Thanks for writing this. This comment, in connection with Dave’s, reminds me that paying people—especially paying them too much—can compromise their epistemics. Of course, paying people is often a practical necessity for any number of reasons, so I’m not suggesting that EA transforms into a volunteer-only movement.
I’m not talking about grift but something that has insidious onset in the medical sense: slow, subtle, and without the person’s awareness. If one believes that financial incentives matter (and they seemingly must for the theory of change behind paying university organizers to make much sense), it’s important to consider the various ways in which those incentives could lead to bad epistemics for the paid organizer.
If student organizers believe they will be well-funded for promoting AI safety/x-risk much more so than broad-tent EA, we would expect that to influence how they approach their organizing work. Moreover, reduction of cognitive dissonance can be a powerful drive—so the organizer may actually (but subconsciously) start favoring the viewpoint they are emphasizing in order to reduce that dissonance rather than for sound reasons. If a significant number of people filling full-time EA jobs were previously paid student organizers, the cumulative effect of this bias could be significant.
I don’t have a great solution for this given that the funding situation is what it is. However, I would err on the side of paying student organizers too little rather than too much. I speculate that the risk of cognitive dissonance—and any pressure student organizers may feel to take certain positions -- increases to some extent with the amount of money involved. While I don’t have a well-developed opinion on whether to pay student organizers at all, they should not be paid “an outrageous amount of money” as Dave reports.
Thanks for writing this. This comment, in connection with Dave’s, reminds me that paying people—especially paying them too much—can compromise their epistemics. Of course, paying people is often a practical necessity for any number of reasons, so I’m not suggesting that EA transforms into a volunteer-only movement.
I’m not talking about grift but something that has insidious onset in the medical sense: slow, subtle, and without the person’s awareness. If one believes that financial incentives matter (and they seemingly must for the theory of change behind paying university organizers to make much sense), it’s important to consider the various ways in which those incentives could lead to bad epistemics for the paid organizer.
If student organizers believe they will be well-funded for promoting AI safety/x-risk much more so than broad-tent EA, we would expect that to influence how they approach their organizing work. Moreover, reduction of cognitive dissonance can be a powerful drive—so the organizer may actually (but subconsciously) start favoring the viewpoint they are emphasizing in order to reduce that dissonance rather than for sound reasons. If a significant number of people filling full-time EA jobs were previously paid student organizers, the cumulative effect of this bias could be significant.
I don’t have a great solution for this given that the funding situation is what it is. However, I would err on the side of paying student organizers too little rather than too much. I speculate that the risk of cognitive dissonance—and any pressure student organizers may feel to take certain positions -- increases to some extent with the amount of money involved. While I don’t have a well-developed opinion on whether to pay student organizers at all, they should not be paid “an outrageous amount of money” as Dave reports.