I would suggest that part of the difference between funding and people for global health is the huge non-EA workforce that is already working on the things EAs want to optimize for—so replaceability is very high, and marginal value low, unless we think value alignment is particularly critical.
The same can’t be said about AI risk, biosecurity, and other areas where the EA perspective about what to focus on differs from the perspective of most other people working in the area. (Not to mention EA meta / prioritization, where non-EAs working on it is effectively impossible.)
We should want funding to go into areas where there is more existing infrastructure / it’s easier to measure results / there are people who already care about the issue.
Then aligned people should focus on areas that don’t have those features.
It’s good to see this seems to be happening to some degree!
Though, to be clear, I think this is only a moderate reason (among many other factors) in favour of donating to global health vs. say biosecurity.
Overall, my guess is that if someone is interested in donating to biosecurity but worried about the smaller existing workforce, then it would be better to:
Fund movement building efforts to build the workforce
Invest the money and donate later when the workforce is bigger
I think this is likely true for animal welfare too. For example, looking at animal welfare organizations funded by Open Phil, and thinking about my own experience working at/with groups funded by them, I’d guess that under 10% of employees at a lot of the bigger orgs (THL, GFI) engage with non-animal EA content at all, and a lot fewer than that fill out the EA survey.
I would suggest that part of the difference between funding and people for global health is the huge non-EA workforce that is already working on the things EAs want to optimize for—so replaceability is very high, and marginal value low, unless we think value alignment is particularly critical.
The same can’t be said about AI risk, biosecurity, and other areas where the EA perspective about what to focus on differs from the perspective of most other people working in the area. (Not to mention EA meta / prioritization, where non-EAs working on it is effectively impossible.)
Good point, I agree that’s a factor.
We should want funding to go into areas where there is more existing infrastructure / it’s easier to measure results / there are people who already care about the issue.
Then aligned people should focus on areas that don’t have those features.
It’s good to see this seems to be happening to some degree!
Though, to be clear, I think this is only a moderate reason (among many other factors) in favour of donating to global health vs. say biosecurity.
Overall, my guess is that if someone is interested in donating to biosecurity but worried about the smaller existing workforce, then it would be better to:
Fund movement building efforts to build the workforce
Invest the money and donate later when the workforce is bigger
I think this is likely true for animal welfare too. For example, looking at animal welfare organizations funded by Open Phil, and thinking about my own experience working at/with groups funded by them, I’d guess that under 10% of employees at a lot of the bigger orgs (THL, GFI) engage with non-animal EA content at all, and a lot fewer than that fill out the EA survey.