Much as I am sympathetic to many of the points in this post, I don’t understand the purpose of the section, “Can you demand ten billion dollars?”. As I understand the proposal to democratise EA it’s just that: a proposal about what, morally, EA ought to do. It certainly doesn’t follow that any particular person or group should try to enforce that norm. So pointing out that it would be a bad idea to try to use force to establish this is not a meaningful criticism of the proposal.
My apologies if this proves uncharitable. I interpreted Carla Zoe’s classification of this proposal as:
ideas I’m pretty sure about and thus believe we should now hire someone full time to work out different implementation options and implement one of them”)
as potentially endorsing grassroots attempts to democratize EA funding without funder buy-in. I do find the general ambiguity frustrating:
If you are going to make these proposals, please consider:
Who you are actually asking to change their behavior?
What actions you would be willing to take if they did not change their behavior?
But if no one interested in reform would endorse a strategy like this, it’s simply my mistake.
Yes I think it’s uncharitable to assume that Carla means other people taking control of funds without funder buy in. I think the general hope with a lot of these posts is to convince funders too.
Much as I am sympathetic to many of the points in this post, I don’t understand the purpose of the section, “Can you demand ten billion dollars?”. As I understand the proposal to democratise EA it’s just that: a proposal about what, morally, EA ought to do. It certainly doesn’t follow that any particular person or group should try to enforce that norm. So pointing out that it would be a bad idea to try to use force to establish this is not a meaningful criticism of the proposal.
My apologies if this proves uncharitable. I interpreted Carla Zoe’s classification of this proposal as:
as potentially endorsing grassroots attempts to democratize EA funding without funder buy-in. I do find the general ambiguity frustrating:
But if no one interested in reform would endorse a strategy like this, it’s simply my mistake.
Yes I think it’s uncharitable to assume that Carla means other people taking control of funds without funder buy in. I think the general hope with a lot of these posts is to convince funders too.