Personally, I’ve noticed that being casually aware of smaller projects that seem cash-strapped has given me the intuition that it would be better for Good Ventures to fund more of the things it thinks should be funded, since that might give some talented EAs more autonomy. On the other hand, I suspect that people who prefer the “opposite” strategy, of being more positive on the pledge and feeling quite comfortable with Givewell’s approach to splitting, are seeing a very different social landscape than I am. Maybe they’re aware of people who wouldn’t have engaged with EA in any way other than by taking the pledge, or they’ve spent relatively more time engaging with Givewell-style core EA material than I have?
Between the fact that filter bubbles exist, and the fact that I don’t get out much (see the last three characters of my username), I think I’d be likely to not notice if lots of the disagreement on this whole cluster of related topics (honesty/pledging/partial funding/etc.) was due to people having had differing social experiences with other EAs.
So, perhaps this is a nudge towards reconciliation on both the pledge and on Good Ventures’ take on partial funding. If people’s social circles tend to be homogeneous-ish, some people will know of lots of underfunded promising EAs and projects (which indirectly compete with GV and GiveWell top charities for resources), and others will know of few such EAs/projects. If this is case, we should expect most people’s intuitions on how many funding opportunities for small projects (which only small donors can identify effectively) there are, to be systematically off in one way or another. Perhaps a reasonable thing to do here would be to discuss ways to estimate how many underfunded small projects, which EAs would be eager to fund if only they knew about them, there are.
Personally, I’ve noticed that being casually aware of smaller projects that seem cash-strapped has given me the intuition that it would be better for Good Ventures to fund more of the things it thinks should be funded, since that might give some talented EAs more autonomy. On the other hand, I suspect that people who prefer the “opposite” strategy, of being more positive on the pledge and feeling quite comfortable with Givewell’s approach to splitting, are seeing a very different social landscape than I am. Maybe they’re aware of people who wouldn’t have engaged with EA in any way other than by taking the pledge, or they’ve spent relatively more time engaging with Givewell-style core EA material than I have?
Between the fact that filter bubbles exist, and the fact that I don’t get out much (see the last three characters of my username), I think I’d be likely to not notice if lots of the disagreement on this whole cluster of related topics (honesty/pledging/partial funding/etc.) was due to people having had differing social experiences with other EAs.
So, perhaps this is a nudge towards reconciliation on both the pledge and on Good Ventures’ take on partial funding. If people’s social circles tend to be homogeneous-ish, some people will know of lots of underfunded promising EAs and projects (which indirectly compete with GV and GiveWell top charities for resources), and others will know of few such EAs/projects. If this is case, we should expect most people’s intuitions on how many funding opportunities for small projects (which only small donors can identify effectively) there are, to be systematically off in one way or another. Perhaps a reasonable thing to do here would be to discuss ways to estimate how many underfunded small projects, which EAs would be eager to fund if only they knew about them, there are.