vetting, but it’s at least easier than vetting everyone at the Hotel to get a sense for its average impact.
--
You could also try to estimate the Hotel’s value as a tool for creating networks—boosting research productivity by giving people an easier way to start conversations and help with one another’s work. If that’s the case, the comparison to EA Meta grantees becomes more apt.
That said, there are a lot of Meta grantees, and trying to find the “best” of them is difficult by any measure. So people may end up wanting to fund organizations with longer histories (like LEAN or The Life You Can Save), or organizations with an extremely good “best-case” scenario (like the Center for Election Science or Sparrow). It’s hard to think of which sub-factor the EA Hotel is “best at” compared to all those other organizations.
Just to give one example: For $10,000, I could fund Giving Games where several hundred people are introduced to EA and make their first “EA-aligned” donation, or pay for 1.3 years of EA Hotel time. Those are very different things, and I could imagine at least 50% of potential meta donors thinking that the first option is better.
If the rest of those donors then compare the Hotel to the next project on the list, and the next… well, there aren’t many people who make large donations to individual meta projects, and it’s not surprising if only a small fraction of that already-small pool lands on the Hotel as their “final answer”.
(This model is too simple, of course, since many donors give to multiple organizations. The most important point is that the Hotel has a lot of competition, and may not stand out enough compared to all the other options.)
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I work for CEA, but these views are my own.
In answer to your first point, see my reply to Moses here.
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Regarding your second point—comparing with other Meta opportunities—one might also want to consider that many Meta projects have goals of bringing more people into the community. We need to then cater for these people. The EA Hotel can help do that, and fill an important gap.