Most of the criticisms I’ve seen about EA spending on outreach seem driven not by the conceptual reasons you mention, but empirical estimates of how effective EA spending on outreach actually is.
Could you give examples? Usually the arguments I see look more like ” Does it really make sense to pay recent college grads $X” or “isn’t flying out college students to international conferences kinda extravagant?”and not “the EV of this grant is too low relative to the costs.”
I don’t have any particular examples in mind, just speaking about my gestalt impression. My impression is that criticisms like “Does it really make sense to pay recent grads $X” and “flying college students out to international conferences is extravagant” are usually fundamentally based on (implicit/unconscious, not necessarily in-depth) estimates that these activities are not in fact high EV relative to costs/alternatives, just phrased in different ways and stressing different parts than EAs typically do. I believe many people making these criticisms would not make them (or would moderate them significantly) if they thought that the activities were high EV even if the overhead ratio or fundraising costs were high.
Most of the criticisms I’ve seen about EA spending on outreach seem driven not by the conceptual reasons you mention, but empirical estimates of how effective EA spending on outreach actually is.
Could you give examples? Usually the arguments I see look more like ” Does it really make sense to pay recent college grads $X” or “isn’t flying out college students to international conferences kinda extravagant?”and not “the EV of this grant is too low relative to the costs.”
I don’t have any particular examples in mind, just speaking about my gestalt impression. My impression is that criticisms like “Does it really make sense to pay recent grads $X” and “flying college students out to international conferences is extravagant” are usually fundamentally based on (implicit/unconscious, not necessarily in-depth) estimates that these activities are not in fact high EV relative to costs/alternatives, just phrased in different ways and stressing different parts than EAs typically do. I believe many people making these criticisms would not make them (or would moderate them significantly) if they thought that the activities were high EV even if the overhead ratio or fundraising costs were high.