Private equity investor (E2G)
Co-Treasurer @ EA UK
Trustee @ EA for Christians
Trustee @ ICM UK
Director @ EA Good Governance Project
MBA @ INSEAD
Grayden šø
Karma: 1,531
Insolvency happens on an entity by entity level. I donāt know which FTX entity gave money to EA orgs (if anyone knows, please say), and whether it went first via the founders personally. I would have thought itās possible that FTX full repays its creditors, so there is value in the shares, but then FTXās investors go after the founders personally and they are declared bankrupt.
Iām hugely in favour of principles first as I think it builds a more healthy community. However, my concern is that if you try too hard to be cause neutral, you end up artificially constrained. For example, Global Heath and Wellbeing is often a good introduction point to the concept of effectiveness. Then once people are focused on maximisation, itās easier to introduce Animal Welfare and X-Risk.
When you are a start-up non-profit, it can be hard to find competent people outside your social circle, which is why I created the EA Good Governance Project to make life easier for people.
I think itās important:
To put in place good practices (e.g. board meeting without the CEO regularly) BEFORE they are needed.
For FUNDERS to ask questions about effective governance and bear responsibility when they get it wrong.
My two cents:
Most governments heavily subsidise R&D (which is equivalent to a deliberate negative externality), often through tax credits
The patent system allows companies to extract abnormal profits for 20 years and incentivise a race (even if somebody independently develops the technology, they canāt use it if somebody else has patented it). This system is a deliberate inefficient market
Corporate R&D tends to be much more short-term and customer-focused. If you come from an academic background, you will be shocked by what is counted as R&D. For example, if you ask a consumer products company about innovation, they will talk about things that really arenāt humanity advancing (e.g. adding another blade to a razor, changing the shape of a chocolate bar to make it smaller without the consumer noticing)
Funding to EA orgs has roughly halved in the last year, so a recession would barely be noticed! More broadly, the point you make is valid. One of the reasons Iāve stayed earning to give is that Iāve never been confident in the stability of EA funding over my future career.
āDonating a kidney results in an over 1300% increase in the risk of kidney disease. A risk-averse interpretation of the data puts the increase in year-to-year mortality after donation upwards of 240%.ā
Could you provide these in absolute terms as relative terms are pretty meaningless and rhetoric
Great article. Very concise, clear and actionable!
You raise some good points, so I have removed that point from the main article.
Each one of us only has a single perspective and itās human nature to assume other people have similar perspectives. EA is a bubble and there are certainly bubbles within the bubble, e.g. I understand Bay Area is very AI focused while London is more plural.
Articles like this that attempt to replace one personās perspective with hard data are really useful. Thank you.
At EA for Christians, we often interact with people who are altruistic and focused on impact but do not want to associate with EA because of its perceived anti-religion ethos.
On the flip side, since becoming involved with EA for Christians, a number of people have told me they are Christian but keep it quiet for fear it will damage their career prospects.
We should all try to maximise our impact and thereās a good argument for specialisation.
However, Iām concerned by a few things:
Its not obvious to me that spending more money on yourself will make you better at your job
Thereās a danger of arrogance clouding our judgment, e.g. I donāt think 99% of people in EA should be flying business class
Donating has value for many people due to the āskin in the gameā effect
I appreciate this comment
Highly engaged EAs were much more likely to select research (25.0% vs 15.1%) and much less likely to select earning to give (5.7% vs 15.7%)
are you sure this isnāt just a function of the definition of highly engaged?
Yes! A rather important typo! Iāve now fixed
The Parable of the Good Samaritan seems to lean towards impartiality. Although the injured man was laying in front of the Samaritan (geographic proximity), the Samaritan was considered a foreigner /ā enemy (no proximity of relationship).
Did the EV US Board consider running an open recruitment process and inviting applications from people outside of their immediate circle? If so, why did it decide against?
Thanks, Ben. This is a really thoughtful post.
I wondered if you had any update on the blurring between EA and longtermism. Iāve seen a lot of criticism of EA that is really just low quality criticism of longtermism because the conclusions can be weird.
Sorry if I wasnāt clear. My claim was not āEvery organisation has a COO); it was āIf an organisation has a COO, the department they manage is typically front-office rather than back-office and often the largest departmentā.
For Apple, they do indeed manage front-office operations: āJeff Williams is Appleās chief operating officer reporting to CEO Tim Cook. He oversees Appleās entire worldwide operations, as well as customer service and support. He leads Appleās renowned design team and the software and hardware engineering for Apple Watch. Jeff also drives the companyās health initiatives, pioneering new technologies and advancing medical research to empower people to better understand and manage their health and fitness.ā
For Amazon, I couldnāt find a COO of the entire company though it looks like they exist for the business units.
I think forecasting is attractive to many people in EA like myself because EA skews towards curious people from STEM backgrounds who like games. However, Iām yet to see a robust case for it being an effective use of charitable funds (if there is, please point me to it). Iām worried we are not being objective enough and trying to find the facts that support the conclusion rather than the other way round.