This framing doesn’t clarify the issue much to me. Why do you think this billionaire would want young professionals to build their safety net over donating? Seems there are considerations (gcrs, potential monetary ease of building safety nets, low expected return on some people’s long-term career, low expectation that people stay involved in EA long-term, etc) which may flip the calculus for any given person.
Why do you think this billionaire would want young professionals to build their safety net over donating?
Here’s one consideration: If someone in EA find themselves in a financially scary situation, and their ability to earn income depends on them publishing/doing impressive things about anthropogenic x-risks, then it seemingly becomes more likely that they will cause accidental harm due to biased judgment. (By drawing attention to something in a harmful way, etc.)
Hey, I’ll dive deeper to why I think so (maybe you’ll change my mind)
Most of the impact comes from late-stage professionals
We want people to reach the late-stage part
Something that might prevent someone from reaching a high impact late career is a financial problem (I’m imagining losing 6-12 months of salary) where they don’t have a safety net
Another failure mode might be the fear of such a financial problem, which would cause the professional to not dare switch jobs or so [I think this is not a theoretical problem, I can elaborate]
Or not be able to save time (or improve productivity) by paying money, like
Not having a reasonable office or computer
Not having a quiet apartment to sleep in
Taking bad cheap public transport
Another (similar) way to think about it:
If everyone would have a safety net of only 2 months or so (because they’d donate everything else), I think
EA would have lots more donations from early career people
EA would have a lot less very strong late career people, because many wouldn’t make it
I also want to say you changed my mind and I agree with you:
Yes there’s less value in getting donations later
Because we can’t use them today
Because we might not get them at all
Regarding “may flip the calculus for any given person”—I already agree with that. That’s part of what I meant by “that would be a complicated project”.
This framing doesn’t clarify the issue much to me. Why do you think this billionaire would want young professionals to build their safety net over donating? Seems there are considerations (gcrs, potential monetary ease of building safety nets, low expected return on some people’s long-term career, low expectation that people stay involved in EA long-term, etc) which may flip the calculus for any given person.
Here’s one consideration: If someone in EA find themselves in a financially scary situation, and their ability to earn income depends on them publishing/doing impressive things about anthropogenic x-risks, then it seemingly becomes more likely that they will cause accidental harm due to biased judgment. (By drawing attention to something in a harmful way, etc.)
Hey, I’ll dive deeper to why I think so (maybe you’ll change my mind)
Most of the impact comes from late-stage professionals
We want people to reach the late-stage part
Something that might prevent someone from reaching a high impact late career is a financial problem (I’m imagining losing 6-12 months of salary) where they don’t have a safety net
Another failure mode might be the fear of such a financial problem, which would cause the professional to not dare switch jobs or so [I think this is not a theoretical problem, I can elaborate]
Or not be able to save time (or improve productivity) by paying money, like
Not having a reasonable office or computer
Not having a quiet apartment to sleep in
Taking bad cheap public transport
Another (similar) way to think about it:
If everyone would have a safety net of only 2 months or so (because they’d donate everything else), I think
EA would have lots more donations from early career people
EA would have a lot less very strong late career people, because many wouldn’t make it
I also want to say you changed my mind and I agree with you:
Yes there’s less value in getting donations later
Because we can’t use them today
Because we might not get them at all
Regarding “may flip the calculus for any given person”—I already agree with that. That’s part of what I meant by “that would be a complicated project”.