Iām really happy to see this contest and hope it will produce high quality scripts!
Iāve watched all the longtermism-relevant videos on your channel and thought they were very well done overall. To be more specific, I thought the video you released promoting WWOTF was significantly better than Kurzgesagtās video promoting WWOTF and I was disappointed Kurzgesagt hadnāt used a script like yours (given their very large audience).
While Iām sure youāve already thought of this, I want to highlight one concern I have about the contest, namely that your $5,000 prize may provide a much smaller incentive than a prize 2-3 times as large:
Given youāre hiring a team of 9 animators to work on the next video, Iād guess that $5,000 is not a large fraction of the budget (though I could be mistaken). And in my opinion, the script matters more than the animation (e.g. see my claim that your WWOTF video was better than Kurzgesagtās despite them presumably having a much larger /ā more expensive animation team). So Iād question the decision to spend a lot more on animators than the script (if you are in fact doing that).
Additionally, contest participants know they are not guaranteed to win the top prize. To asses the expected hourly earnings from entering the contest they need to discount the prize by the probability that they win. All things considered Iām not sure that many people who could write great scripts for you would be justified in believing theyād earn a reasonable wage in expectation by participating in the contest.
Anyway, Iām sure you picked the $5,000 amount carefully and that youāve already thought of the relative value of higher prize amounts, but just wanted to provide this quick feedback in case itās helpful.
The second related point of feedback is that committing to ā0-4ā prizes means that someone might think āeven if I write the best script, they still might not choose me and I might not win any moneyā leading people to discount their expected earnings even more. Perhaps commit to offering some prize for the best script regardless of whether you create a video out of it?
I have the same concern about the fact that the expected income from participating in the contest might be small. I think the other two prizes somewhat mitigate this, but Iām not sure how people value those prizes.
Iām indeed spending a lot less on scriptwriting than on animation. This hasnāt always been true, but it is true now and will continue to be true as the team becomes larger because animation is just way costlier. That said, the proportion of the budget devoted to scriptwriting will increase again in the near future, but not drastically. More specifically, as I say in the post, Iād like to hire more scriptwriters, and, later on, Iād like to bring in at least one fact-checker.
For now, Iāll leave the prizes unchanged. Iāll wait at least a couple of weeks to see how the contest goes. Depending on how many scripts Iām getting and their quality, I might decide to change the prizes.
Iām really happy to see this contest and hope it will produce high quality scripts!
Iāve watched all the longtermism-relevant videos on your channel and thought they were very well done overall. To be more specific, I thought the video you released promoting WWOTF was significantly better than Kurzgesagtās video promoting WWOTF and I was disappointed Kurzgesagt hadnāt used a script like yours (given their very large audience).
While Iām sure youāve already thought of this, I want to highlight one concern I have about the contest, namely that your $5,000 prize may provide a much smaller incentive than a prize 2-3 times as large:
Given youāre hiring a team of 9 animators to work on the next video, Iād guess that $5,000 is not a large fraction of the budget (though I could be mistaken). And in my opinion, the script matters more than the animation (e.g. see my claim that your WWOTF video was better than Kurzgesagtās despite them presumably having a much larger /ā more expensive animation team). So Iād question the decision to spend a lot more on animators than the script (if you are in fact doing that).
Additionally, contest participants know they are not guaranteed to win the top prize. To asses the expected hourly earnings from entering the contest they need to discount the prize by the probability that they win. All things considered Iām not sure that many people who could write great scripts for you would be justified in believing theyād earn a reasonable wage in expectation by participating in the contest.
Anyway, Iām sure you picked the $5,000 amount carefully and that youāve already thought of the relative value of higher prize amounts, but just wanted to provide this quick feedback in case itās helpful.
The second related point of feedback is that committing to ā0-4ā prizes means that someone might think āeven if I write the best script, they still might not choose me and I might not win any moneyā leading people to discount their expected earnings even more. Perhaps commit to offering some prize for the best script regardless of whether you create a video out of it?
Thanks a lot for the feedback!
I have the same concern about the fact that the expected income from participating in the contest might be small. I think the other two prizes somewhat mitigate this, but Iām not sure how people value those prizes.
Iām indeed spending a lot less on scriptwriting than on animation. This hasnāt always been true, but it is true now and will continue to be true as the team becomes larger because animation is just way costlier. That said, the proportion of the budget devoted to scriptwriting will increase again in the near future, but not drastically. More specifically, as I say in the post, Iād like to hire more scriptwriters, and, later on, Iād like to bring in at least one fact-checker.
For now, Iāll leave the prizes unchanged. Iāll wait at least a couple of weeks to see how the contest goes. Depending on how many scripts Iām getting and their quality, I might decide to change the prizes.
Terrific, Iām excited to see how things turn out!