I’m really glad that you want to support EA-adjacent writers and spread EA ideas to a wider audience. I think this is crucially important work and I’m really happy that you’re taking it seriously. This prize has given me a nudge to take my own EA-adjacent blogging more seriously!
Like many others, I have concerns about the amount. I think it’s overkill and, as others have said, it may be easier for the privileged to take a gamble on winning the prize, while great writers who don’t have the option of cutting down their working hours will still be neglected. Another concern that others haven’t mentioned is PR. I don’t think EAs always need to be super ‘image focussed’ and paranoid about PR, and indeed sometimes we skew too far in that direction. But it seems some concern is appropriate here because part of the aim of the project is to spread EA ideas to people who are not already in the movement. I think if one of the first things I heard about EA was ‘this is a movement whose stated aim is to spend money super efficiently to do the most good, and they just spent $500,000 paying people in/adjacent to their community to write blogs that are vaguely supportive of their community’, that would seem suss to me. It seems cronyish. Of course, *I* can easily believe that good blogs could create way more than $500,000 of value by bringing people into the movement, improving decision-making, etc. But that involves *already* thinking in very EA ways and trusting the community to be acting in good faith and not just trying to enrich their friends.
As an alternative way of incentivizing good writing: a thought I’ve often had is making a google doc of all the blog posts that “live rent free” in my head—blogs whose main idea has seeped into my consciousness, blogs that I constantly recommend when certain topics come up. I bet many EAs, if they introspect, have an internal list of blog posts like this. You could ask a large-ish number of trusted people about which specific blog posts have been most influential for them, and grant awards for blogs that are cited by many people (or offer to pay those bloggers to do it full-time for a while, if they want). If you are interested in funding more popularizing writings, you could choose people who are newer to the movement or more ‘adjacent’, rather than hardcore EAs who will choose something niche.
I’m really glad that you want to support EA-adjacent writers and spread EA ideas to a wider audience. I think this is crucially important work and I’m really happy that you’re taking it seriously. This prize has given me a nudge to take my own EA-adjacent blogging more seriously!
Like many others, I have concerns about the amount. I think it’s overkill and, as others have said, it may be easier for the privileged to take a gamble on winning the prize, while great writers who don’t have the option of cutting down their working hours will still be neglected.
Another concern that others haven’t mentioned is PR. I don’t think EAs always need to be super ‘image focussed’ and paranoid about PR, and indeed sometimes we skew too far in that direction. But it seems some concern is appropriate here because part of the aim of the project is to spread EA ideas to people who are not already in the movement. I think if one of the first things I heard about EA was ‘this is a movement whose stated aim is to spend money super efficiently to do the most good, and they just spent $500,000 paying people in/adjacent to their community to write blogs that are vaguely supportive of their community’, that would seem suss to me. It seems cronyish. Of course, *I* can easily believe that good blogs could create way more than $500,000 of value by bringing people into the movement, improving decision-making, etc. But that involves *already* thinking in very EA ways and trusting the community to be acting in good faith and not just trying to enrich their friends.
As an alternative way of incentivizing good writing: a thought I’ve often had is making a google doc of all the blog posts that “live rent free” in my head—blogs whose main idea has seeped into my consciousness, blogs that I constantly recommend when certain topics come up. I bet many EAs, if they introspect, have an internal list of blog posts like this. You could ask a large-ish number of trusted people about which specific blog posts have been most influential for them, and grant awards for blogs that are cited by many people (or offer to pay those bloggers to do it full-time for a while, if they want). If you are interested in funding more popularizing writings, you could choose people who are newer to the movement or more ‘adjacent’, rather than hardcore EAs who will choose something niche.