As someone pretty new to this forum and the effective altruism community (not the ideas though) it’s shocking to see how much money the EA community seems to spend on funding projects by it’s members.
$100,000 is significantly more money than most people earn per year, and a ton more than most blogs earn.
Maybe this is a good use of this money. I just wanted to express this in case folks who are used to this type of funding forget how surprising it can be to a newcomer.
Hello there, and welcome to the forum! I understand how the number can seem surprising, but here is a little more background from Nick that might have gotten buried below: “Yes, this is a serious amount of money. That said, writing a good blog takes a lot of time, and note that the expected value for any particular blogger will be relatively low. If 100 bloggers apply (which we expect to be a lower bound given the traction), it’s $5k for the work of a part-time job over a year. Obviously, Cowen using the same number makes it a bit of a Shelling Point and the number has some viral appeal as well. But we also want to convey how valuable we think writing like this really is: we think the very best entrants really will deserve this. For instance, we have in mind that the breakout successes from the competition might begin writing full-time, or even become public intellectuals within EA. We think the $100,000 amount is the right amount to encourage that kind of ambition. But note that we’re not committing to giving any particular number of these prizes (“up to five”)— we’re planning to use an appropriately high bar in judging the blogs.”
100k for a “blog” might seem silly, but it is about the content not the format. Good ideas change the world, or could possibly save it. One of my favorite quotes about the power of new knowledge: “Civilizations starved, long before Malthus, because of what they thought of as the ‘natural disasters’ of drought and famine. But it was really because of what we would call poor methods of irrigation and farming – in other words, lack of knowledge. Before our ancestors learned how to make fire artificially (and many times since then too), people must have died of exposure literally on top of the means of making the fires that would have saved their lives, because they did not know how. In a parochial sense, the weather killed them; but the deeper explanation is lack of knowledge. Many of the hundreds of millions of victims of cholera throughout history must have died within sight of the hearths that could have boiled their drinking water and saved their lives; but, again, they did not know that. Quite generally, the distinction between a ‘natural’ disaster and one brought about by ignorance is parochial.” (The Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch)
In my prior career I worked with a lot of organizations that offered prizes and fellowships to artists, including writers. $100k is on the high side for a prestigious writer’s fellowship, but not absurdly so. I see the amount as being well targeted for an experienced part-time writer who has been blogging on top of a day job or other commitments and wants to make the leap to full-time but doesn’t feel like they have the runway. It feels harder for me to justify giving an award of that amount to a brand-new blogger; the counterfactual impact would have to be extremely clear.
The large prize size and other contest choices might be more principled and have a better explanation than it appears.
So my headcanon about what is going on is that they are aiming for the “tail value” of a strong publication. So the prize amount is to get writing of that quality.
Getting into these places could be incredibly valuable. But this access is not fungible by design (you shouldn’t be able to buy it with money). This explains why they don’t say this explicitly.
So that’s basically a response to your comment.
Maybe to see this another way, imagine telling someone, “Hey, want to get a prize for writing? It just has to be an interesting blog that is consistent with this thing called EA.” A lot of talented people might perk up and ask, what’s “interesting/EA”? I think that could be super valuable if well executed. With this amount, you can go into any community of writers in the world with that story.
More headcanon:
Another model is to use many small grants. But there’s less splashy publicity. It would also be harder to allocate smaller prizes, so many would go to existing EAs or their friends. That has a different theory of impact and seems less virtuous.
A big prize is easier to observe, and the results give an unusually clear feedback loop for the project. It’s bad to add a lot of pressure to a new project, but the ceiling for the possible winners is high.
For disciplines/domains with lower funding, this sort of prize could be paradoxically more appropriate. It’s harder to see many other fields where this amount would be the top prize.
Another reason the OP might be shy, is that “tail value” and “flow through effects” are spicier motivations, for a new project, even if the EV is large.
$100,000 is significantly more money than most people earn per year
There are a lot of things going on, and maybe what I wrote above isn’t the heart of your question. If you care about the bigger issue of comp and history, there are some principled answers. But I’m just some random dude and it’s not clear it’s appropriate for me to write some giant manifesto about it unless there’s demand from you.
Thanks for adding this. Just as a point of clarification:
Another model is to use many small grants. But there’s less splashy publicity. It would also be harder to allocate smaller prizes, so many would go to existing EAs or their friends. That has a different theory of impact and seems less virtuous.
We are also making a few small grants to capture good, known writers in EA and on its margins. We view both models as worthwhile.
I’ve been in EA for 5+years and I agree this is a shocking amount of money. Even assuming that starting a blog is useful, I doubt that the incentive for someone to start a blog would be substantially different if the prize was let’s say $15,000
Just to give one data point to the contrary: I have just read this and now I am seriously thinking about starting a blog. (I have been thinking about starting a blog for a long time, but this might push me to actually get going on it, I don’t think if the prize were $15,000 that would be the case.)
As someone pretty new to this forum and the effective altruism community (not the ideas though) it’s shocking to see how much money the EA community seems to spend on funding projects by it’s members.
$100,000 is significantly more money than most people earn per year, and a ton more than most blogs earn.
Maybe this is a good use of this money. I just wanted to express this in case folks who are used to this type of funding forget how surprising it can be to a newcomer.
Hello there, and welcome to the forum! I understand how the number can seem surprising, but here is a little more background from Nick that might have gotten buried below: “Yes, this is a serious amount of money. That said, writing a good blog takes a lot of time, and note that the expected value for any particular blogger will be relatively low. If 100 bloggers apply (which we expect to be a lower bound given the traction), it’s $5k for the work of a part-time job over a year. Obviously, Cowen using the same number makes it a bit of a Shelling Point and the number has some viral appeal as well. But we also want to convey how valuable we think writing like this really is: we think the very best entrants really will deserve this. For instance, we have in mind that the breakout successes from the competition might begin writing full-time, or even become public intellectuals within EA. We think the $100,000 amount is the right amount to encourage that kind of ambition. But note that we’re not committing to giving any particular number of these prizes (“up to five”)— we’re planning to use an appropriately high bar in judging the blogs.”
100k for a “blog” might seem silly, but it is about the content not the format. Good ideas change the world, or could possibly save it. One of my favorite quotes about the power of new knowledge: “Civilizations starved, long before Malthus, because of what they thought of as the ‘natural disasters’ of drought and famine. But it was really because of what we would call poor methods of irrigation and farming – in other words, lack of knowledge. Before our ancestors learned how to make fire artificially (and many times since then too), people must have died of exposure literally on top of the means of making the fires that would have saved their lives, because they did not know how. In a parochial sense, the weather killed them; but the deeper explanation is lack of knowledge. Many of the hundreds of millions of victims of cholera throughout history must have died within sight of the hearths that could have boiled their drinking water and saved their lives; but, again, they did not know that. Quite generally, the distinction between a ‘natural’ disaster and one brought about by ignorance is parochial.” (The Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch)
In my prior career I worked with a lot of organizations that offered prizes and fellowships to artists, including writers. $100k is on the high side for a prestigious writer’s fellowship, but not absurdly so. I see the amount as being well targeted for an experienced part-time writer who has been blogging on top of a day job or other commitments and wants to make the leap to full-time but doesn’t feel like they have the runway. It feels harder for me to justify giving an award of that amount to a brand-new blogger; the counterfactual impact would have to be extremely clear.
I’ve been around for a few years and it definitely shocked me!
It’s also worth 6.67 Pulitzer Prizes!
The large prize size and other contest choices might be more principled and have a better explanation than it appears.
So my headcanon about what is going on is that they are aiming for the “tail value” of a strong publication. So the prize amount is to get writing of that quality.
Getting into these places could be incredibly valuable. But this access is not fungible by design (you shouldn’t be able to buy it with money). This explains why they don’t say this explicitly.
So that’s basically a response to your comment.
Maybe to see this another way, imagine telling someone, “Hey, want to get a prize for writing? It just has to be an interesting blog that is consistent with this thing called EA.” A lot of talented people might perk up and ask, what’s “interesting/EA”? I think that could be super valuable if well executed. With this amount, you can go into any community of writers in the world with that story.
More headcanon:
Another model is to use many small grants. But there’s less splashy publicity. It would also be harder to allocate smaller prizes, so many would go to existing EAs or their friends. That has a different theory of impact and seems less virtuous.
A big prize is easier to observe, and the results give an unusually clear feedback loop for the project. It’s bad to add a lot of pressure to a new project, but the ceiling for the possible winners is high.
For disciplines/domains with lower funding, this sort of prize could be paradoxically more appropriate. It’s harder to see many other fields where this amount would be the top prize.
Another reason the OP might be shy, is that “tail value” and “flow through effects” are spicier motivations, for a new project, even if the EV is large.
There are a lot of things going on, and maybe what I wrote above isn’t the heart of your question. If you care about the bigger issue of comp and history, there are some principled answers. But I’m just some random dude and it’s not clear it’s appropriate for me to write some giant manifesto about it unless there’s demand from you.
Thanks for adding this. Just as a point of clarification:
We are also making a few small grants to capture good, known writers in EA and on its margins. We view both models as worthwhile.
I’ve been in EA for 5+years and I agree this is a shocking amount of money. Even assuming that starting a blog is useful, I doubt that the incentive for someone to start a blog would be substantially different if the prize was let’s say $15,000
Just to give one data point to the contrary: I have just read this and now I am seriously thinking about starting a blog. (I have been thinking about starting a blog for a long time, but this might push me to actually get going on it, I don’t think if the prize were $15,000 that would be the case.)