“Leadership” and “eco-systems” sound very nice as far as they’re described here but I find this post unhelpful as a guide to what “EA” should do.
Assuming this post is addressing EA funders – rather than the collection of diverse, largely uncoordinated, people, organizations, and perspectives that ‘EA’ is – is the claim that funders should open 20 of these offices? Who do they pay to do that and apply the “high standards” for early membership? What are the standards? Should people have models of the world that distinguish good/bad opportunities and big/small ones? At what point does answering these questions become too analytical?
“Find all the smart altruistic people, point them to each other, give them some money, and let them do what they want” sounds nice, but aren’t there hundreds or thousands of organizations interested in funding various projects, not least of which the whole VC industry? My sense is that not analyzing why you might be the funder of last resort, at least a little bit, is a recipe to crash and burn very quickly. $1m/yr/office could feed a handful of people and keep the lights on, but it’s not scaling any projects. “EA” doesn’t have enough money to last long without a lot of analysis and it’s only been around for ~10 years.
People with diverse, niche interests and moxie have had really outsized influence on the world. It’s easy to say “go find them,” but the ones who will actually make a difference are very very few and far between and it takes some analysis to find them. There are a million people in Port Au Prince and probably hundreds of discernible perspectives on how to make things better there. Some multiplication for other localities. The Future Fund has 30 categories of ideas they want to pursue. Maybe that’s “too small,” but they’re largely unaddressed and really big in scale. If they wanted to count all wins as equal, I don’t doubt they could rack up a lot of very concrete wins and cool stories, but that seems to be what… all the rest of philanthropy is doing. And I’m glad they are!
There’s an undergrad econ thing where burning a dollar lowers the price level for all other dollar holders and increases their welfare, but everyone thinks you can do better than that by being more discerning. So just saying “more causes/ideas!” isn’t really helpful without some limiting principle.
There’s a lot here, but I would just say building ecosystems of leaders and builders is not an exotic idea, but actually something that is extremely common. Even just restricting it to the altruistic space, the The Nonprofit Centers Network has many spaces that are analogous to the example I gave.
Each space in the international Impact Hub network is self sustaining, and actually does not receive any seed funding (they’re mostly funded by friends/family or bank loans). And it is a completely reasonable to expect any space to be self-sustaining after it is seeded.
The building of EA hubs in cities across the world might turn out to be a bad idea, but as I pointed out it’s not my idea (it was the runner up in an EA ideas contest), and versions of it are currently being pursued by various different groups in the movement right now.
I think that the overall philanthropic sector could benefit greatly from more collaboration with EA, and that EA could take a leadership role to help to systematically improve it. However, that would require a shift in thinking.
I think most people on this forum would agree that the rest of the philanthropy sector would benefit from more contact with EA, but the question is whether the world would benefit from it [more than what EAs would otherwise be doing]. Interested to hear your thoughts on that
I think the world would unquestionably benefit from a more efficient/effective philanthropy sector. A central tenet of EA seems to be that the philanthropic sector is too inefficient. I think that sentiment is very uncontroversial, even among those operating within the sector. Engaging with those in the sector that share your core values, and helping them become more efficient, is a great way to maximize impact (in my view). I also think the statement ‘more than what EAs would otherwise be doing’ reflects a scarcity mindset that made a lot more sense in days past. EA has traditionally been a small movement, it doesn’t have to remain that way.
Analysis is of course incredibly important no matter what you are trying to do. Ecosystem building requires an incredible amount of analysis to answer these and a myriad of other questions. But analysis coupled with building/data gathering/experimentation is much better than analysis alone.
From my post:
It provides a place for analysis and practice to intersect—Many current EAs may be stronger in gathering and analyzing data to help guide and influence those on the front lines. At the same time, all analysis is improved by interaction with the real world. This represents a place where those that analyze and those that build can interact to their mutual benefit.
“Leadership” and “eco-systems” sound very nice as far as they’re described here but I find this post unhelpful as a guide to what “EA” should do.
Assuming this post is addressing EA funders – rather than the collection of diverse, largely uncoordinated, people, organizations, and perspectives that ‘EA’ is – is the claim that funders should open 20 of these offices? Who do they pay to do that and apply the “high standards” for early membership? What are the standards? Should people have models of the world that distinguish good/bad opportunities and big/small ones? At what point does answering these questions become too analytical?
“Find all the smart altruistic people, point them to each other, give them some money, and let them do what they want” sounds nice, but aren’t there hundreds or thousands of organizations interested in funding various projects, not least of which the whole VC industry? My sense is that not analyzing why you might be the funder of last resort, at least a little bit, is a recipe to crash and burn very quickly. $1m/yr/office could feed a handful of people and keep the lights on, but it’s not scaling any projects. “EA” doesn’t have enough money to last long without a lot of analysis and it’s only been around for ~10 years.
People with diverse, niche interests and moxie have had really outsized influence on the world. It’s easy to say “go find them,” but the ones who will actually make a difference are very very few and far between and it takes some analysis to find them. There are a million people in Port Au Prince and probably hundreds of discernible perspectives on how to make things better there. Some multiplication for other localities. The Future Fund has 30 categories of ideas they want to pursue. Maybe that’s “too small,” but they’re largely unaddressed and really big in scale. If they wanted to count all wins as equal, I don’t doubt they could rack up a lot of very concrete wins and cool stories, but that seems to be what… all the rest of philanthropy is doing. And I’m glad they are!
There’s an undergrad econ thing where burning a dollar lowers the price level for all other dollar holders and increases their welfare, but everyone thinks you can do better than that by being more discerning. So just saying “more causes/ideas!” isn’t really helpful without some limiting principle.
There’s a lot here, but I would just say building ecosystems of leaders and builders is not an exotic idea, but actually something that is extremely common. Even just restricting it to the altruistic space, the The Nonprofit Centers Network has many spaces that are analogous to the example I gave.
Each space in the international Impact Hub network is self sustaining, and actually does not receive any seed funding (they’re mostly funded by friends/family or bank loans). And it is a completely reasonable to expect any space to be self-sustaining after it is seeded.
The building of EA hubs in cities across the world might turn out to be a bad idea, but as I pointed out it’s not my idea (it was the runner up in an EA ideas contest), and versions of it are currently being pursued by various different groups in the movement right now.
I think that the overall philanthropic sector could benefit greatly from more collaboration with EA, and that EA could take a leadership role to help to systematically improve it. However, that would require a shift in thinking.
I think most people on this forum would agree that the rest of the philanthropy sector would benefit from more contact with EA, but the question is whether the world would benefit from it [more than what EAs would otherwise be doing]. Interested to hear your thoughts on that
I think the world would unquestionably benefit from a more efficient/effective philanthropy sector. A central tenet of EA seems to be that the philanthropic sector is too inefficient. I think that sentiment is very uncontroversial, even among those operating within the sector. Engaging with those in the sector that share your core values, and helping them become more efficient, is a great way to maximize impact (in my view). I also think the statement ‘more than what EAs would otherwise be doing’ reflects a scarcity mindset that made a lot more sense in days past. EA has traditionally been a small movement, it doesn’t have to remain that way.
I’m a bit confused, Mjreard seems to be saying something more like ‘hubs are common’ than ‘hubs are exotic’?
I was responding to the series of questions that implied building these would mean encountering difficult or impossible to answer questions.
I don’t think that’s what was implied—rather that they require analysis to answer, and that your post is in the vein of encouraging less analysis
Analysis is of course incredibly important no matter what you are trying to do. Ecosystem building requires an incredible amount of analysis to answer these and a myriad of other questions. But analysis coupled with building/data gathering/experimentation is much better than analysis alone.
From my post:
It provides a place for analysis and practice to intersect—Many current EAs may be stronger in gathering and analyzing data to help guide and influence those on the front lines. At the same time, all analysis is improved by interaction with the real world. This represents a place where those that analyze and those that build can interact to their mutual benefit.
I don’t think anyone disagrees with that
Yes and it’s also not ideal to lust after hyper-legible solutions. Sometimes a general direction can be a useful starting point.