Hey Michael! I read your comment when you wrote it, but am only replying now :/
Thank you for your thoughts, you raise important questions. One I want to hone in on is:
if EA is so focused on effectiveness, why does it make sense to pay people to just learn about EA
In a way, this seems like the classic question of “how can we convert money into X?”, where X is sometimes organizer time. Here, X is “highly engaged EAs who use an EA mindset to determine their career”. One proposed answer is to give out tons of books. I’m not sure if we have good cost-effectiveness estimates of book giveaways, but we also don’t have cost-effectiveness estimates of paying program participants. Giving out books is reputationally much safer, but in principle it is also “spend money so people learn about EA.”
The second part of your question is “especially when no other student group is paying people for things.” which also seems important. I think I am more and more believing that we should not think about EA groups like other student groups. This transition (and messaging around it) here seems complicated, but I think if done right, we should totally give ourselves space to do things no other student groups are doing.
Hey Michael! I read your comment when you wrote it, but am only replying now :/
Thank you for your thoughts, you raise important questions. One I want to hone in on is:
In a way, this seems like the classic question of “how can we convert money into X?”, where X is sometimes organizer time. Here, X is “highly engaged EAs who use an EA mindset to determine their career”. One proposed answer is to give out tons of books. I’m not sure if we have good cost-effectiveness estimates of book giveaways, but we also don’t have cost-effectiveness estimates of paying program participants. Giving out books is reputationally much safer, but in principle it is also “spend money so people learn about EA.”
The second part of your question is “especially when no other student group is paying people for things.” which also seems important. I think I am more and more believing that we should not think about EA groups like other student groups. This transition (and messaging around it) here seems complicated, but I think if done right, we should totally give ourselves space to do things no other student groups are doing.