Agreed that we should be doing more exploration. I think one reason there hasn’t been as much is it’s a harder sell. “Give me money that I can use to save lives—I’ve already found a method that works” is a more convincing plea than “give me money so I can sit around and think of an altruistic way to spend other people’s money—I swear I’ll work effectively at this.” Of course, big established organizations like OPP can do this, but I think the hard sell creates a barrier to entry.
Exploration also carries significant risk of failure, which can be offputting. I don’t think there’s any way around that but to be somewhat tolerant of failure. But not so tolerant that people don’t try hard!
Yeah. Probably the fact that it caries an uncertain risk of failure, and that the level of success is also unknowable, makes it more off-putting. Especially since EA has a quantitative bent.
Agreed that we should be doing more exploration. I think one reason there hasn’t been as much is it’s a harder sell. “Give me money that I can use to save lives—I’ve already found a method that works” is a more convincing plea than “give me money so I can sit around and think of an altruistic way to spend other people’s money—I swear I’ll work effectively at this.” Of course, big established organizations like OPP can do this, but I think the hard sell creates a barrier to entry.
Exploration also carries significant risk of failure, which can be offputting. I don’t think there’s any way around that but to be somewhat tolerant of failure. But not so tolerant that people don’t try hard!
Yeah. Probably the fact that it caries an uncertain risk of failure, and that the level of success is also unknowable, makes it more off-putting. Especially since EA has a quantitative bent.