I suspect I would advise taking them less seriously than you would advise, but I’m not sure.
The range of quality in Forum posts is… wide, so it’s hard to say anything about them as a group. I thought for a while about how to phrase that sentence and could only come up with the mealy-mouthed version you read.
But even more importantly, perhaps fewer EA orgs that are not any larger.
Maybe? I’d be happy to see a huge number of additional charities at the “median GiveWell grantee” level, and someone has to start those charities. Doesn’t have to be people in EA — maybe the talent pool is simply too thin right now — but there’s plenty of room for people to create organizations focused on important causes.
(But maybe you’re talking about meta orgs only, in which case I’d need a lot more community data to know how I feel.)
Conventional wisdom would suggest, I think, that EAs should mostly be working at normal, high-quality organizations/universities, getting experience under the mentorship of highly qualified (probably non-EA) people.
I agree, and I also think this is what EA people are mostly doing.
When I open Swapcard for the most recent EA Global, and look at the first 20 attendees alphabetically (with jobs listed), I see:
Seven people in academia (students or professors); one is at the Global Priorities Institute, but it still seems like “studying econ at Oxford” would be a good conventional-wisdom thing to do (I’d be happy to yield on this, though)
Six people working in conventional jobs (this includes one each from Wave and Momentum, but despite being linked to EA, both are normal tech companies, and Wave at least has done very well by conventional standards)
One person in policy
Six people at nonprofit orgs focused on EA things
Glancing through the rest of the list, I’d say it leans toward more “EA jobs” than not, but this is a group that is vastly skewed in favor of “doing EA stuff” compared to the broad EA community as a whole, and it’s still not obvious that the people with EA jobs/headed for EA jobs are a majority.
(The data gets even messier if you’re willing to count, say, an Open Philanthropy researcher as someone doing a conventionally wise thing, since you seem to think OP should keep existing.)
Overall, I’d guess that most people trying to maximize their impact with EA in mind are doing so via policy work, earning-to-give,[1] or other conventional-looking strategies; this just gets hidden by the greater visibility of people in EA roles.
I’d love to hear counterarguments to this — I’ve held this belief for a long time, it feels uncommon, and there’s a good chance I’m just wrong.
This isn’t a conventional way to use money, but the part where you earn money is probably very conventional (get professional skill, use professional skill in expected way, climb the ladder of your discipline).
This is very high-quality. No disputes just clarifications.
I don’t just mean meta-orgs.
I think working for a well-financed grantmaking organization is not outrageously unconventional, although I suspect most lean on part-time work from well-respected academics more than OpenPhil does.
And I think 80k may just be an exception (a minor one, to some extent), borne out of an unusually clear gap in the market. I think some of their work should be done in academia instead (basically whatever work it’s possible to do), but some of the very specific stuff like the jobs board wouldn’t fit there.
Also, if we imagine an Area Dad from an Onion Local News article, I don’t think he’s skepticism would be quite as pronounced for 80k as for other orgs like, e.g., an AI Safety camp.
The range of quality in Forum posts is… wide, so it’s hard to say anything about them as a group. I thought for a while about how to phrase that sentence and could only come up with the mealy-mouthed version you read.
Maybe? I’d be happy to see a huge number of additional charities at the “median GiveWell grantee” level, and someone has to start those charities. Doesn’t have to be people in EA — maybe the talent pool is simply too thin right now — but there’s plenty of room for people to create organizations focused on important causes.
(But maybe you’re talking about meta orgs only, in which case I’d need a lot more community data to know how I feel.)
I agree, and I also think this is what EA people are mostly doing.
When I open Swapcard for the most recent EA Global, and look at the first 20 attendees alphabetically (with jobs listed), I see:
Seven people in academia (students or professors); one is at the Global Priorities Institute, but it still seems like “studying econ at Oxford” would be a good conventional-wisdom thing to do (I’d be happy to yield on this, though)
Six people working in conventional jobs (this includes one each from Wave and Momentum, but despite being linked to EA, both are normal tech companies, and Wave at least has done very well by conventional standards)
One person in policy
Six people at nonprofit orgs focused on EA things
Glancing through the rest of the list, I’d say it leans toward more “EA jobs” than not, but this is a group that is vastly skewed in favor of “doing EA stuff” compared to the broad EA community as a whole, and it’s still not obvious that the people with EA jobs/headed for EA jobs are a majority.
(The data gets even messier if you’re willing to count, say, an Open Philanthropy researcher as someone doing a conventionally wise thing, since you seem to think OP should keep existing.)
Overall, I’d guess that most people trying to maximize their impact with EA in mind are doing so via policy work, earning-to-give,[1] or other conventional-looking strategies; this just gets hidden by the greater visibility of people in EA roles.
I’d love to hear counterarguments to this — I’ve held this belief for a long time, it feels uncommon, and there’s a good chance I’m just wrong.
This isn’t a conventional way to use money, but the part where you earn money is probably very conventional (get professional skill, use professional skill in expected way, climb the ladder of your discipline).
This is very high-quality. No disputes just clarifications.
I don’t just mean meta-orgs.
I think working for a well-financed grantmaking organization is not outrageously unconventional, although I suspect most lean on part-time work from well-respected academics more than OpenPhil does.
And I think 80k may just be an exception (a minor one, to some extent), borne out of an unusually clear gap in the market. I think some of their work should be done in academia instead (basically whatever work it’s possible to do), but some of the very specific stuff like the jobs board wouldn’t fit there.
Also, if we imagine an Area Dad from an Onion Local News article, I don’t think he’s skepticism would be quite as pronounced for 80k as for other orgs like, e.g., an AI Safety camp.