(Sorry, the formatting here doesn’t seem to work but I don’t know how to fix it)
I think there are two aspects that make “the EA community” a good candidate for who should make decisions:
The need to balance between “getting all perspectives by involving the entire world” and “making sure it’s still about doing the most good possible”. It’s much less vetting over value-alignment than the current state, but still some. I’m not sure it’s the best point on the scale, but I think it might be better than where we are currently.
1.1. another thought about this is that maybe we ought to fix the problem where “value alignment” is, as the other post argues, actually taken much more narrowly than agreeing about “doing the most good”.
The fact that EA is, in the end, a collaborative project and not a corporation. It seems wrong and demotivating to me that EAs have to compete and take big risks on themselves individually to try to have a say about the project they’re still expected to participate in.
2.1. Maybe a way for funders to test this is to ask yourselves—if there weren’t an EA community, would your plans still work as you expect them to? If not, than I think the community ought to also have some say on making decisions.
(Sorry, the formatting here doesn’t seem to work but I don’t know how to fix it)
I think there are two aspects that make “the EA community” a good candidate for who should make decisions:
The need to balance between “getting all perspectives by involving the entire world” and “making sure it’s still about doing the most good possible”. It’s much less vetting over value-alignment than the current state, but still some. I’m not sure it’s the best point on the scale, but I think it might be better than where we are currently. 1.1. another thought about this is that maybe we ought to fix the problem where “value alignment” is, as the other post argues, actually taken much more narrowly than agreeing about “doing the most good”.
The fact that EA is, in the end, a collaborative project and not a corporation. It seems wrong and demotivating to me that EAs have to compete and take big risks on themselves individually to try to have a say about the project they’re still expected to participate in. 2.1. Maybe a way for funders to test this is to ask yourselves—if there weren’t an EA community, would your plans still work as you expect them to? If not, than I think the community ought to also have some say on making decisions.