I think that’s a good point, though I’ve heard it discussed a fair amount. One way of thinking about it is that ‘direct work’ also has movement building benefits. This makes the ideal fraction of direct work in the portfolio higher than it first seems.
I’m not sure. Unfortunately there’s a lot of things like this that aren’t yet written up. There might be some discussion of the movement building value of direct work in our podcast with Phil Trammell.
I see. Yeah, Phil and Rob do discuss it, but focused on movement-building via fundraising/recruitment/advocacy/etc, rather than via publicly doing amazing direct work. Perhaps they were implicitly thinking about the latter as well, though. But I suspect the choice of examples shapes people’s impression of the argument pretty significantly.
E.g. when it comes to your individual career, you’ll think of “investing in yourself” very differently if the central examples are attending training programs and going to university, versus if the central example is trying to do more excellent and eye-catching work.
Agree. I’ve definitely heard the other point though—it’s a common concern with 80k among donors (e.g. maybe ‘concrete problems in AI safety’ does far more to get people into the field than an explicit movement building org ever would). Not sure where to find a write up!
I think that’s a good point, though I’ve heard it discussed a fair amount. One way of thinking about it is that ‘direct work’ also has movement building benefits. This makes the ideal fraction of direct work in the portfolio higher than it first seems.
Cool, good to know. Any pointers to places where people have made this argument at more length?
I’m not sure. Unfortunately there’s a lot of things like this that aren’t yet written up. There might be some discussion of the movement building value of direct work in our podcast with Phil Trammell.
I see. Yeah, Phil and Rob do discuss it, but focused on movement-building via fundraising/recruitment/advocacy/etc, rather than via publicly doing amazing direct work. Perhaps they were implicitly thinking about the latter as well, though. But I suspect the choice of examples shapes people’s impression of the argument pretty significantly.
E.g. when it comes to your individual career, you’ll think of “investing in yourself” very differently if the central examples are attending training programs and going to university, versus if the central example is trying to do more excellent and eye-catching work.
Agree. I’ve definitely heard the other point though—it’s a common concern with 80k among donors (e.g. maybe ‘concrete problems in AI safety’ does far more to get people into the field than an explicit movement building org ever would). Not sure where to find a write up!