Thank you for your answer.
Assuming someone could decide between being a billionaire and donating billions to effective causes or being a very talented researcher in an effective cause organization, what would do more good to more people?
You are an outsider who is expressly considering earning to give and do not seem interested in direct work (often extremely constrained by fit).
A good answer to such a person is to ask about what causes interest you most, and then lay out some content with considerations to your interests and background.
Assuming someone could decide between being a billionaire and donating billions to effective causes or being a very talented researcher in an effective cause organization, what would do more good to more people?
If you are pretty certain about the outcome of being a billionaire, the answer is be the billionaire.
It will be difficult to find anyone saying that a very talented researcher is worth a billion dollars.
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Long Answer:
Some answers putting a number on talent have ranges at $400K-$4M a year, and this is driven by outliers, such as singular founders (e.g. the person who could create a large, leading EA organization).
My guess is that for the type of researcher you’re thinking about (e.g. star senior staff at GiveWell or Anthropic), most people would put maximum net present value of impact in the tens of millions. There’s a few outlier examples of “researchers”, but the theory of change starts to become sort of leadership/political once again.
At the object level for why becoming a billionaire and earning money is fine:
The money in EA has to come from somewhere. There’s really currently 1.5 sources of it, at the amounts that drive the beliefs/plans that underpin Evan and Mauricio’s answer.
There are many places where funding is constrained as canonically described by Ben Todd. To be clear, unless you think global health and development has low value, a new billionaire can buy life at $3,000-$5,000. That is hard to argue against—the literal answer to the OP is that “it is that simple”.
It’s not obvious and depends on your personal fit for each and especially the quality of your startup ideas. I suggest making a spreadsheet with careful expected-value estimates, and picking the option with the higher expected value.
To help estimate the value of a very talented researcher, you could draft descriptions of your median and 90th percentile expectations for skills you would have in the future, and asking someone at a top organization how they would value someone with those skills.
To help you estimate the probability of success for trying to become a billionaire,
soft upper bounds come from the best startup opportunities observed so far; Sam Bankman-Fried thinks he had a <30% chance to succeed at building FTX, and most ideas are >3x lower probability than this
Thank you for your answer. Assuming someone could decide between being a billionaire and donating billions to effective causes or being a very talented researcher in an effective cause organization, what would do more good to more people?
I don’t agree with Evan and Mauricio’s answers.
You are an outsider who is expressly considering earning to give and do not seem interested in direct work (often extremely constrained by fit).
A good answer to such a person is to ask about what causes interest you most, and then lay out some content with considerations to your interests and background.
If you are pretty certain about the outcome of being a billionaire, the answer is be the billionaire.
It will be difficult to find anyone saying that a very talented researcher is worth a billion dollars.
______________________________
Long Answer:
Some answers putting a number on talent have ranges at $400K-$4M a year, and this is driven by outliers, such as singular founders (e.g. the person who could create a large, leading EA organization).
My guess is that for the type of researcher you’re thinking about (e.g. star senior staff at GiveWell or Anthropic), most people would put maximum net present value of impact in the tens of millions. There’s a few outlier examples of “researchers”, but the theory of change starts to become sort of leadership/political once again.
At the object level for why becoming a billionaire and earning money is fine:
The money in EA has to come from somewhere. There’s really currently 1.5 sources of it, at the amounts that drive the beliefs/plans that underpin Evan and Mauricio’s answer.
There are many places where funding is constrained as canonically described by Ben Todd. To be clear, unless you think global health and development has low value, a new billionaire can buy life at $3,000-$5,000. That is hard to argue against—the literal answer to the OP is that “it is that simple”.
It’s not obvious and depends on your personal fit for each and especially the quality of your startup ideas. I suggest making a spreadsheet with careful expected-value estimates, and picking the option with the higher expected value.
To help estimate the value of a very talented researcher, you could draft descriptions of your median and 90th percentile expectations for skills you would have in the future, and asking someone at a top organization how they would value someone with those skills.
To help you estimate the probability of success for trying to become a billionaire,
soft lower bounds come from reference classes; you can beat these significantly because you’re actively trying to become a billionaire: e.g. see https://applieddivinitystudies.com/billionaire/
soft upper bounds come from the best startup opportunities observed so far; Sam Bankman-Fried thinks he had a <30% chance to succeed at building FTX, and most ideas are >3x lower probability than this