I liked this series, and agree with a lot of it. But (unless I missed this) I think you omitted an important problem of using low salaries as a proxy for value alignment: it is a much more meaningful proxy for some people than others. Low salaries might filter out people who aren’t value aligned, but they will also filter out people who are very value aligned but can’t accept low salaries because of e.g. high medical bills, having dependents to support, student loans, etc. This interferes with the goal of finding the best candidates, and exacerbates EA’s tendency toward elitism.
I liked this series, and agree with a lot of it. But (unless I missed this) I think you omitted an important problem of using low salaries as a proxy for value alignment: it is a much more meaningful proxy for some people than others. Low salaries might filter out people who aren’t value aligned, but they will also filter out people who are very value aligned but can’t accept low salaries because of e.g. high medical bills, having dependents to support, student loans, etc. This interferes with the goal of finding the best candidates, and exacerbates EA’s tendency toward elitism.
Thanks, good point. I agree that this is an additional problem for that strategy. My discussion about it wasn’t very systematic.