I think this would vary greatly by cause area—I see global poverty as primarily funding constrained (largely due to the fact that much of it involves transferring wealth). Unsure about existential risk, but I think animal causes are more human capital constrained. It’s interesting what Jacy said about ACE—I’m curious if he would extend that to animal charities more broadly. It seems to me like the sorts of things that would make a difference for animals could use more organizers and charismatic personalities relative to money.
I think animal causes are more human capital constrained.
That would surprise me. While GiveWell has billions (e.g., Good Ventures) and AI Risk reduction has millions (e.g., Elon Musk), EA animal causes have maybe hundreds of thousands at most. (Note that this ignores PETA, which does have tens of millions, but I’m not sure it’s really going to animals as EAAs would define the cause area.)
Maybe animal causes are just talent constrained and funding constrained, but I’ve heard more “I wish we had more money to make our salaries more competitive” and “I wish we could hire for a position X but we don’t have the money” than “We have $50K lying around for this job offer but can’t find anyone to take it”.
This also makes sense given that I think animal causes have a good capacity to hire from outside EA—there are lots of motivated animal activists who haven’t heard of EA yet (though they may be hostile to the idea). If I recall correctly, Jon Bockman was this kind of hire.
My thinking was that (and show me the holes in this—it may affect major life decisions!) animal causes are more human capital constrained because more people willing to borderline starve would be useful. You definitely hear more people say “I wish we had more money...” than “We have $50K lying around...” but there are two ways to solve that—more money or someone willing to live on less than $50K, and I think the latter is likely to be more important. Given the record of the movements that seem to me to most resemble animal rights, it seems the vast majority of the work will be done by volunteers, so the primary need is more volunteers rather than more money.
Someone who would take a $25K salary instead of a $50K salary is effectively “donating” $25K. So if you think you could ETG more than that, you’d be beating that, from that perspective.
The stronger perspective is the perspective that we need more people in the animal rights movement to steward the money we already have, to create new funding opportunities, or to do good work such as to inspire more respect and thus more funding.
I’m not involved with the animal rights movement outside of its intersection with effective altruism, so I don’t know much about it. However, among other things, I’d think the evaluators at ACE are involved with the AR movement, and would come out and said at there EAG talks that the community is just as, if not more, constrained by lack of volunteers than lack of funds. They didn’t prioritize raising awareness of a greater volunteer need than a greater funding need. Of course, they were optimizing for an effective altruism audience. So, maybe the most the average effective altruist can do, one who has or will have a career which is not primarily low-paid or volunteer work for animal liberation, and who is already planning on earning to give or whatever, is donate to, e.g., ACE’s top recommended charities. That’s not necessarily an argument for the rest of the AR movement as it exists, or anyone new who joins it, to mostly go earning to give, rather than volunteering.
My thinking was that (and show me the holes in this—it may affect major life decisions!)
+1 to this sentiment. I too would like to know if I’m ignorant or wrong about the future or present status of the animal rights movement.
Agree with this.
AI risk seems the least funding constrained.
My guess is global poverty is more talent constrained than funding constrained, but still somewhat funding constrained.
Animal cause seems the most funding constrained.
EA orgs might fall between global poverty and AI risk.
AI risk seems the least funding constrained. My guess is global poverty is more talent constrained than funding constrained, but still somewhat funding constrained. Animal cause seems the most funding constrained. EA orgs might fall between global poverty and AI risk.
I’m not sure I agree with these comparisons.
I think MIRI has a good case that they can hire top math talent without them being EAs, provided they get enough money in their fundraiser, which they suggest has as much as $5.4M in additional room for funding.
Meanwhile, global poverty also appears to have about as much room for more funding.
Animal causes have relatively much less room for more funding just because there’s much less infrastructure set up right now to spend those funds. I doubt animal causes could absorb any more than $2M productively right now. But I hope this could change over the next five years...
Of course, each of the cause areas also have a lot of room for exceptionally talented people to make them better. I imagine someone who can start a new global poverty charity as good as AMF should certainly do that, even if they could get an ETG job at $1M a year otherwise.
The extent to which a cause is funding constrained doesn’t equal the size of its room for more funding. It’s more to do with how much progress you can gain per unit of money compared to a unit of talent.
Global poverty has large room for more funding, but I still suspect it may be more talent constrained than funding constrained, because a talented person can do a lot more through setting up new nonprofits, policy or research than etg.
I agree MIRI has a funding gap, but all the other xrisk research groups have a lot of funds, and are concerned they may not find sufficiently good researchers to hire. Moreover, there are major donors (e.g. Open Phil) ready to put more funds into AI risk research, but don’t think there’s enough good people available to hire yet.
Building on what Peter said, Nick Cooney in addition to Jacy said not just ACE, but charities like ACE’s top recommendations are also funding constrained. If I recall correctly, Mr. Cooney said at EA Global something like:
Building on what Jacy said earlier, I’ve heard a lot of talk this weekend about how some people are concerned their isn’t room for more funding at organizations. Well, that isn’t the case for us. Animal advocacy could definitely use more money.
Note this isn’t a paraphrase, but me attempting to directly quote Mr. Cooney as best as I can remember. This is how he started his third of the “Animal Advocacy Triple Talk”. As senior staff at both Mercy For Animals and The Farm Sanctuary, he would know, and it appears he meant to prioritize and emphasize this practical point.
Givewell has said in the past that finding the right talent is a bottleneck problem they can’t just solve by receiving more money. Animal advocacy and liberation seems to have the opposite problem, where they need tons of both. More money might help animal charities better search for and/or attract the talent, but I don’t know enough about that. I’m seeking an interview with Nick Cooney for this Forum, but I haven’t heard back from him yet. If or when I do, I will ask him about this.
Yeah, this depends greatly on views of the optimal strategy for approaching animal activism. Nick Cooney definitely favors a more money-intensive approach where you spend money to conduct ad campaigns pressuring corporations and publicizing various videos. Other activists favor a more grassroots approach where funding is far less essential (though still valuable, to be clear, and often to a greater degree than the grassroots will admit). So I think what he said indicates more about the particular needs of those organizations than the movement as a whole, but I could be wrong.
Yeah, I forgot your priority cause is animals, so you’d know better. I’m just going off of what Mr. Cooney said, so take my report with a grain of salt (which you are doing).
I think this would vary greatly by cause area—I see global poverty as primarily funding constrained (largely due to the fact that much of it involves transferring wealth). Unsure about existential risk, but I think animal causes are more human capital constrained. It’s interesting what Jacy said about ACE—I’m curious if he would extend that to animal charities more broadly. It seems to me like the sorts of things that would make a difference for animals could use more organizers and charismatic personalities relative to money.
That would surprise me. While GiveWell has billions (e.g., Good Ventures) and AI Risk reduction has millions (e.g., Elon Musk), EA animal causes have maybe hundreds of thousands at most. (Note that this ignores PETA, which does have tens of millions, but I’m not sure it’s really going to animals as EAAs would define the cause area.)
Maybe animal causes are just talent constrained and funding constrained, but I’ve heard more “I wish we had more money to make our salaries more competitive” and “I wish we could hire for a position X but we don’t have the money” than “We have $50K lying around for this job offer but can’t find anyone to take it”.
This also makes sense given that I think animal causes have a good capacity to hire from outside EA—there are lots of motivated animal activists who haven’t heard of EA yet (though they may be hostile to the idea). If I recall correctly, Jon Bockman was this kind of hire.
My thinking was that (and show me the holes in this—it may affect major life decisions!) animal causes are more human capital constrained because more people willing to borderline starve would be useful. You definitely hear more people say “I wish we had more money...” than “We have $50K lying around...” but there are two ways to solve that—more money or someone willing to live on less than $50K, and I think the latter is likely to be more important. Given the record of the movements that seem to me to most resemble animal rights, it seems the vast majority of the work will be done by volunteers, so the primary need is more volunteers rather than more money.
Someone who would take a $25K salary instead of a $50K salary is effectively “donating” $25K. So if you think you could ETG more than that, you’d be beating that, from that perspective.
The stronger perspective is the perspective that we need more people in the animal rights movement to steward the money we already have, to create new funding opportunities, or to do good work such as to inspire more respect and thus more funding.
I’m not involved with the animal rights movement outside of its intersection with effective altruism, so I don’t know much about it. However, among other things, I’d think the evaluators at ACE are involved with the AR movement, and would come out and said at there EAG talks that the community is just as, if not more, constrained by lack of volunteers than lack of funds. They didn’t prioritize raising awareness of a greater volunteer need than a greater funding need. Of course, they were optimizing for an effective altruism audience. So, maybe the most the average effective altruist can do, one who has or will have a career which is not primarily low-paid or volunteer work for animal liberation, and who is already planning on earning to give or whatever, is donate to, e.g., ACE’s top recommended charities. That’s not necessarily an argument for the rest of the AR movement as it exists, or anyone new who joins it, to mostly go earning to give, rather than volunteering.
+1 to this sentiment. I too would like to know if I’m ignorant or wrong about the future or present status of the animal rights movement.
Agree with this. AI risk seems the least funding constrained. My guess is global poverty is more talent constrained than funding constrained, but still somewhat funding constrained. Animal cause seems the most funding constrained. EA orgs might fall between global poverty and AI risk.
I’m not sure I agree with these comparisons.
I think MIRI has a good case that they can hire top math talent without them being EAs, provided they get enough money in their fundraiser, which they suggest has as much as $5.4M in additional room for funding.
Meanwhile, global poverty also appears to have about as much room for more funding.
Animal causes have relatively much less room for more funding just because there’s much less infrastructure set up right now to spend those funds. I doubt animal causes could absorb any more than $2M productively right now. But I hope this could change over the next five years...
Of course, each of the cause areas also have a lot of room for exceptionally talented people to make them better. I imagine someone who can start a new global poverty charity as good as AMF should certainly do that, even if they could get an ETG job at $1M a year otherwise.
The extent to which a cause is funding constrained doesn’t equal the size of its room for more funding. It’s more to do with how much progress you can gain per unit of money compared to a unit of talent.
Global poverty has large room for more funding, but I still suspect it may be more talent constrained than funding constrained, because a talented person can do a lot more through setting up new nonprofits, policy or research than etg.
I agree MIRI has a funding gap, but all the other xrisk research groups have a lot of funds, and are concerned they may not find sufficiently good researchers to hire. Moreover, there are major donors (e.g. Open Phil) ready to put more funds into AI risk research, but don’t think there’s enough good people available to hire yet.
Building on what Peter said, Nick Cooney in addition to Jacy said not just ACE, but charities like ACE’s top recommendations are also funding constrained. If I recall correctly, Mr. Cooney said at EA Global something like:
Note this isn’t a paraphrase, but me attempting to directly quote Mr. Cooney as best as I can remember. This is how he started his third of the “Animal Advocacy Triple Talk”. As senior staff at both Mercy For Animals and The Farm Sanctuary, he would know, and it appears he meant to prioritize and emphasize this practical point.
Givewell has said in the past that finding the right talent is a bottleneck problem they can’t just solve by receiving more money. Animal advocacy and liberation seems to have the opposite problem, where they need tons of both. More money might help animal charities better search for and/or attract the talent, but I don’t know enough about that. I’m seeking an interview with Nick Cooney for this Forum, but I haven’t heard back from him yet. If or when I do, I will ask him about this.
Yeah, this depends greatly on views of the optimal strategy for approaching animal activism. Nick Cooney definitely favors a more money-intensive approach where you spend money to conduct ad campaigns pressuring corporations and publicizing various videos. Other activists favor a more grassroots approach where funding is far less essential (though still valuable, to be clear, and often to a greater degree than the grassroots will admit). So I think what he said indicates more about the particular needs of those organizations than the movement as a whole, but I could be wrong.
Yeah, I forgot your priority cause is animals, so you’d know better. I’m just going off of what Mr. Cooney said, so take my report with a grain of salt (which you are doing).