Greg_Colbourn
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Note that with 3 months’ runway remaining, we are at a stage where a single medium-size funder can have an outsized impact. Our costs are ~£8k/month, so even buying a month or two runway would make a big difference in terms of giving us some breathing space to work on getting more money coming in. It’s also approximately continuously divisible in that every ~£265 will keep us going another day.
As things stand, we are getting close to the point where we will have to radically alter the nature of the project (i.e. start charging people/kicking them out if we can’t otherwise support them and their work).
As a heads up—we intend to hire a new manager to start mid-June (as Toon will be leaving at the end of June). Will hold off officially advertising until we have a better idea of our funding situation, but open to any expressions of interest.
EA Hotel Fundraiser 2: current guests and their projects
We are now fundraising for the hotel: http://eahotel.org/fundraiser/ (Unfortunately the cryptocurrency markets are now a lot lower than anticipated. But I also want the project to become genuinely community supported. i.e. if others don’t think it’s worth funding then I should probably update in the direction that I shouldn’t continue funding it either).
At the moment, me and Toon.
The scaling up is a stretch goal, and we could in theory have separate pots, but in practice one would funge against the other to some extent (due to e.g. me being more likely to spend my money on buying next door instead of paying for current running costs). Personally I think we should get next door whilst we can, as it will make scaling up by ~75% so much easier than buying a building even on the other side of the street (adding a door in the wall would create effectively one big building, which could be run with the same kitchen, buffet, laundry and staff as the current one). It’s also a relatively low risk investment as I don’t think the prices can get much lower. Adding capacity is also much easier than being more selective, and it’s more in keeping with the original idea (I’d rather the hotel didn’t end up super exclusive like all other sources of EA funding).
I’m all for franchaising the model to mainland Europe and the US though. Happy to let people copy everything we have. In practice this will require someone to step up and buy a building like I did though I think (unless this fundraiser exceeds all expectations!)
1). In theory we are open to giving out grants to people who spend the same amount on their living costs (say in Chiang Mai), as I stated in my initial forum post about the project (see Value Proposition section). No one has yet enquired about this though. One issue however is that if people are spending more on their living costs you are proportionally buying less work time for them (e.g. you might only get 4 months from someone in London instead of a year at the hotel), so it would require a fair amount of trust that they are only spending that amount. Also the community, coordination and collaboration at the hotel is worth something.
2). So far it is easy for Europeans, but Brexit might change this. US Citizens can get 6 month tourist visas and we have had a few. Commonwealth citizens can get visas for a year or two. More info here. Ideally I think there should be a network of EA Hotels, with one in mainland Europe and one in the US.
3). Most people who have applied so far have got in. The few that haven’t have been people who didn’t seem to really get EA and had their own non-EA pet project. The Trustees do the selecting for stays over a month. Managers for stays under a month.
4). ~3-12 months seems to be what a lot of people are going for. We’ve also had a fair number of short term visitors stay for 1-14 days.
5). The second post in this series will cover this.
6). I think this is referring to organising events and retreats elsewhere (e.g. EA Netherlands retreats). The hotel did host the EA London retreats at the end of August though. Lately I’ve been thinking that we could probably use a hotel dedicated to events, retreats and bootcamps (we have the common area at the current hotel, but not the sleeping accomodation).
“Isn’t it plausible that a clever species such as our own might need less pain, precisely because we are capable of intelligently working out what is good for us, and what damaging events we should avoid? Isn’t it plausible that an unintelligent species might need a massive wallop of pain, to drive home a lesson that we can learn with less powerful inducement?” Richard Dawkins: https://boingboing.net/2011/06/30/richard-dawkins-on-v.html
Yes I saw, and it’s great! That’s a bit different to what I’m thinking of though, in that TED is more something that people actively seek out/watch.
I’m thinking in terms of pieces that reach millions of passive readers/viewers (i.e. national newspapers and TV). [Context: The EA Hotel has recently been receiving a fair few requests to do pieces of this type].
The recent survey of the community, showed that the media has played a comparatively small role in getting people involved.
Following David Moss, I’m curious about how much mass media on EA there has actually been? Could it not just be that we are not seeing new EAs as a result of media exposure simply because there has been hardly any of it in the last few years? What are the biggest TV appearances EA has featured in recently?
Given a lack of recent mass media, it’s hard to say how many productive new EAs could result from a big mainstream media piece, and in the event they do, how long it would’ve taken for them to hear about EA otherwise. [This speaking about the English-speaking world].
The website is now up at eahotel.org. It’s possible to book via the Booking page, and the Wiki has information for guests and an FAQ. People can also book video calls to talk about proposals for free stays working on EA stuff via the Contact page (I have updated the Next Steps section in the OP to reflect this).
Thanks :) Yes I have two independent Trustees now, we’re in the process of registering the CIO. Good of you to offer of the London room, will let you know if anyone needs to go to London for (EA) business!
Remote supervision of research is a possibility, but depends on people with relevant knowledge and experience being available. Peer support from other guests will be available to some extent, especially given the preponderance of people in the movement with postgraduate degrees. However, plenty of research can be self-directed, especially things that are more a case of collating existing knowledge than developing new science (e.g. meta-analyses, review articles, writing books). And the hotel will probably appeal to autodidacts who can plow through published texts and then build on top of them (without much need for explanation additional to what they find in writing).
The hotel is open to hosting research groups, and also conferences and workshops.
My point (and remmelt’s) was that public funds would be harder/more time (and resource) consuming to get.
There is currently a gap at the low end (OpenPhil is too big to spend time on funding such small projects).
And Good Ventures/OpenPhil also already fill a lot of the gap in funding programs with track records of effectively reducing suffering.
There is an analogy with speculative investing here I think—for something to be widely regarded as worthwhile investing in (i.e. research funded by mainstream academia) it has to already have evidence of success (e.g. Bitcoin now). By which point it is no longer new and highly promising in terms of expected value (like Bitcoin was in, say, 2011) i.e. it is necesssarily the case that all things very high in (relative) expected value are outside the mainstream.
AGI alignment is gaining more credibility, but it still doesn’t seem like it’s that accepted in mainstream academia.
Anyway, I think we are probably on a bit of a tangent to what AISC is trying to achieve—namely help new researchers level up (/get a foot in the door in academic research).
For more on the thinking behind streamlined non-mainstream funding, see https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/hits-based-giving
I don’t think academia is yet on the same page as EA with regard to AI Safety, but may well be soon hopefully (with credibility coming from the likes of Stuart Russell and Max Tegmark).
I’ve not yet had anyone say it’s a dealbreaker (and of course people are allowed to buy meat from takeaways—or microwaveable burgers etc—with their spending money if they are really craving it..). Whilst frugality comes into it, the main reason for the all vegan catering is ethics.
Also, I’d put money on the 2018 survey coming out with higher numbers for veg*anism :)
when I organized EA London’s weekend retreat and oversaw the housing, cooking and cleaning for 25 people, it was really hard and I made some significant mistakes.
Would be interested to hear more details about this (fine to PM).
Also, it’s unlikely to be 17 guests all at once to start with, things are ramping up gradually so far (have a few people booked in over the next few weeks), so the learning curve should be relatively gentle.
vague idea of how things ought to be, rather than a conscious attempt to maximize success.
I would say it’s a bit more than vague ;) I think it’s important to have someone who really understands and shares the goals of the project. Someone who doesn’t get EA is not likely to care about it much beyond seeing it as a means to get paid. It would then be largely up to part time volunteers (the other Trustees) to direct the project and keep it aligned with EA. This scenario seems more likely to lead to stagnation/failure to me.
less of the skills we tend to have (such as a flair for optimization)
I think a flair for optimisation is needed in any kind of ops role. The more you optimise, the greater your capacity (/free time).
and even more of the skills we tend not to have (consistency, hotel-related metis)
Conscientiousness would be required. But there are a fair amount of EAs with that trait, right?
optimizing for initial success seems more important than optimizing for future expansion.
In practice I think these are mostly the same thing. The more initial success there is, the more likely expansion is. The point I was making is that the manager will have a large stake in the course the project takes, so it will depend on what they make of it (hence meaning it should be seen as an exciting opportunity. I mean yeah, there will be some amount of “boring” (mindfulness promoting?) tasks—but it could be so much more fun than “Hotel Manager in Blackpool” initially sounds).
less external validation of managerial capability than a similarly qualified external candidate, who might be a hotel manager already!
In many ways this won’t be a typical hotel (non-profit, longer term stays, self-service breakfast and lunch, simplified dinner menu, weekly linen/towel changes, EA evening events etc), so I’m not sure how much prior hotel experience is relevant. Really anyone who is a reasonably skilled generalist, passionate about the project, and friendly should be able to do it.
I expect you’d need to offer a higher salary to attract the same level of talent
Salary is open to negotiation (have amended ad).
require separating the hotel manager and the community mentor
I think that once everything is set up, the day-to-day management of the hotel itself won’t require full time hours. Would prefer to have one full time employee rather than two part-time employees, but as I’ve said previously, I am open to splitting the role.
division of labor
As mentioned above, part of optimisation can be outsourcing tasks you are less good at (or don’t like doing). e.g. hiring someone else to do the cooking or laundry (depending on how much you value your time/money).
No, factoring in rent paid costs were ~25% less for Jan and Feb so far (although it’s hard to state a precise figure going forward with changes in occupancy etc).