There’s lots of talk about how more EA-aligned funding will attract grifters. The Robin Hanson in me wondered what expensive or hard-to-fake signals exist for (human) alignment.
The first ideas that came to mind:
donating a kidney
vegan/​vegetarian
non-profit work
donating a lot to effective charities
community engagement
I don’t know whether folks should weight these highly in funding decisions. Probably they all collapse under sufficient pressure.
The kind of grifting that most concerns me within EA would result in a lot of fudging and inflation around reported impact in order to gain money & status. I think the hardest thing is fake, and the main thing we care about protecting, is real, verifiable impact. If there is an influx of money into EA, I would want the first thing to be done is to undertake a lot of new, third-party evaluation with depth. This is not happening today and I have not seen great plans to do so right now.
One point where I disagree is that I’m more concerned about well-intentioned people genuinely believing their project is extremely valuable, but who lack clear evidence of impact end up not achieving much. I’m less worried about people deliberately lying/​exaggerating to raise money for things they do not themselves believe are impactful.
But of course it’s hard to say from the outside, you could always argue that people are secretly doing whatever they’re doing just for the money & status, and I’ve seen people making such claims even when there’s tons of evidence of the contrary.
Frankly, if you can’t measure your work in a that an independent person could evaluate, I would be very skeptical that you’re having any impact at all.
I personally think people worry disproportionally too much about grift on the EA Forum, while implementation challenges and other considerations seem to be bigger risks in practice. (e.g. I don’t think the Wytham project or Dispensers for Safe Water would have been more successful if they had been assigned to more vegan or more frugal people)
There’s lots of talk about how more EA-aligned funding will attract grifters. The Robin Hanson in me wondered what expensive or hard-to-fake signals exist for (human) alignment.
The first ideas that came to mind:
donating a kidney
vegan/​vegetarian
non-profit work
donating a lot to effective charities
community engagement
I don’t know whether folks should weight these highly in funding decisions. Probably they all collapse under sufficient pressure.
The kind of grifting that most concerns me within EA would result in a lot of fudging and inflation around reported impact in order to gain money & status. I think the hardest thing is fake, and the main thing we care about protecting, is real, verifiable impact. If there is an influx of money into EA, I would want the first thing to be done is to undertake a lot of new, third-party evaluation with depth. This is not happening today and I have not seen great plans to do so right now.
See also this comment which I also agree with.
One point where I disagree is that I’m more concerned about well-intentioned people genuinely believing their project is extremely valuable, but who lack clear evidence of impact end up not achieving much. I’m less worried about people deliberately lying/​exaggerating to raise money for things they do not themselves believe are impactful.
But of course it’s hard to say from the outside, you could always argue that people are secretly doing whatever they’re doing just for the money & status, and I’ve seen people making such claims even when there’s tons of evidence of the contrary.
Sure, if you can directly measure what you actually want (positive impact), that is of course best :)
Frankly, if you can’t measure your work in a that an independent person could evaluate, I would be very skeptical that you’re having any impact at all.
Here’s another list from Caroline Ellison during the FTX times on valuable signals: https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​posts/​​M44i4CiMECP5Xoorz/​​demandingness-and-time-money-tradeoffs-are-orthogonal (which I’m not sure I agree with, but I found interesting)
I personally think people worry disproportionally too much about grift on the EA Forum, while implementation challenges and other considerations seem to be bigger risks in practice. (e.g. I don’t think the Wytham project or Dispensers for Safe Water would have been more successful if they had been assigned to more vegan or more frugal people)