The EA community has been welcoming in many ways, yet I’ve noticed a fair bit of standoffishness around some of my professional circles. [1]
Several factors likely contribute:
Many successful thinkers often possess high disagreeableness, introversion, significant egos, and intense focus on their work
Limited funding creates natural competition between people and groups, fostering zero-sum incentives
These people are very similar to academics, which also share these same characteristics
I’ve noticed that around forecasting/EA, funding scarcity means one organization getting a grant can prevent another from receiving support. There’s only so much money in the space. In addition to nonprofit groups, there are some for-profit groups—but I think the for-profit groups have even more inherent challenges cooperating. As a simple example, Kalshi has been accused of doing some particularly mean spirited things to its competitors.
Another personal example—Guesstimate and Squiggle are in a narrow category of [probabilistic risk management tools]. This is an incredibly narrow field that few people know much about, but it also requires a lot of work. There are a few organizations in this field, and most directly compete with each other. So it’s very awkward for people in different groups to share ideas, even though these are about the only people they could share ideas with.
A significant downside for individuals is the profound isolation this sort of environment creates. Each given ecosystem is already quite small, making it particularly problematic when you feel you’re competing with (rather than collaborating with) the few others in your field. People can surprisingly easily end up collaborating with essentially no one for stretches of 10-30 years.
This situation creates obvious challenges for overall productivity. While competitive pressure can motivate individual performance, it simultaneously hampers coordination between different actors. The result is often a landscape fragmented by 20 different sets of jargon and numerous overlapping but poorly integrated ideas. Additionally, younger practitioners miss out on valuable mentorship from more experienced colleagues.
If I were a funder targeting these areas, I’d prioritize addressing these misaligned incentives. Many professionals seem trapped in suboptimal equilibria that undermine broader research goals. CEOs already struggle with fostering collaboration among direct reports; facilitating cooperation in decentralized environments presents an even greater, but still important, challenge.
[1] I definitely contribute to this as well, to certain extents, and feel bad about it. For example, I probably spend less time helping out others in my area than I should.
The EA community has been welcoming in many ways, yet I’ve noticed a fair bit of standoffishness around some of my professional circles. [1]
Several factors likely contribute:
Many successful thinkers often possess high disagreeableness, introversion, significant egos, and intense focus on their work
Limited funding creates natural competition between people and groups, fostering zero-sum incentives
These people are very similar to academics, which also share these same characteristics
I’ve noticed that around forecasting/EA, funding scarcity means one organization getting a grant can prevent another from receiving support. There’s only so much money in the space. In addition to nonprofit groups, there are some for-profit groups—but I think the for-profit groups have even more inherent challenges cooperating. As a simple example, Kalshi has been accused of doing some particularly mean spirited things to its competitors.
Another personal example—Guesstimate and Squiggle are in a narrow category of [probabilistic risk management tools]. This is an incredibly narrow field that few people know much about, but it also requires a lot of work. There are a few organizations in this field, and most directly compete with each other. So it’s very awkward for people in different groups to share ideas, even though these are about the only people they could share ideas with.
A significant downside for individuals is the profound isolation this sort of environment creates. Each given ecosystem is already quite small, making it particularly problematic when you feel you’re competing with (rather than collaborating with) the few others in your field. People can surprisingly easily end up collaborating with essentially no one for stretches of 10-30 years.
This situation creates obvious challenges for overall productivity. While competitive pressure can motivate individual performance, it simultaneously hampers coordination between different actors. The result is often a landscape fragmented by 20 different sets of jargon and numerous overlapping but poorly integrated ideas. Additionally, younger practitioners miss out on valuable mentorship from more experienced colleagues.
If I were a funder targeting these areas, I’d prioritize addressing these misaligned incentives. Many professionals seem trapped in suboptimal equilibria that undermine broader research goals. CEOs already struggle with fostering collaboration among direct reports; facilitating cooperation in decentralized environments presents an even greater, but still important, challenge.
[1] I definitely contribute to this as well, to certain extents, and feel bad about it. For example, I probably spend less time helping out others in my area than I should.
(This was lightly edited using Claude)
Could you describe a bit more what you mean here by “standoffishness?” Is it just that people aren’t very friendly and welcoming in a social sense?
Sort of. More practically, this includes people being hesitant to share ideas with each other, help each other, say good things about each other, etc.