Hey David, love you, but as one of the people who has struggled as an independent EA worker and in small orgs I very strongly disagree. The overarching theme of my disagreement is that EA desperately needs more competition in general and more more incentives for its staff to do a good job.
All of the downsides you mention could be addressed by (hopefully multiple) support organisations that would prioritise according to their sense of counterfactual value. Such orgs could directly compete or lightly compete, by eg having distinct focus areas, but that one could turn to if they felt underserved by the one nominally in their domain. This would give a recourse for people who felt like a particular org wasn’t doing a good job to turn to an alternative one, and for effectiveness-minded funders to respond by raising the relative funding the more popular org received.
The downsides of centralisation are numerous: we’ve seenaccusationafteraccusationofhowEApeoplehaverunorgsverybadly. One needn’t believe all of these (and I’m certainly sceptical of some parts of them) to think they provide evidence if it were needed that more centralisation massively increases the chance that bad or incompetent actors end up steering the movement, or just that EA becomes/remains overly homogenous and cliquey, such that valuable projects are less likely to get funding because they’re outside the funders’ social circle.
I think EA would improve with more competition as well, what I’m suggesting is more competition in the ‘larger’ orgs category. If someone has a disagreement with how things are run at one of the bigger EA orgs, there are very few other places for them to go within EA.
I don’t think that the issues you linked to are because of centralisation, there are lots of small organisations badly run, and without larger organisations there often isn’t a way to hold bad actors accountable.
I’m talking about increasing the number of large organisations. I don’t think I can do much about how many different types of funders we have, which is a separate question.
I’m talking about increasing the number of large organisations.
I’m confused what you are suggesting exactly. When reading post I assumed that you suggested more centralisation in general. If there where a compotator to CEA, I would not call that “more centralisation”. Although maybe it depends on how we get there form here?
If several small orgs join together to form a new big org, that would seem like going towards more centralisation. But if someone starts a new org that grows into a large org, which competes with an existing large org, that would look like de-centralisation to me. Maybe (as someone pointed out in another comment) “centralisation” is not a useful word here, since it’s meaning is too ambiguous.
I think it would be useful if you could clarify your suggestion.
I think it would be better to have 20 organisations with about 50 people each than 3 organisations with 50 people and then everyone else working as individuals. One organisation with 1000 people would probably be the worst option.
I’m still not sure what you mean by org. Do you count CEA as an org, or EVF as an org?
I think in terms of projects and people and funding. Legal orgs are just another part of the infrastructure that supports funding and people.
I think it would be great if AI Safety Support, where given enough funding to hire 50 people, and used that funding to provide financial security to lots of existing projects. Although that is heavily biased by the fact that I personally know and trust the people running AISS, and that their work style and attitude is aligned with mine. I might feel very different about someone I did not trust as much getting that power.
In my example I was more referring to orgs like EVF, but I imagine if EA was more centralised there would be a range of larger orgs, some more like EVF and others more like Open Phil, who aren’t incubating projects.
what I’m suggesting is more competition in the ‘larger’ orgs category
I still strongly disagree if, as it seems from the OP, you mean ‘we want more larger orgs’ rather than ‘we want to make large orgs smaller’. The larger the org, the less fidelity you get from any competition.
If Org 1 and Org 2 each do only one activity, they can compete perfectly, in that funders can express an unambiguous preference between those two activities by donating a marginal $ to one or other of them.
But for each further activity an org does, ignoring restricted donations (which on my understanding are counterfactually not very effective), they approximately multiply the number of preference-orderings consistent with donating to either org by the total number of activities. If I’m thinking about this correctly, the number of preference orderings consistent with a donation to one of two orgs is (mn)! - m!n! where m and n are the number of activities each org does.
For example, if Org 1 does activities A, B, and and Org 2 does C and D, then giving to Org 1 is consistent with any combination of preferences such that at least one activity at Org 1 is preferred to at least one activity at Org 2. This gives 4! − 2!*2! = 20 consistent orderings:
A > B > C > D A > B > D > C A > C > B > D A > C > D > B A > D > B > C A > D > C > B
B > A > C > D B > A > D > C B > C > A > D B > C > D > A B > D > A > C B > D > C > A
C > B > A > D C > B > D > A C > A > B > D C > A > D > B C > D > B > A C > D > A > B
D > B > C > A D > B > A > C D > C > B > A D > C > A > B D > A > B > C D > A > C > B
Obviously this is a bit abstract/oversimplified, but if we think it’s a reasonable approximation of reality, it implies that the difference in fidelity of competition between small and large organisations is colossal. Depending on how you think about CEA (the sub-org, not EVF) alone, their activities might include
Arguably software development and any other in-house services they provide. Even by comparison to a hypothetical org who was only doing one of those things, that would mean a donation to either org would be consistent with 8! preference orderings (or 9! if you include software): that’s 40320 or 362880, respectively. Obviously take these numbers with a large grain of salt in the real world, but I think the picture isn’t totally unreasonable, and the numbers are large enough that they could outweigh a very great number of inside view considerations, to make any organisation provided an alternative to have close to zero value in the sense of incentivising either org to perform better.
This is before you’re even looking at the umbrella orgs, where the picture gets even murkier—in theory their sub-orgs seem to be expected to arrange their own funding independently, but in principle their sources of funding seem to be extremely correlated.
Do orgs get cut off? Are there examples of OP being like “you just aren’t efficient enough”
I guess there are benefits to scale when do these take off?
When should an org split into two?
I guess I like that GiveWell is it’s own org and theoretically it could get less funding from OpenPhil if something else filled that space. I hope that would happen and maybe 50% that it would.
Hey David, love you, but as one of the people who has struggled as an independent EA worker and in small orgs I very strongly disagree. The overarching theme of my disagreement is that EA desperately needs more competition in general and more more incentives for its staff to do a good job.
All of the downsides you mention could be addressed by (hopefully multiple) support organisations that would prioritise according to their sense of counterfactual value. Such orgs could directly compete or lightly compete, by eg having distinct focus areas, but that one could turn to if they felt underserved by the one nominally in their domain. This would give a recourse for people who felt like a particular org wasn’t doing a good job to turn to an alternative one, and for effectiveness-minded funders to respond by raising the relative funding the more popular org received.
The downsides of centralisation are numerous: we’ve seen accusation after accusation of how EA people have runorgs very badly. One needn’t believe all of these (and I’m certainly sceptical of some parts of them) to think they provide evidence if it were needed that more centralisation massively increases the chance that bad or incompetent actors end up steering the movement, or just that EA becomes/remains overly homogenous and cliquey, such that valuable projects are less likely to get funding because they’re outside the funders’ social circle.
I think EA would improve with more competition as well, what I’m suggesting is more competition in the ‘larger’ orgs category. If someone has a disagreement with how things are run at one of the bigger EA orgs, there are very few other places for them to go within EA.
I don’t think that the issues you linked to are because of centralisation, there are lots of small organisations badly run, and without larger organisations there often isn’t a way to hold bad actors accountable.
I’m talking about increasing the number of large organisations. I don’t think I can do much about how many different types of funders we have, which is a separate question.
I’m confused what you are suggesting exactly. When reading post I assumed that you suggested more centralisation in general. If there where a compotator to CEA, I would not call that “more centralisation”. Although maybe it depends on how we get there form here?
If several small orgs join together to form a new big org, that would seem like going towards more centralisation. But if someone starts a new org that grows into a large org, which competes with an existing large org, that would look like de-centralisation to me. Maybe (as someone pointed out in another comment) “centralisation” is not a useful word here, since it’s meaning is too ambiguous.
I think it would be useful if you could clarify your suggestion.
I think it would be better to have 20 organisations with about 50 people each than 3 organisations with 50 people and then everyone else working as individuals. One organisation with 1000 people would probably be the worst option.
Thanks, that clarifies things.
I’m still not sure what you mean by org. Do you count CEA as an org, or EVF as an org?
I think in terms of projects and people and funding. Legal orgs are just another part of the infrastructure that supports funding and people.
I think it would be great if AI Safety Support, where given enough funding to hire 50 people, and used that funding to provide financial security to lots of existing projects. Although that is heavily biased by the fact that I personally know and trust the people running AISS, and that their work style and attitude is aligned with mine. I might feel very different about someone I did not trust as much getting that power.
In my example I was more referring to orgs like EVF, but I imagine if EA was more centralised there would be a range of larger orgs, some more like EVF and others more like Open Phil, who aren’t incubating projects.
I still strongly disagree if, as it seems from the OP, you mean ‘we want more larger orgs’ rather than ‘we want to make large orgs smaller’. The larger the org, the less fidelity you get from any competition.
If Org 1 and Org 2 each do only one activity, they can compete perfectly, in that funders can express an unambiguous preference between those two activities by donating a marginal $ to one or other of them.
But for each further activity an org does, ignoring restricted donations (which on my understanding are counterfactually not very effective), they approximately multiply the number of preference-orderings consistent with donating to either org by the total number of activities. If I’m thinking about this correctly, the number of preference orderings consistent with a donation to one of two orgs is (mn)! - m!n! where m and n are the number of activities each org does.
For example, if Org 1 does activities A, B, and and Org 2 does C and D, then giving to Org 1 is consistent with any combination of preferences such that at least one activity at Org 1 is preferred to at least one activity at Org 2. This gives 4! − 2!*2! = 20 consistent orderings:
A > B > C > D
A > B > D > C
A > C > B > D
A > C > D > B
A > D > B > C
A > D > C > B
B > A > C > D
B > A > D > C
B > C > A > D
B > C > D > A
B > D > A > C
B > D > C > A
C > B > A > D
C > B > D > A
C > A > B > D
C > A > D > B
C > D > B > AC > D > A > BD > B > C > A
D > B > A > C
D > C > B > AD > C > A > BD > A > B > C
D > A > C > B
Obviously this is a bit abstract/oversimplified, but if we think it’s a reasonable approximation of reality, it implies that the difference in fidelity of competition between small and large organisations is colossal. Depending on how you think about CEA (the sub-org, not EVF) alone, their activities might include
Community building grants
Group support
The EA forum
Other EA websites
Running events
Supporting EAGx events
Community health
Media training, in some capacity
Arguably software development and any other in-house services they provide. Even by comparison to a hypothetical org who was only doing one of those things, that would mean a donation to either org would be consistent with 8! preference orderings (or 9! if you include software): that’s 40320 or 362880, respectively. Obviously take these numbers with a large grain of salt in the real world, but I think the picture isn’t totally unreasonable, and the numbers are large enough that they could outweigh a very great number of inside view considerations, to make any organisation provided an alternative to have close to zero value in the sense of incentivising either org to perform better.
This is before you’re even looking at the umbrella orgs, where the picture gets even murkier—in theory their sub-orgs seem to be expected to arrange their own funding independently, but in principle their sources of funding seem to be extremely correlated.
My thoughts here are something like:
Do orgs get cut off? Are there examples of OP being like “you just aren’t efficient enough”
I guess there are benefits to scale when do these take off?
When should an org split into two?
I guess I like that GiveWell is it’s own org and theoretically it could get less funding from OpenPhil if something else filled that space. I hope that would happen and maybe 50% that it would.