Another reason to first secure financial independence is to mitigate conflict of interest risks.
If one’s ability to provide food, shelter, and healthcare—to themselves / loved ones—depends on whether they’re doing/publishing impressive things about anthropogenic x-risks, they can easily end up doing impactful, net-negative things (due to being biased / self-deception).
Even without conflicts of interest, complex cluelessness is a common phenomenon in the domains of anthropogenic x-risks and meta-EA (due to an abundance of crucial considerations). It is often very hard to judge whether a given intervention is net-positive or net-negative. Conflicts of interest can thus easily influence decisions catastrophically.
On the other hand, advocating for many people to secure financial independence and then go work independently in anthropogenic x-risks domains can exacerbate the unilateralist’s curse problem and make coordination harder. (Relative to a situation where there are few EA orgs that employ those people.)
Another reason to first secure financial independence is to mitigate conflict of interest risks.
If one’s ability to provide food, shelter, and healthcare—to themselves / loved ones—depends on whether they’re doing/publishing impressive things about anthropogenic x-risks, they can easily end up doing impactful, net-negative things (due to being biased / self-deception).
Even without conflicts of interest, complex cluelessness is a common phenomenon in the domains of anthropogenic x-risks and meta-EA (due to an abundance of crucial considerations). It is often very hard to judge whether a given intervention is net-positive or net-negative. Conflicts of interest can thus easily influence decisions catastrophically.
On the other hand, advocating for many people to secure financial independence and then go work independently in anthropogenic x-risks domains can exacerbate the unilateralist’s curse problem and make coordination harder. (Relative to a situation where there are few EA orgs that employ those people.)