Evan_Gaensbauer

• Evan_Gaensbauer 8 Jun 2019 21:15 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Denkenberger's comment on: Public Spread­sheet of Effec­tive Altru­ism Re­sources by Ca­reer Type

  It isn’t meant to mean soft­ware en­g­ineer­ing, but all en­g­ineer­ing. Un­for­tu­nately, aside from the FB group I made, I wasn’t aware of any other EA ma­te­ri­als and re­sources for en­g­ineers other than speci­fi­cally for soft­ware en­g­ineer­ing.

• Evan_Gaensbauer 5 Jun 2019 17:33 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Garrison's comment on: What ex­actly is the sys­tem EA’s crit­ics are seek­ing to change?

  I’m sure lots of lefties would not like how mar­ket-friendly EA tends to be

  It’s un­clear to me how rep­re­sen­ta­tive this is of ei­ther EA or leftists. Year over year, the EA sur­vey has shown the vast ma­jor­ity of EA to be “left-of-cen­tre”, which in­cludes a sig­nifi­cant por­tion of the com­mu­nity whose poli­tics might very well be de­scribed as ‘far-left’. So while some leftists might be will­ing to sur­mise from one EA-al­igned or­ga­ni­za­tion, or a sub­set of the com­mu­nity, be­ing mar­ket-friendly as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of how mar­ket-friendly all of EA is, that’s an un­sound in­fer­ence. Ad­di­tion­ally, even for leftist move­ments in the U.S. to the left of the Demo­cratic es­tab­lish­ment, there is enough ide­olog­i­cal di­ver­sity I would say many of them ap­pre­ci­ate mar­kets enough such that they’re not ‘un­friendly’ to them. Of course there are leftists who aren’t friendly to mar­kets, but I’m aware of a phe­nomenon of some fac­tions on the Left to claim to speak on be­half of the whole Left, when there is no rea­son in the vast ma­jor­ity of these cases to think it’s a sound con­clu­sion to draw that the bulk of the Left is hos­tile to mar­kets. So, while ‘a lot’ of leftists may be hos­tile to mar­kets, and ‘a lot’ of EA may be mar­ket-friendly, with­out be­ing sub­stan­ti­ated with more em­piri­cal ev­i­dence and log­i­cal qual­ifi­ca­tion, those claims don’t provide use­ful info we can mean­ingfully work with.

  Cur­rent Af­fairs over­all is fairly amenable to EA and has a large plat­form within the left. I don’t think “they are a poli­ti­cal move­ment that seeks at­ten­tion and power” is a fair or com­plete char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the left. The peo­ple I know on the left gen­uinely be­lieve that their preferred poli­cies will im­prove peo­ple’s lives (e.g. sin­gle payer, in­crease min­i­mum wage, more worker coops, etc.).

  I think you’re mis­in­ter­pret­ing. I never said that was a com­plete char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, and fair­ness has noth­ing to do with it. Leftist move­ments are poli­ti­cal move­ments, and I would say they’re seek­ing at­ten­tion and power like any and ev­ery other poli­ti­cal move­ment. I’m on the Left as well, and that I and the peo­ple who are leftists gen­uinely be­lieve our preferred poli­cies will in­deed im­prove peo­ple’s lives doesn’t change the fact the ac­qui­si­tion of poli­ti­cal power to achieve those goals, and ac­quiring the req­ui­site pub­lic at­ten­tion to achieve that poli­ti­cal power, is nec­es­sary to achieve those goals. To pub­li­cly ac­knowl­edge this can be fraught be­cause such lan­guage can be eas­ily, of­ten through mo­ti­va­tion, in­ter­preted by leftists or their sym­pa­thiz­ers as speak­ing of a poli­ti­cal move­ment cov­etous of power for its own sake. If one is too sheep­ish to ex­plain oth­er­wise, and stand up for one’s con­vic­tions, it’s a prob­lem. Yet it shouldn’t be a prob­lem. I’ve read ar­ti­cles writ­ten by no less than Cur­rent Af­fairs’ ed­i­tor-in-chief Nathan Robin­son that to talk about power is some­thing all leftists need to do more of.

• Evan_Gaensbauer 4 Jun 2019 19:28 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Milan_Griffes's comment on: What’s the best struc­ture for op­ti­mal al­lo­ca­tion of EA cap­i­tal?

  Strongly up­voted. I don’t have any­thing else to add right now then I now un­der­stand why you’re ask­ing this ques­tion as you have, and that I agree it makes sense as a first step with the back­ground as­sump­tions you’re com­ing in with.

• Evan_Gaensbauer 4 Jun 2019 19:27 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Milan_Griffes's comment on: What’s the best struc­ture for op­ti­mal al­lo­ca­tion of EA cap­i­tal?

  I think your sug­ges­tion of Good Ven­tures mak­ing more grants to the EA Funds would be a bet­ter al­ter­na­tive, though be­fore that I’d like to be con­fi­dent the kinks have been worked out of the EA Funds man­age­ment sys­tem. I was speak­ing more gen­er­ally, though, that all kinds of generic struc­tures that merely de­cen­tral­ized grant­mak­ing in EA more would be bet­ter. That it could al­most be any struc­ture that had that fea­ture was my point. I’m aware there are rea­sons peo­ple might be­have as though so much de­ci­sion-mak­ing be­ing con­cen­trated in Open Phil is op­ti­mal. If you have knowl­edge there is a sig­nifi­cant por­tion of the EA com­mu­nity who in­deed sincerely be­lieves the cur­rent struc­ture for cap­i­tal al­lo­ca­tion be­ing so con­cen­trated as it is, please let me know. I would act on that, as I would see that as a lu­dicrous and dan­ger­ous no­tion for all of EA I wouldn’t think even Open Phil or Good Ven­tures would con­done.

• Evan_Gaensbauer 4 Jun 2019 17:43 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Milan_Griffes's comment on: What’s the best struc­ture for op­ti­mal al­lo­ca­tion of EA cap­i­tal?

  Like I said in my above com­ment, ask­ing in­ter­est­ing ques­tions to avoid stat­ing in­con­ve­nient if valuable opinions doesn’t go far in EA. If you think so much cen­tral­iza­tion of de­ci­sion-mak­ing in Open Phil in the per­son of Holden Karnofsky is sub­op­ti­mal, and there are bet­ter al­ter­na­tives, why not just say so?

• Evan_Gaensbauer 4 Jun 2019 17:42 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Milan_Griffes's comment on: What’s the best struc­ture for op­ti­mal al­lo­ca­tion of EA cap­i­tal?

  I think it’s unim­por­tant. I would hope ev­ery­one is already aware we’ve ar­rived where we’re at for con­tin­gent rea­sons. I think it’s more than plau­si­ble we could have an al­ter­na­tive struc­ture for cap­i­tal al­lo­ca­tion than the one we have now. I think this first step should have been com­bined with the next cou­ple steps to just be its own first step.

  Michael Dick­ens took the op­po­site route and said Open Phil should pri­ori­tize wild an­i­mal welfare. I also re­mem­ber last year there were lots of peo­ple just ask­ing ques­tions about whether the EA Funds should be man­aged differ­ently, and noth­ing hap­pened, and then I made a state­ment more than a ques­tion, and then the EA Funds changed a lot.

• Evan_Gaensbauer 4 Jun 2019 17:26 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Milan_Griffes's comment on: What’s the best struc­ture for op­ti­mal al­lo­ca­tion of EA cap­i­tal?

  Right, but if all he is do­ing is sign­ing off, then you’re at­tribut­ing to him only the fi­nal part of the de­ci­sion, and treat­ing that as if it’s the whole de­ci­sion.

• Evan_Gaensbauer 4 Jun 2019 17:26 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Milan_Griffes's comment on: What’s the best struc­ture for op­ti­mal al­lo­ca­tion of EA cap­i­tal?

  Right, I guess I was ask­ing why you’re ex­plor­ing it.

  I don’t think will get a bet­ter struc­ture through the route you’re go­ing, which is just ask­ing ques­tions about Open Phil. I figure at the least one would try figur­ing out what struc­ture they con­sider best, and then ex­plain­ing why you think it’s the case Good Ven­tures should switch to that struc­ture.

• Evan_Gaensbauer 4 Jun 2019 17:10 UTC

  2 points

  on: What’s the best struc­ture for op­ti­mal al­lo­ca­tion of EA cap­i­tal?

  Why are you ask­ing this ques­tion? I’m ask­ing be­cause it seems more like an aca­demic ex­er­cise in what would be a bet­ter cap­i­tal al­lo­ca­tion struc­ture if one were to be had, when in prac­tice it doesn’t seem like will get there.

• Evan_Gaensbauer 4 Jun 2019 17:09 UTC

  12 points

  on: What’s the best struc­ture for op­ti­mal al­lo­ca­tion of EA cap­i­tal?

  
  

  Rough es­ti­mate: if ~60% of Open Phil grant­mak­ing de­ci­sion­ing is at­tributable to Holden, then 47.2% of all EA cap­i­tal al­lo­ca­tion, or $157.4M, was de­cided by one in­di­vi­d­ual in 2017. 2018 & 2019 will prob­a­bly have similar pro­por­tions.

  It seems like EA en­tered into this regime largely due to his­tor­i­cally con­tin­gent rea­sons (Cari & Dustin de­vel­op­ing a close re­la­tion­ship with Holden, then out­sourc­ing a lot of their philan­thropic de­ci­sion-mak­ing to him & the Open Phil staff).

  This es­ti­mate seems to have a lot of prob­lems with it, from at­tribut­ing so much credit to Holden that way not only seem­ing in prac­tice treat­ing him as too unique an ac­tor with­out sub­stan­ti­a­tion, if not in prin­ci­ple play­ing fast and loose with how cau­sa­tion works, while be­ing a wild over­es­ti­mate from nowhere. This is a pretty jar­ring turn to what up un­til that point I had been read­ing as a rea­son­able ques­tion post.

Public Spread­sheet of Effec­tive Altru­ism Re­sources by Ca­reer Type

• Evan_Gaensbauer 3 Jun 2019 6:06 UTC

  13 points

  on: Is EA Grow­ing? EA Growth Met­rics for 2018

  When I asked about what has caused EA move­ment growth to slow down, peo­ple an­swered it seemed like­liest EA made the choice to fo­cus on fidelity in­stead of rapid growth. That is a vague re­sponse. What I took it to mean is:

  • EA as a com­mu­nity, led by EA-al­igned or­ga­ni­za­tions, chose to switch from pri­ori­tiz­ing rapid growth to fidelity.

  • That this was a choice means that, pre­sum­ably, EA could have con­tinued to rapidly grow.

  • No limit­ing fac­tor has been iden­ti­fied that is out­side the con­trol of the EA com­mu­nity re­gard­ing its growth.

  • EA could make the choice to grow once again.

  Given this, no­body has iden­ti­fied a rea­son why EA can’t just grow again if we so choose as a com­mu­nity by redi­rect­ing re­sources at our dis­posal. Since the out­come is un­der our con­trol and sub­ject to change, I think it’s un­war­ranted to char­ac­ter­ize the fu­ture as ‘bleak’.

• Evan_Gaensbauer 2 Jun 2019 23:45 UTC

  9 points

  on: On the mar­gin, should EA fo­cus on out­reach or re­ten­tion?

  I think we should fo­cus on re­ten­tion. When I asked what has caused EA move­ment growth to slow down, the an­swer achieved through the con­sen­sus in the com­ments was that EA chose to fo­cus on fidelity rather than move­ment growth.

  I choose to in­ter­pret this as the EA com­mu­nity not know­ing how to make good use of the same high growth rates with fidelity to­wards our goals, since sev­eral years ago when the com­mu­nity was much smaller to pur­sue our goals with fidelity en­tailed grow­ing the com­mu­nity large enough to have a chance of achiev­ing our goals. So, it’s not an ei­ther/​or sce­nario. Suffice to say growth has been nec­es­sary to EA in the past, but we’re at a stage where:

  • we have some re­sources in ex­cess of what we are mak­ing use of.

  • we may not know how to make use of greater growth.

  • there are mul­ti­ple other fac­tors to progress on EA’s goals more limit­ing than growth.

  So, EA is cur­rently at a point where growth doesn’t ap­pear as cru­cial. I imag­ine in the fu­ture, as EA solves fac­tors limit­ing our rate of progress on the pur­suit of our goals un­re­lated to growth, suc­cess will free up more op­por­tu­nity to make good use of growth. The growth rate of EA is slow­ing. It may plateau or de­cline in the fu­ture. It doesn’t ap­pear a prob­lem right now.

  Mean­while, there was a rel­a­tively pop­u­lar ar­ti­cle a cou­ple months ago about how EA doesn’t fo­cus enough on cli­mate change, and there were many com­ments from peo­ple who would oth­er­wise be much more in­volved in EA be­ing put off by the ap­par­ent ne­glect of cli­mate change. As a pro­fes­sional com­mu­nity, if we keep de­mand­ing high tal­ent but keep lack­ing the ca­pac­ity to match tal­ented peo­ple to jobs, then lots of those peo­ple we ini­tially at­tracted mostly for the jobs will exit when there are none.

  So, in the last few months, there are mul­ti­ple ex­am­ples about how re­ten­tion failure may pose a se­ri­ous prob­lem to EA in the fu­ture. Mean­while, a lack of growth doesn’t pose a cur­rent se­ri­ous threat to EA. EA as a com­mu­nity seems to un­der­stand our own growth much more than we un­der­stand re­ten­tion, since we haven’t stud­ied it as much. I’ve been im­pressed by how much un­der­stand­ing of the move­ment’s own growth was demon­strated in the an­swers I’ve got­ten. So, I’m con­fi­dent if EA thought it needed to sus­tain high growth rates once again, we could rise to such a press­ing challenge. I’m not con­fi­dent we know how to solve re­ten­tion prob­lems.

  To solve re­ten­tion prob­lems EA would need to learn what are the po­ten­tial sources of re­ten­tion prob­lems. Were EA to solve such po­ten­tial prob­lems, we would solve prob­lems not only caus­ing ex­ist­ing effec­tive al­tru­ists to leave the move­ment, but also prob­lems new­com­ers see in EA that re­pel them. So, fo­cus­ing on re­ten­tion solves prob­lems in the pre­sent that will help with move­ment growth in the fu­ture, if ever EA tries to grow at a faster rate in the fu­ture.

  Fi­nally, I’d say the third op­tion of ‘up­skil­ling’ Aaron sug­gested in his com­ment isn’t to­tally mu­tu­ally ex­clu­sive with re­ten­tion ei­ther, since I think in­creas­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for up­skil­ling, es­pe­cially mak­ing them more in­clu­sive and widely available, would do a lot for re­ten­tion in EA as well.

• Evan_Gaensbauer 2 Jun 2019 23:17 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Peter_Hurford's comment on: What caused EA move­ment growth to slow down?

  Yeah, that looks in­ter­est­ing. Thanks for let­ting me know. I’ll check it out.

• Evan_Gaensbauer 1 Jun 2019 18:21 UTC

  10 points

  in reply to: G Gordon Worley III's comment on: Drown­ing chil­dren are rare

  My ar­ti­cle crit­i­ciz­ing the EA Funds last year were both more co­gent than this post, and the re­cip­i­ent of a much greater num­ber of up­votes, than Ben’s here. I do in fact think it is the case here that this post is re­ceiv­ing down­votes be­cause of the fac­tual er­rors with it. Yet nei­ther is this en­tirely sep­a­rate from the is­sue of peo­ple down­vot­ing the post sim­ply be­cause they don’t like it as a crit­i­cism of EA. That peo­ple don’t like the post is con­founded by the fact the rea­son they don’t like it could be be­cause they think it’s very er­ro­neous.

• Evan_Gaensbauer 30 May 2019 13:20 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: kbog's comment on: What ex­actly is the sys­tem EA’s crit­ics are seek­ing to change?

  Okay, so, what has has hap­pened is:

  • khor­ton said she is a cen­trist, who for the sake of ar­gu­ment, was putting on her ‘leftist’ hat.

  • By “leftist”, I thought she meant she was be­ing the devil’s ad­vo­cate for anti-cap­i­tal­ism, when she was ac­tu­ally be­ing an ad­vo­cate for pro­gres­sive/​left-liberal re­form.

  • She as­sumed that you as­sumed, like me, she was play­ing the role of devil’s ad­vo­cate for anti-cap­i­tal­ism, when you did not, i.e., not anti-cap­i­tal­ist.

  • While khor­ton’s origi­nal com­ment didn’t men­tion re­form and reg­u­la­tion of global mar­kets, she made clear in her next re­sponse to me that is what she in­tended as the sub­ject of her com­ment even though she didn’t make it ex­plicit.

  • I got mixed up, and as the sub­ject changed, I for­got mar­ket re­form was never even im­plied by khor­ton’s origi­nal com­ment.

  While I dis­agreed with how rude your origi­nal re­sponse to her was, I did agree with your point. Now that you’ve ed­ited it, and this com­ment is sorted, I’ve now up­voted your com­ment, as I agree with you.

• Evan_Gaensbauer 30 May 2019 13:10 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: kbog's comment on: What ex­actly is the sys­tem EA’s crit­ics are seek­ing to change?

  Point of cor­rec­tion: khor­ton is a ‘she’, not a ‘he’.

• Evan_Gaensbauer 30 May 2019 3:20 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Milan_Griffes's comment on: Drown­ing chil­dren are rare

  He is claiming the idea that the cost of sav­ing a life be­ing $100k in­stead of be­ing $5k be­ing a suffi­cient con­di­tion to log­i­cally con­clude one is not obliged to save a life, given the as­sump­tion one would oth­er­wise be obliged to save a life, and that one be­lieves in obli­ga­tions in the first place, is ridicu­lous.

• Evan_Gaensbauer 30 May 2019 2:38 UTC

  0 points

  on: My state al­lows for a 1 mem­ber non­profit board and I like that idea in or­der to keep my vi­sion. How­ever I want to have a “board of di­rec­tors”, but have them as a body to give me ad­vice, as op­posed to the tra­di­tional gov­ern­ing board? How can I ac­tu­ally ap­ply this and what non mis­lead­ing ti­tle can I give to the “board of di­rec­tors”?

  What state are you in? Based on what I know, be­ing able to set up a non-profit with a one-mem­ber di­rec­tory board is not com­mon. So, I would be cu­ri­ous to know what state you are liv­ing in.

• Evan_Gaensbauer 30 May 2019 1:51 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Khorton's comment on: What ex­actly is the sys­tem EA’s crit­ics are seek­ing to change?

  Right, I wasn’t as­sum­ing com­mu­nism on your part. I was just shar­ing thoughts of my own that I thought bet­ter rep­re­sented the frus­tra­tion kbog was try­ing to ex­press. I did this be­cause I thought he was mak­ing a valid point with his com­ment you down­voted about how the kind of ques­tion you’re ask­ing would lead EA to pri­ori­tize a route for pub­lic di­alogue that it doesn’t ac­tu­ally make sense to pri­ori­tize, since it is one you made from a leftist view­point as a thought ex­er­cise, even though you clar­ified you your­self are a cen­trist, and as a crit­i­cism of EA it is un­sound.

  My above com­ment was also ad­dress­ing the premise you thought the his­tor­i­cal ori­gins of wealth as seen from an anti-cap­i­tal­ist per­spec­tive is a very rele­vant crit­i­cism of EA. I of course as­sumed by ‘leftist’ you meant ‘anti-cap­i­tal­ist’, which you did not. So, my last com­ment doesn’t ap­ply. I was aware that you your­self were just wear­ing a leftist hat for the sake of ar­gu­ment, and I did not as­sume com­mu­nism on your part.

  Of course, re­gard­ing your point about ques­tions of re­form of con­tem­po­rary global mar­kets, I agree with you, and dis­agree with kbog, that that is a le­gi­t­i­mate crit­i­cism of EA the com­mu­nity should think more about.