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)
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)