Thank you so much for your thoughtful and considered reply.
I think based on my EA Funds experience so far, I’m less optimistic that the cost would be incredibly small. E.g., I would expect less correlation between “EAIF managers think something is good to fund from a longtermist perspective” and “LTFF managers think something is good to fund from a longtermist perspective” (and vice versa for ‘meta’ grants) than you seem to expect.
This is because grantmaking decisions in these areas rely a lot on judgment calls that different people might make differently even if they’re aligned on broad “EA principes” and other fundamental views. I have this view both because of some cases I’ve seen where we actually discussed (aspects of) grants across both the EAIF and LTFF managers and because within the EAIF committee large disagreements are not uncommon (and I have no reasons to believe that disagreements would be smaller between LTFF and EAIF managers than just within EAIF managers).
Sorry to change topic but this is super fascinating and more interesting to me than questions of fund admin time (however much I like discussing organisational design I am happy to defer to you / Jonas / etc on if the admin cost is too high – ultimately only you know that).
Why would there be so much disagreement (so much that you would routinely want to veto each others decisions if you had the option)? It seems plausible that if there is such levels of disagreement maybe:
One fund is making quite poor decisions AND/OR
There is significant potential to use consensus decisions making tools as a large group to improve decision quality AND/OR
There are some particularly interesting lessons to be learned by identifying the cruxes of these disagreements.
Just curious and typing up my thoughts. Not expecting good answers to this.
I think all funds are generally making good decisions.
I think a lot of the effect is just that making these decisions is hard, and so that variance between decision-makers is to some extent unavoidable. I think some of the reasons are quite similar to why, e.g., hiring decisions, predicting startup success, high-level business strategy, science funding decisions, or policy decisions are typically considered to be hard/unreliable. Especially for longtermist grants, on top of this we have issues around cluelessness, potentially missing crucial considerations, sign uncertainty, etc.
I think you are correct that both of the following are true:
There is potential of improving decision quality by spending time on discussing diverging views, improving the way we aggregate opinions to the extent they still differ after the amount of discussion that is possible, and maybe by using specific ‘decision making tools’ (e.g., certain ways of a structured discussion + voting).
There are interesting lessons to be learned by identifying cruxes. Some of these lessons might directly improve future decisions, others might be valuable for other reasons—e.g., generating active grantmaking ideas or cruxes/results being shareable and thereby being a tiny bit epistemically helpful to many people.
I think a significant issue is that both of these cost time—both identifying how to improve in these areas and then implementing the improvements -, which is a very scarce resource for fund managers.
I don’t think it’s obvious whether at the margin the EAIF committee should spend more or less time to get more or fewer benefits in these areas. Hopefully this means we’re not too far away from the optimum.
I think there are different views on this within EA Funds (both within the EAIF committee, and potentially between the average view of the EAIF committee and the average view of the LTFF committee—or at least this is suggested by revealed preferences as my loose impression is that LTFF fund managers spend more time in discussions with each other). Personally, I actually lean toward spending less time and less aggregation of opinions across fund managers—but I think currently this view isn’t sufficiently widely shared that I expect it to be reflected in how we’re going to make decisions in the future.
But I also feel a bit confused because some people (e.g., some LTFF fund managers, Jonas) have told me that spending more time discussing disagreements seemed really helpful to them, while I feel like my experience with this and my inside-view prediction of how spending more time on discussions would look like make me expect less value. I don’t really know why that is—it could be that I’m just bad at getting value out of discussions, or updating my views, or something like that.
think a significant issue is that both of these cost time
I am always amazed at how much you fund managers all do given this isn’t your paid job!
I don’t think it’s obvious whether at the margin the EAIF committee should spend more or less time to get more or fewer benefits in these areas
Fair enough. FWIW my general approach to stuff like this is not to aim for perfection but to aim for each iteration/round to be a little bit better than the last.
… it could be that I’m just bad at getting value out of discussions, or updating my views, or something like that.
That is possible. But also possible that you are particularly smart and have well thought-out views and people learn more from talking to you than you do from talking to them! (And/or just that everyone is different and different ways of learning work for different people)
Thank you so much for your thoughtful and considered reply.
Sorry to change topic but this is super fascinating and more interesting to me than questions of fund admin time (however much I like discussing organisational design I am happy to defer to you / Jonas / etc on if the admin cost is too high – ultimately only you know that).
Why would there be so much disagreement (so much that you would routinely want to veto each others decisions if you had the option)? It seems plausible that if there is such levels of disagreement maybe:
One fund is making quite poor decisions AND/OR
There is significant potential to use consensus decisions making tools as a large group to improve decision quality AND/OR
There are some particularly interesting lessons to be learned by identifying the cruxes of these disagreements.
Just curious and typing up my thoughts. Not expecting good answers to this.
I think all funds are generally making good decisions.
I think a lot of the effect is just that making these decisions is hard, and so that variance between decision-makers is to some extent unavoidable. I think some of the reasons are quite similar to why, e.g., hiring decisions, predicting startup success, high-level business strategy, science funding decisions, or policy decisions are typically considered to be hard/unreliable. Especially for longtermist grants, on top of this we have issues around cluelessness, potentially missing crucial considerations, sign uncertainty, etc.
I think you are correct that both of the following are true:
There is potential of improving decision quality by spending time on discussing diverging views, improving the way we aggregate opinions to the extent they still differ after the amount of discussion that is possible, and maybe by using specific ‘decision making tools’ (e.g., certain ways of a structured discussion + voting).
There are interesting lessons to be learned by identifying cruxes. Some of these lessons might directly improve future decisions, others might be valuable for other reasons—e.g., generating active grantmaking ideas or cruxes/results being shareable and thereby being a tiny bit epistemically helpful to many people.
I think a significant issue is that both of these cost time—both identifying how to improve in these areas and then implementing the improvements -, which is a very scarce resource for fund managers.
I don’t think it’s obvious whether at the margin the EAIF committee should spend more or less time to get more or fewer benefits in these areas. Hopefully this means we’re not too far away from the optimum.
I think there are different views on this within EA Funds (both within the EAIF committee, and potentially between the average view of the EAIF committee and the average view of the LTFF committee—or at least this is suggested by revealed preferences as my loose impression is that LTFF fund managers spend more time in discussions with each other). Personally, I actually lean toward spending less time and less aggregation of opinions across fund managers—but I think currently this view isn’t sufficiently widely shared that I expect it to be reflected in how we’re going to make decisions in the future.
But I also feel a bit confused because some people (e.g., some LTFF fund managers, Jonas) have told me that spending more time discussing disagreements seemed really helpful to them, while I feel like my experience with this and my inside-view prediction of how spending more time on discussions would look like make me expect less value. I don’t really know why that is—it could be that I’m just bad at getting value out of discussions, or updating my views, or something like that.
I am always amazed at how much you fund managers all do given this isn’t your paid job!
Fair enough. FWIW my general approach to stuff like this is not to aim for perfection but to aim for each iteration/round to be a little bit better than the last.
That is possible. But also possible that you are particularly smart and have well thought-out views and people learn more from talking to you than you do from talking to them!
(And/or just that everyone is different and different ways of learning work for different people)