It’s not that the post is bad, but I didn’t perceive it to contribute much to intellectual progress in any major way, and to me mostly parsed as an organizational announcement. The post obviously got a lot of upvotes, which is good because it was an important announcement, but I think a large part of that is because it was written by Open Phil (which is what makes it an important announcement) [Edit: I believe this less strongly now than I did at the time of writing this comment. See my short thread with Peter_Hurford]. I expect the same post written by someone else would have not received much prominence and I expect would have very unlikely been selected for a price.
I think it’s particularly bad for posts to get prizes that would have been impossible to write when not coming from an established organization. I am much less confident about posts that could have been written by someone else, but that happened to have been written by someone in a full time role at an EA organization.
Just to explain why I voted for this piece as one of the judges… I like career profiles that emphasize opportunities in a space that I don’t think many people considered. Especially careers that might scalably employ a large number of EAs. I personally don’t think the OpenPhil-affiliated authorship was a key determinant of my judging decision, but it may have played a small role in the decision. I disagree that it “would have been impossible to write when not coming from an established organization”. I agree with Aaron that “Aligning Recommender Systems” falls in a similar category for me. Similarly, this post on plant-based food jobs also felt similarly helpful to me.
I expect the same post written by someone else would have not received much prominence and I expect would have very unlikely been selected for a prize.
I’m not sure about this. One of last month’s winners, “Aligning Recommender Systems,” also outlined an argument for EAs gaining experience/pursuing careers in a field that hadn’t been covered much or at all by prior authors, and was highly upvoted. As far as I know, neither author works for an EA organization (though I don’t know much about their background, and would appreciate someone correcting me if I’m wrong).
I think it’s particularly bad for posts to get prizes that would have been impossible to write when not coming from an established organization.
How do you feel about posts which would have been almost impossible to write for authors who weren’t in some other exceptional circumstance?
For example, during the first month of prize selection, one winner was Adam Gleave, who wrote a great post about deciding what to do with his winnings from the EA Donor Lottery. I’d guess that only someone with unusual financial resources would have been able to make such large donations (and get statements from ALLFED, etc.) which left me uncertain at the time whether Adam’s post should have qualified.
The main difference here seems to be that he sacrificed a lot of his free time to conduct research and write a post, but I still expect that other authors with equal willingness to research and write wouldn’t have gotten as much attention.
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On another note, I think that some posts in this category are highly valuable. For example, someone working at an org might write a very detailed post on operations that they couldn’t have written without experience running large-scale EA events. If this kind of post wouldn’t be written in someone’s spare time without incentives (which I know is a big assumption), I’d like to provide those incentives.
Yep, I’d generally agree with that. One possible distinction is that I could see value in recognizing posts that have high EV but don’t necessarily match “intellectual progress” in one way or another.
My comment applied to the fact that all three winners were tough to compete with for most people. However, there is the similar point that the Information Security Careers post in particular is odd because it was useful because it of the reputation of the writers (I’d agree this seemed necessary.)
I think the Information security careers for GCR reduction post is a relatively bad first place, and made me update reasonably strong downwards on the signal of the price.
It’s not that the post is bad, but I didn’t perceive it to contribute much to intellectual progress in any major way, and to me mostly parsed as an organizational announcement. The post obviously got a lot of upvotes, which is good because it was an important announcement, but I think a large part of that is because it was written by Open Phil (which is what makes it an important announcement) [Edit: I believe this less strongly now than I did at the time of writing this comment. See my short thread with Peter_Hurford]. I expect the same post written by someone else would have not received much prominence and I expect would have very unlikely been selected for a price.
I think it’s particularly bad for posts to get prizes that would have been impossible to write when not coming from an established organization. I am much less confident about posts that could have been written by someone else, but that happened to have been written by someone in a full time role at an EA organization.
Just to explain why I voted for this piece as one of the judges… I like career profiles that emphasize opportunities in a space that I don’t think many people considered. Especially careers that might scalably employ a large number of EAs. I personally don’t think the OpenPhil-affiliated authorship was a key determinant of my judging decision, but it may have played a small role in the decision. I disagree that it “would have been impossible to write when not coming from an established organization”. I agree with Aaron that “Aligning Recommender Systems” falls in a similar category for me. Similarly, this post on plant-based food jobs also felt similarly helpful to me.
This updated me a bit, and I think I now at least partially retract that part of my comment.
I’m not sure about this. One of last month’s winners, “Aligning Recommender Systems,” also outlined an argument for EAs gaining experience/pursuing careers in a field that hadn’t been covered much or at all by prior authors, and was highly upvoted. As far as I know, neither author works for an EA organization (though I don’t know much about their background, and would appreciate someone correcting me if I’m wrong).
How do you feel about posts which would have been almost impossible to write for authors who weren’t in some other exceptional circumstance?
For example, during the first month of prize selection, one winner was Adam Gleave, who wrote a great post about deciding what to do with his winnings from the EA Donor Lottery. I’d guess that only someone with unusual financial resources would have been able to make such large donations (and get statements from ALLFED, etc.) which left me uncertain at the time whether Adam’s post should have qualified.
The main difference here seems to be that he sacrificed a lot of his free time to conduct research and write a post, but I still expect that other authors with equal willingness to research and write wouldn’t have gotten as much attention.
--
On another note, I think that some posts in this category are highly valuable. For example, someone working at an org might write a very detailed post on operations that they couldn’t have written without experience running large-scale EA events. If this kind of post wouldn’t be written in someone’s spare time without incentives (which I know is a big assumption), I’d like to provide those incentives.
A question for the prize winners (if they read this and have time):
Did you find this award helps to motivate you, and do you have thoughts on if the prize should be changed in the future?
See https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/u55Misp5ZjtkTQrXQ/ea-forum-prize-winners-for-june-2019#fDmiPdXBgA99oPp5g
Yep, I’d generally agree with that. One possible distinction is that I could see value in recognizing posts that have high EV but don’t necessarily match “intellectual progress” in one way or another.
My comment applied to the fact that all three winners were tough to compete with for most people. However, there is the similar point that the Information Security Careers post in particular is odd because it was useful because it of the reputation of the writers (I’d agree this seemed necessary.)