More EA Near/āMedium-Termist Money Should be Flowing to Climate Change Mitigation
My understanding of EA funding is that almost none goes to climate. I (loosely) tend think that it would be good that a bit more resources go to Giving Green and other environmental prioritization projects.
However, I also gather that such projects attract funding far more easily than most other EA-consensual-ish causes.
Random point of data: I know itās less exotic but with this budget you could work quite decently from Parisās close suburbs, in France.
Same here. Ping @Rahman Shanq :)
Agreed! One nuance though: Iām not familiar with the ātime-to-resultsā that we can expect from such investments, but it seems plausible to me that it takes >1 year for them to deliver. So, results could potentially not show up before the 2028 report.
I think the discussion about how we should think about working with governments is very important. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Nick!
Congratulations on creating this! It feels like quite a natural progression. Will you share the curriculumās details publicly when the paint is dry?
Current community builders should also think of their work more in terms of the superstructure, rather than just motivating and directing people towards impactful careers
I think most European, national EA groups try to balance the expectations of proofs of impact from funders (like āwe contributed strongly to <X> people applying to MATSā) with a mandate of norm setting, community health, information, etc.
Thanks for sharing! As a former product owner, I love to know a bit about whatās happening behind the scenes š I think the Forum is immensely important, and Iām surprised to learn that thereās less than 1 FTE in software engineering maintaining it.
Thanks a lot for this article, itās very useful to improve my understanding of whatās happening and what to make of it! This has been discussed a lot already, but the claims were usually made with somewhat motivated reasoning and cherry-picked and/āor weak arguments.
Thanks for writing this! Iām trying to think through this as Iām writing it. Here are a bunch of not-too-well-formed ideas:
There might be āa lot more fundingā available soon (note: this is still TBC. I believe a lot of caution is warranted on that question)
This might result in a significant ālowering of the funding barā from funders.
In this case, it will attract many more people to:
work for EA and/āor AI safety projects
launch new initiatives.
As a community-builder, I tend to have a bias for people with deep engagement with EA principles. But I think many projects can be good with leaders who have not initially spent much time thinking about EA.
Iām not sure Iāve heard much criticism in mainstream discourse about how easily EA funding was granted during the pre-FTX funding. Itās not surprising, given the fact that most people donāt think much about it.
It would probably be much more discussed in some specific spheres: philanthropy in general, TPOT, non-EA spheres.
Most of all, I think funders (and all of us) should consider the impact this situational change could bring to EAās culture, epistemics, and appropriate trust levels in what might become (again) less of a community and more of a ānetworkā.
At this stage, I think I broadly
would avoid talking about āvulturesā as this seems insulting to both 1) vultures and 2) people who are rationally looking for funding opportunities
share your state of alarm about what this will do to EAās culture
still believe this could be immensely good
believe that the increase in funding will take some time and that we should invest a lot in grantmaking to maintain decent standards of scrutiny (as well as coordination mechanisms).
I see many good points in the comments of the original The Vultures Are Circling by CitizenTen that you refer to. Most of mine were somehow expressed there already^^
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
On āIs it generally recommended for someone with my skill set to pursue āEarning to Giveā (maximizing my income in the corporate marketing world and donating) rather than trying to do direct work for EA orgs?ā: itās been said a lot, in the past years, that we need more talented, āhigh-contextā communicators. I encourage you to explore direct work opportunities and think deeply about what could, or couldnāt, work in the context of EA.
Thank you very much for taking the time to write this, @Melanie Brennan š¹ and @Anthony L ! It must have been difficult at this time of turmoil.
First, congratulations on all you (and past CBers) have accomplished in Barcelona and in Spain more generally. Your recap in this post clearly shows that much was done, and I think your sustained work has probably created a lot of positive impact.
Second, I think this post is important for reminding all of us that EA community building is at a strange place: it is clearly important, but it is also very hard to get funding for. Like many other roles in EA, we (counting myself) are precarious workers, relying on yearly renewals and decent-if-you-can-live-frugally salaries. Off the top of my head, Iād say with confidence that fewer than 50 people in the world do principles-first EA community building as their main source of income. And I think perhaps fewer than 30 have been at it for more than 2 years.
Good luck to both of you, and looking forward to see the switch to a community/āvolunteering-led system works out!
Agreed.
One data point: in the recent EA community retreat I organized for 65 people in France in 2025 (not a āpremiumā retreat), the cost per participant was 156ā¬. This includes my time as well as financial support from participants.
I tend to see these types of events as complementary. I think we should not treat their various outcomes as fungible. You get results of different, non-tradeable kinds. In particular:
Differents types of participants
Different types of impact.
I love number 4! :D
Yes. Another question is the geographical direction of the (potential) giving. I suppose we should expect a strong focus on US-centric actions, which might very suboptimal. Surely relying on funds will help coordinate intelligently.
Therefore, one approach to preparing for the influx of many new donors could be to increase the EA Funds teams to facilitate grantmaking (afaik, theyāre quite overworked anyway).
Thanks for the kind words!
To answer your question:
- One person said it to me, and another wrote it in the feedback form: it can be hard to understand how an organization can amend their activities to be more effective, concretely. Another person found the event ātoo theoricalā.
- I personally think examples contribute a lot to making the ideas clearer and more convincing.
Iām really thrilled that you seized this opportunity to speak to many people (and become one of the relatively rare speakers to discuss a moral atrocity on that stage).
With the Dwarkesh Patel podcast episode you recently did, this is very, very encouraging. Thank you so much.
Thanks a lot for maintaining this space! Itās been great coworking with you and others in GatherTown, I love how it creates a cozy, friendly atmosphere akin to that of a physical office.
Strong reco for others to come (especially remote workers) and experiment with this solution.
Thanks for writing this! Itās a useful framework to encode stuff we frequently have to think about.
I think it might be rational to over-invest initially when youāre testing the program and arenāt sure how to support participants.