I understand your intuition behind dividing the hours by expenses, but I donât think those numbers are correct; this comment has a bit more detail.
I also agree with Linch that Dominion is probably not the right comparison; a conference like CARE might be a better reference class of âhighly dedicated people seriously engaging with complex animal welfare topicsâ
That being said, I think you have an underlying point which is underappreciated: we sometimes talk about âcause prioritizationâ as though one cause would be universally better than another, but itâs entirely consistent to be willing to pay more for someone to read a forum post about AI safety than about animal welfare, while simultaneously being willing to pay more for an animal welfare documentary than an AI safety one. I think it is, in fact, true that many people I talk to would pay more for an hour of someone reading about AI safety than an hour of reading about animal welfare, and that is a relevant fact for figuring out how we should prioritize our work.
(This argument also should make us aware of bias in the users: people who use the EA Forum are disproportionately interested in causes where the EA Forum is useful. My guess, though Iâm not sure, is that the EA Forum is more oriented towards existential risk than EA overall is, for this reason. Thanks to AGB for pointing this out to me.)
Thanks for the comment!
I understand your intuition behind dividing the hours by expenses, but I donât think those numbers are correct; this comment has a bit more detail.
I also agree with Linch that Dominion is probably not the right comparison; a conference like CARE might be a better reference class of âhighly dedicated people seriously engaging with complex animal welfare topicsâ
That being said, I think you have an underlying point which is underappreciated: we sometimes talk about âcause prioritizationâ as though one cause would be universally better than another, but itâs entirely consistent to be willing to pay more for someone to read a forum post about AI safety than about animal welfare, while simultaneously being willing to pay more for an animal welfare documentary than an AI safety one. I think it is, in fact, true that many people I talk to would pay more for an hour of someone reading about AI safety than an hour of reading about animal welfare, and that is a relevant fact for figuring out how we should prioritize our work.
(This argument also should make us aware of bias in the users: people who use the EA Forum are disproportionately interested in causes where the EA Forum is useful. My guess, though Iâm not sure, is that the EA Forum is more oriented towards existential risk than EA overall is, for this reason. Thanks to AGB for pointing this out to me.)