Thanks for this. I want to make sure I’m understanding you correctly, so let me try to paraphrase.
You’re saying the discovery problem I describe is real but is a symptom of something deeper: EA has no formal governance, so whoever controls the money controls the priorities, and there’s no institutional mechanism to resist that. The three groups you identify (people who think EA is just math, people who think decentralization is strategically good, and people who benefit from the status quo) form a coalition that blocks any structural reform, and they’re concentrated in the places where power actually lives. So any solution I propose, like scouts or green-teaming or seed grants, will just get absorbed by the same dynamics that created the problem, unless there’s something closer to a binding political structure that constrains how money translates into agenda-setting power.
And your most pessimistic read is that this might not be fixable from inside EA at all, and that the better move might be starting something new that builds in those structural safeguards from the beginning.
Is that roughly right? And if so, do you think there’s any version of reform that works short of formal governance, or is your view that anything less is window dressing?
Yes I think you mostly captured it and quite well. But I think there is something a little more too, which is that EA meme actually is more epistemically humble than you think. There is EA the meme and EA the group. The EA meme has leaked into much of mainstream policy and economics. It’s in the water. The EA group has not.
Let’s say (referring to your other comment here), you do get a rich funder to fund work on applying alternate moral systems, in a ratio such that we, we being the current people and groups who you think compose ea (who is that?), in tandem with this new funding, are riding the perfect part of the curve where the marginal efficiency of exploration and exploitation (of our moral values) is equivalent.
Taking a specific example, let’s say this founder funds EA of biodiversity. Based on some (evolving) metric of biodiversity, this new group finds the best interventions for preserving biodiversity. Let’s say their current best cause areas after all of this debate are saving the coral reefs and preserving indigenous languages and culture.
In what sense are they any longer part of EA? Would you expect this subgroup to then post to the EA forums and go to EAG? More likely is they just become their own thing or the people get absorbed into the existing biodiversity or climate movements.
So then are we still properly exploring/exploiting? or do we now need a new group? Again, who is we?
We is some effort-status-capital-talent weighted aggregation of all the people who care to engage in the spaces and network of other people who would self describe as ea. It’s a very ephemeral thing driven by subliminal status games and hidden incentives.
I’m definitely not sure this is futile. I still try to push towards you vision, and others have too.
Thanks for this. I want to make sure I’m understanding you correctly, so let me try to paraphrase.
You’re saying the discovery problem I describe is real but is a symptom of something deeper: EA has no formal governance, so whoever controls the money controls the priorities, and there’s no institutional mechanism to resist that. The three groups you identify (people who think EA is just math, people who think decentralization is strategically good, and people who benefit from the status quo) form a coalition that blocks any structural reform, and they’re concentrated in the places where power actually lives. So any solution I propose, like scouts or green-teaming or seed grants, will just get absorbed by the same dynamics that created the problem, unless there’s something closer to a binding political structure that constrains how money translates into agenda-setting power.
And your most pessimistic read is that this might not be fixable from inside EA at all, and that the better move might be starting something new that builds in those structural safeguards from the beginning.
Is that roughly right? And if so, do you think there’s any version of reform that works short of formal governance, or is your view that anything less is window dressing?
Yes I think you mostly captured it and quite well. But I think there is something a little more too, which is that EA meme actually is more epistemically humble than you think. There is EA the meme and EA the group. The EA meme has leaked into much of mainstream policy and economics. It’s in the water. The EA group has not.
Let’s say (referring to your other comment here), you do get a rich funder to fund work on applying alternate moral systems, in a ratio such that we, we being the current people and groups who you think compose ea (who is that?), in tandem with this new funding, are riding the perfect part of the curve where the marginal efficiency of exploration and exploitation (of our moral values) is equivalent.
Taking a specific example, let’s say this founder funds EA of biodiversity. Based on some (evolving) metric of biodiversity, this new group finds the best interventions for preserving biodiversity. Let’s say their current best cause areas after all of this debate are saving the coral reefs and preserving indigenous languages and culture.
In what sense are they any longer part of EA? Would you expect this subgroup to then post to the EA forums and go to EAG? More likely is they just become their own thing or the people get absorbed into the existing biodiversity or climate movements.
So then are we still properly exploring/exploiting? or do we now need a new group? Again, who is we?
We is some effort-status-capital-talent weighted aggregation of all the people who care to engage in the spaces and network of other people who would self describe as ea. It’s a very ephemeral thing driven by subliminal status games and hidden incentives.
I’m definitely not sure this is futile. I still try to push towards you vision, and others have too.
However the question isn’t can it be done, but is it the best path. I now lean in the direction that it is better to just start a new movement. I have tried to flesh parts of generative visions.