[for context, I’ve talked to Eli about this in person]
I’m interpreting you as having two concerns here.
Firstly, you’re asking why this is different than you deferring to people about the impact of the two orgs.
From my perspective, the nice thing about the impact certificate setup is that if you get paid in org B impact certificates, you’re making the person at orgs A and B put their money where their mouth is. Analogously, suppose Google is trying to hire me, but I’m actually unsure about Google’s long term profitability, and I’d rather be paid in Facebook stock than Google stock. If Google pays me in Facebook stock, I’m not deferring to them about the relative values of these stocks, I’m just getting paid in Facebook stock, such that if Google is overvalued it’s no longer my problem, it’s the problem of whoever traded their Facebook stock for Google stock.
The reason why I think that the policy of maximizing impact certificates is better for the world in this case is that I think that people are more likely to give careful answers to the question “how relatively valuable is the work orgs A and B are doing” if they’re thinking about it in terms of trying to make trades than if some random EA is asking for their quick advice.
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Secondly, you’re worrying that people might end up seeming like they’re endorsing an org that they don’t endorse, and that this might harm community epistemics. This is an interesting objection that I haven’t thought much about. A few possible responses:
It’s already currently an issue that people have different amounts of optimism about their workplaces, and people don’t very often publicly state how much they agree and disagree with their employer (though I personally try to be clear about this). It’s unlikely that impact equity trades will exacerbate this problem much.
Also, people often work at places for reasons that aren’t “I think this is literally the best org”, eg:
comparative advantage
thinking that the job is fun
the job paying them a high salary (this is exactly analogous to them paying in impact equity of a different org)
thinking that the job will give you useful experience
random fluke of who happened to offer you a job at a particular point
thinking the org is particularly flawed and so you can do unusual amounts of good by pushing it in a good direction
Also, if there were liquid markets in the impact equity of different orgs, then we’d have access to much higher-quality information about the community’s guess about the relative promisingness of different orgs. So pushing in this direction would probably be overall helpful.
What is meant by “not my problem”? My understanding is that what is meant is “what I care about is no better off if I worry about this thing than if I don’t.” Hence the analogy to salary; if all I care about is $$, then getting paid in Facebook stock means that my utility is the same if I worry about the value of Google stock or if I don’t.
It sounds like you’re saying that, if I’m working at org A but getting paid in impact certificates from org B, the actual value of org A impact certificates is “not my problem” in this sense. Here obviously I care about things other than $$.
This doesn’t seem right at all to me, given the current state of the world. Worrying about whether my org is impactful is my problem in that it might indeed affect things I care about, for example because I might go work somewhere else.
Thinking about this more, I recalled the strength of the assumption that, in this world, everyone agrees to maximize impact certificates *instead of* counterfactual impact. This seems like it just obliterates all of my objections, which are arguments based on counterfactual impact. They become arguments at the wrong level. If the market is not robust, that means more certificates for me *which is definitionally good*.
So this is an argument that if everyone collectively agrees to change their incentives, we’d get more counterfactual impact in the long run. I think my main objection is not about this as an end state — not that I’m sure I agree with that, I just haven’t thought about it much in isolation — but about the feasibility of taking that kind of collective action, and about issues that may arise if some people do it unilaterally.
[for context, I’ve talked to Eli about this in person]
I’m interpreting you as having two concerns here.
Firstly, you’re asking why this is different than you deferring to people about the impact of the two orgs.
From my perspective, the nice thing about the impact certificate setup is that if you get paid in org B impact certificates, you’re making the person at orgs A and B put their money where their mouth is. Analogously, suppose Google is trying to hire me, but I’m actually unsure about Google’s long term profitability, and I’d rather be paid in Facebook stock than Google stock. If Google pays me in Facebook stock, I’m not deferring to them about the relative values of these stocks, I’m just getting paid in Facebook stock, such that if Google is overvalued it’s no longer my problem, it’s the problem of whoever traded their Facebook stock for Google stock.
The reason why I think that the policy of maximizing impact certificates is better for the world in this case is that I think that people are more likely to give careful answers to the question “how relatively valuable is the work orgs A and B are doing” if they’re thinking about it in terms of trying to make trades than if some random EA is asking for their quick advice.
---
Secondly, you’re worrying that people might end up seeming like they’re endorsing an org that they don’t endorse, and that this might harm community epistemics. This is an interesting objection that I haven’t thought much about. A few possible responses:
It’s already currently an issue that people have different amounts of optimism about their workplaces, and people don’t very often publicly state how much they agree and disagree with their employer (though I personally try to be clear about this). It’s unlikely that impact equity trades will exacerbate this problem much.
Also, people often work at places for reasons that aren’t “I think this is literally the best org”, eg:
comparative advantage
thinking that the job is fun
the job paying them a high salary (this is exactly analogous to them paying in impact equity of a different org)
thinking that the job will give you useful experience
random fluke of who happened to offer you a job at a particular point
thinking the org is particularly flawed and so you can do unusual amounts of good by pushing it in a good direction
Also, if there were liquid markets in the impact equity of different orgs, then we’d have access to much higher-quality information about the community’s guess about the relative promisingness of different orgs. So pushing in this direction would probably be overall helpful.
What is meant by “not my problem”? My understanding is that what is meant is “what I care about is no better off if I worry about this thing than if I don’t.” Hence the analogy to salary; if all I care about is $$, then getting paid in Facebook stock means that my utility is the same if I worry about the value of Google stock or if I don’t.
It sounds like you’re saying that, if I’m working at org A but getting paid in impact certificates from org B, the actual value of org A impact certificates is “not my problem” in this sense. Here obviously I care about things other than $$.
This doesn’t seem right at all to me, given the current state of the world. Worrying about whether my org is impactful is my problem in that it might indeed affect things I care about, for example because I might go work somewhere else.
Thinking about this more, I recalled the strength of the assumption that, in this world, everyone agrees to maximize impact certificates *instead of* counterfactual impact. This seems like it just obliterates all of my objections, which are arguments based on counterfactual impact. They become arguments at the wrong level. If the market is not robust, that means more certificates for me *which is definitionally good*.
So this is an argument that if everyone collectively agrees to change their incentives, we’d get more counterfactual impact in the long run. I think my main objection is not about this as an end state — not that I’m sure I agree with that, I just haven’t thought about it much in isolation — but about the feasibility of taking that kind of collective action, and about issues that may arise if some people do it unilaterally.