This is an interesting read, thanks so much for putting it together. I can’t really talk about things on a larger scope e.g. companies and official consultancy offers, but I suppose on the more micro-level of cakes at conferences or research on a forum...
I think you set out some of the conflicts in a way that helped me structure my thoughts a lot more clearly. I offered an organisation some support in putting together a meta-analysis on this forum in a field I specialise in—this was out of a general sense of altruism and support of the over-arching cause, as well as soothing my conscience a little for otherwise providing critique. At the same time, I did wonder if doing so ‘de-valued’ the offer i.e. suggested my skills were worth what I was offering (nothing), I had an abundance of time to be doing this (i.e. I’m not in demand), and as an EA-outsider using a pseudonym, I don’t come pre-vetted [While my brother is ‘known’ in EA, I wouldn’t feel comfortable using my searchable legal name on a public forum due to my profession putting me at high risk of stalking, and (no doubt) a combination of my age/gender/physicality etc meaning I’ve had a lot of unwelcome attention online].
I think all of this skews naturally to EA projects selecting in-group (trusted) members for specific tasks, or having to pay for commercial services, which will likely come with a higher price due to any overhead of running a company (unless offering an EA-discount, making it more likely to be EA-aligned and receive promotion through EA—it’s perhaps a quid-pro-quo). E.g. I have no idea about accountancy and if I was hiring an accountant, I wouldn’t be able to look at their work and know if they were good or not—I’d likely rely on reputation, recommendations, the appearance they are ‘legitimate’ etc, and if they fit my budget. It makes sense to me for EA projects, this would favour EAs and EA-orgs.
Perhaps there is an issue with a more ‘grassroots’ concept in EA in the broader sphere of cost-effectiveness where some people likely struggle to properly evaluate their worth, don’t charge for their time, and therefore won’t get the ‘signals’ to build on their contributions to realise they should. It’s quite a leap from offering ad-hoc services to running a company. On the other hand, with receiving grants/funding or reputation being the markers of ‘valuable’ work in the community, this is open to corruption. Let’s say my family is wealthy, so my Dad is happy to give me some money to start an organisation, there’s little/no personal risk if it fails, and I don’t need to work for six months so I can focus entirely on getting it off the ground. I could set it up as something official and make it look like a ‘proper’ company, get a flashy website, devote all of my time to developing content and applying for grants, offer discounts to solicit clients and positive endorsements, advertise, network in EA, etc. Even if my work was terrible, if it is niche enough, it’s likely I would seem extremely legitimate within the community and I could enter a positive-feedback loop of increasing revenue, over-confidence and over-recommendation. It seems that there is risk of over- and under-funding effort along the same lines.
This is perhaps a silly question, but do people ever use a sort of Patreon model or have links to individual cash apps like PayPal etc.? [FWIW my offer wasn’t taken up so I’m relatively unbiased here] To be basic, I suppose how people might endorse/reward creators of content on social media platforms (a bit like Asimov in your example having a ‘Give whatever you like’ tin vs pricing the cakes). I’ve not seen this and it might be against the rules (sorry) or be a gauche idea, but this forum feels relatively unique in the amount of work people put into posts and other community-facing offers from regular contributors which provide a lot of value. It might allow for people to make better cost evaluations of their time/effort and perhaps encourage people who are doing good work to continue and recognise they should be charging for their services, which would allow the organic development to perhaps something official. This might also provide a slight counter-lever to the power dynamics and provide scope for reduced insularity in EA, as mentioned in your post, in encouraging smaller service-providers to not work for free, and allowing some questioning of bigger organisations utilising ‘free’ services if there was an option to fairly compensate people for their work (even if this was voluntary).
The Patreon idea is interesting! One potential drawback is that it could skew participants’ incentives (and feeback mechamisms) a bit in the direction of whatever made the class of people who disproportionately participated in Patreon happy.
For example, I believe that median salaries for people working in AI safety are considerably higher than those working in global health & wellbeing. If everyone spent (say) 0.03% of their salaries on Patreon subsidies, and people were more inclined to use Patreon to send money to semi-volunteers in their own area of focus, using Patreon as a feedback mechanism would likely skew toward AI safety merely because AI safety folks tend to have more money to give.
This is an interesting read, thanks so much for putting it together. I can’t really talk about things on a larger scope e.g. companies and official consultancy offers, but I suppose on the more micro-level of cakes at conferences or research on a forum...
I think you set out some of the conflicts in a way that helped me structure my thoughts a lot more clearly. I offered an organisation some support in putting together a meta-analysis on this forum in a field I specialise in—this was out of a general sense of altruism and support of the over-arching cause, as well as soothing my conscience a little for otherwise providing critique. At the same time, I did wonder if doing so ‘de-valued’ the offer i.e. suggested my skills were worth what I was offering (nothing), I had an abundance of time to be doing this (i.e. I’m not in demand), and as an EA-outsider using a pseudonym, I don’t come pre-vetted [While my brother is ‘known’ in EA, I wouldn’t feel comfortable using my searchable legal name on a public forum due to my profession putting me at high risk of stalking, and (no doubt) a combination of my age/gender/physicality etc meaning I’ve had a lot of unwelcome attention online].
I think all of this skews naturally to EA projects selecting in-group (trusted) members for specific tasks, or having to pay for commercial services, which will likely come with a higher price due to any overhead of running a company (unless offering an EA-discount, making it more likely to be EA-aligned and receive promotion through EA—it’s perhaps a quid-pro-quo). E.g. I have no idea about accountancy and if I was hiring an accountant, I wouldn’t be able to look at their work and know if they were good or not—I’d likely rely on reputation, recommendations, the appearance they are ‘legitimate’ etc, and if they fit my budget. It makes sense to me for EA projects, this would favour EAs and EA-orgs.
Perhaps there is an issue with a more ‘grassroots’ concept in EA in the broader sphere of cost-effectiveness where some people likely struggle to properly evaluate their worth, don’t charge for their time, and therefore won’t get the ‘signals’ to build on their contributions to realise they should. It’s quite a leap from offering ad-hoc services to running a company. On the other hand, with receiving grants/funding or reputation being the markers of ‘valuable’ work in the community, this is open to corruption. Let’s say my family is wealthy, so my Dad is happy to give me some money to start an organisation, there’s little/no personal risk if it fails, and I don’t need to work for six months so I can focus entirely on getting it off the ground. I could set it up as something official and make it look like a ‘proper’ company, get a flashy website, devote all of my time to developing content and applying for grants, offer discounts to solicit clients and positive endorsements, advertise, network in EA, etc. Even if my work was terrible, if it is niche enough, it’s likely I would seem extremely legitimate within the community and I could enter a positive-feedback loop of increasing revenue, over-confidence and over-recommendation. It seems that there is risk of over- and under-funding effort along the same lines.
This is perhaps a silly question, but do people ever use a sort of Patreon model or have links to individual cash apps like PayPal etc.? [FWIW my offer wasn’t taken up so I’m relatively unbiased here] To be basic, I suppose how people might endorse/reward creators of content on social media platforms (a bit like Asimov in your example having a ‘Give whatever you like’ tin vs pricing the cakes). I’ve not seen this and it might be against the rules (sorry) or be a gauche idea, but this forum feels relatively unique in the amount of work people put into posts and other community-facing offers from regular contributors which provide a lot of value. It might allow for people to make better cost evaluations of their time/effort and perhaps encourage people who are doing good work to continue and recognise they should be charging for their services, which would allow the organic development to perhaps something official. This might also provide a slight counter-lever to the power dynamics and provide scope for reduced insularity in EA, as mentioned in your post, in encouraging smaller service-providers to not work for free, and allowing some questioning of bigger organisations utilising ‘free’ services if there was an option to fairly compensate people for their work (even if this was voluntary).
The Patreon idea is interesting! One potential drawback is that it could skew participants’ incentives (and feeback mechamisms) a bit in the direction of whatever made the class of people who disproportionately participated in Patreon happy.
For example, I believe that median salaries for people working in AI safety are considerably higher than those working in global health & wellbeing. If everyone spent (say) 0.03% of their salaries on Patreon subsidies, and people were more inclined to use Patreon to send money to semi-volunteers in their own area of focus, using Patreon as a feedback mechanism would likely skew toward AI safety merely because AI safety folks tend to have more money to give.