Grifters are optimizing only to get themselves money and power; EAs are optimizing for improving the world.
I think it is not so binary in reality. It’s likely that almost no one thinks about themselves as a grifter; and almost everyone in EA is at least somewhat biased towards actions that will cause them to have more money and power (on account of being human). So, while I think this post points at an extremely important problem, I wouldn’t use the grifters vs. EAs dichotomy.
It’s likely that almost no one thinks about themselves as a grifter
I strongly agree with this, and think it’s important to keep in mind
Almost everyone in EA is at least somewhat biased towards actions that will cause them to have more money and power (on account of being human)
I don’t think this matches my (very limited) intuition. I think that there is huge variance in how much different individuals in EA optimize for money/power/prestige. It seems to me that some people really want to “move up the career ladder” in EA orgs, and be the ones that have that precious “impact”. While others really want to “do the most good”, and would be genuinely happy to have others take decision-making roles if they thought it would lead to more good.
I disagree with your model of human nature. I think I’d agree with you if you instead said
almost everyone in EA is at least somewhat biased towards actions that will cause them to be better at accomplishing their selfish goals (on account of being human).
I think it’s valuable to remember that people in EA aren’t perfect saints, and have natural human foibles and selfishness. But also humans are not by default either power- or money- maximizers, and in fact some selfish goals are poorly served by power-seeking (e.g. laziness)
I think it is not so binary in reality. It’s likely that almost no one thinks about themselves as a grifter; and almost everyone in EA is at least somewhat biased towards actions that will cause them to have more money and power (on account of being human). So, while I think this post points at an extremely important problem, I wouldn’t use the grifters vs. EAs dichotomy.
I strongly agree with this, and think it’s important to keep in mind
I don’t think this matches my (very limited) intuition.
I think that there is huge variance in how much different individuals in EA optimize for money/power/prestige. It seems to me that some people really want to “move up the career ladder” in EA orgs, and be the ones that have that precious “impact”. While others really want to “do the most good”, and would be genuinely happy to have others take decision-making roles if they thought it would lead to more good.
I disagree with your model of human nature. I think I’d agree with you if you instead said
I think it’s valuable to remember that people in EA aren’t perfect saints, and have natural human foibles and selfishness. But also humans are not by default either power- or money- maximizers, and in fact some selfish goals are poorly served by power-seeking (e.g. laziness)