Data analyst at a consulting firm, previously ran an EA university group.
Rebecca
I’m confused by the use of the term “expert” throughout this report. What exactly is the expertise that these individual donors and staff members are meant to be contributing? Something more neutral like ‘stakeholder’ seems more accurate.
I think a 2x2 rather than 1x3 seating arrangement would be more natural. Currently it feels like you and Arden are too far away to make it a cosy chat vibe. I agree with Jamie that the topics should be impact-relevant, rather than just friends chatting about random things.
The work tests that don’t require a single sitting still do have a max number of hours
I find it’s very rare to have to do the work test in 1 sitting, and I at least usually do better if I can split it up a bit
It sounds like you would benefit from greater prioritisation and focus. (Eg see: https://calnewport.com/dangerous-ideas-college-extracurriculars-are-meaningless/).
I don’t think it requires years of learning to write a thoughtful op-ed-level critique of EA. I’d be surprised if that’s true for an academic paper-level one either
Mainly advice on intermediate steps to get more domain-relevant experience.
Have you applied for 80k career advice?
The point I’m trying to make is that there are many ways you can be influential (including towards people that matter) and only some of them increase prestige. People can talk about your ideas without ever mentioning or knowing your name, you can be a polarising figure who a lot of influential people like but who it’s taboo to mention, and so on.
I also do think you originally meant (or conveyed) a broader meaning of influential—as you mention economic output and the dustbins of history, which I would consider to be about broad influence.
Andrew Tate is very influential, but entirely lacking in prestige.
This is interesting, thanks. Though I wanted to flag that the volume of copyediting errors means I’m unlikely to share it with others.
Influence =/= prestige
You’re answering a somewhat different question to the one I’m bringing up
I’m very confused why you think that FHI brought prestige to Oxford University rather than the other way around
In the examples you give, the arguments for and against are fairly cached so there’s less of a need to bring them up. That doesn’t apply here. I also think your argument is often false even in your examples—in my experience, the bigger the gap between the belief the person is expressing and that of the ~average of everyone else in the audience, the more likely there is to be pushback (though not always by putting someone on the spot to justify their beliefs, e.g. awkwardly changing the conversation or straight out ridiculing the person for the belief)
In my experience people update less from positive comments and more from negative comments intuitively to correct for this asymmetry (that it’s more socially acceptable to give unsupported praise than unsupported criticism). Your preferred approach to correcting the asymmetry, while I agree is in the abstract better, doesn’t work in the context of these existing corrections.
I took that second quote to mean ‘even if Sam is dodgy it’s still good to publicly back him’
Re your footnote 4, CE/AIM are starting an earning-to-give incubation program, so that is likely to change pretty soon
Factual note: Rory Stewart isn’t a co-founder of GD, he is/was a later stage employee
I’m inferring from other comments that AGB as an individual EtG donor is the “expert [who] funded [80k] at an early stage of their existence, but has not funded them since” mentioned in the report. If this is the case, how do individual EtG donors relate to the criteria you mention here?