Thanks for writing this, I think it’s important that people at least understand the basics. EA blogs used to contain much more personal finance advice. In the past I’ve wondered whether EAs who joined more recently were less likely to know about personal finance as a result.
JoshYou
Karma: 574
I think you’re overestimating how high EA-org-salary spending is compared to (remaining) total EA funding per year (in the neighborhood of 10%?)
I think the benefits of living in a hub city (SF, NYC, Boston, or DC) are very large and are well worth the higher costs, assuming it’s financially feasible at all, especially if you currently have no personal network in any city. You’ll have easy access to interesting and like-minded people, which will have many many diffuse impact and personal benefits.
Also, those are probably the only American cities besides maybe Chicago and Philly where’s it is easy to live without a car (and arguably it’s only NYC).
I loved this Wikitravel article about American culture for this same reason.
What makes someone good at AI safety work? How does he get feedback on whether his work is useful, makes sense, etc?
see also
For the big-buck EtGers, what sort of donation percentages is this advice assuming? I imagine that if you’re making $1M and even considering direct work then you’re giving >>10% (>50%?) but I’m not sure.
“Neglectedness” is a potentially confusing simplification of true impact
I also actually have no idea how people do this, curious to see answers!
Also, the questions seem to assume that grantees don’t have another (permanent, if not full-time) job. I’m not sure how common that is.
Melatonin supplements can increase the vividness of dreams, which seems counterproductive here. But maybe there is a drug with the opposite effect?
Anyone trying to think about how to do the most good will be very quickly and deeply confused if they aren’t thinking at the margin. E.g. “if everyone buys bednets, what happens to the economy?”
It might help to put some rough numbers on this. Most of the EA org non-technical job postings that I have seen recently have been in the $60-120k/year range or so. I don’t think those are too high, even at the higher end of that range. But value alignment concerns (and maybe PR and other reasons) seem like a good reason to not offer, say, 300k or more for non-executive and non-technical roles at EA orgs.
I think EA orgs generally pay higher salaries than other non-profits, but below-market for the EA labor market (many of whom have software, consulting, etc as alternatives). I don’t think they’re anywhere close to “impact value” based on anecdotal reports of how much EA orgs value labor. I believe 80k did a survey on this (Edit: it’s here).
whoa I used to teach there back in the day. This is cool!
Fundraising is particularly effective in open primaries, such as this one. From the linked article:
But in 2017, Bonica published a study that found, unlike in the general election, early fundraising strongly predicted who would win primary races. That matches up with other research suggesting that advertising can have a serious effect on how people vote if the candidate buying the ads is not already well-known and if the election at hand is less predetermined along partisan lines.
Basically, said Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, advertising is useful for making voters aware that a candidate or an issue exists at all. Once you’ve established that you’re real and that enough people are paying attention to you to give you a decent chunk of money, you reach a point of diminishing returns (i.e., Paul Ryan did not have to spend $13 million to earn his seat). But a congressperson running in a close race, with no incumbent — or someone running for small-potatoes local offices that voters often just skip on the ballot — is probably getting a lot more bang for their buck.
Note that large funders such as SBF can and do support political candidates with large donations via PACs, which can advertise on behalf of a candidate but are not allowed to coordinate with them directly. But direct donations are probably substantially more cost-effective than PAC money because campaigns have more options on how to spend the money (door-knocking, events, etc not just ads) and it would look bad if a candidate was exclusively supported by PACs.
If you’re not planning to go to grad school (and maybe even if you are), getting straight As in college probably means a lot of unnecessary effort.
I gave most of my donations to the EA Funds Donor Lottery because I felt pretty uncertain about where to give. I am still undecided on which cause to prioritize, but I have become fairly concerned about existential risk from AI and I don’t think I know enough about the donation opportunities in that space. If I won the lottery, I would then take some more time to research and think about this decision.
I also donated to Wild Animal Initiative and Rethink Priorities because I still want to keep a regular habit of making donation decisions. I think they are the two best organizations working on wild-animal welfare, which is potentially a highly cost-effective cause area because of the very large number of wild animals in existence. I also donated to GiveWell’s maximum impact fund.
I did Metaculus for a while but I wasn’t quite sure how to assess how well I was doing and I lost interest. I know Brier score isn’t the greatest metric. Just try to accumulate points?
I’m probably “on the clock” about 45 hours per week—I try to do about 8 hours a day but I go over more often than not. But maybe only about 25-35 hours of that is focused work, using a relatively loose sense of “focused” (not doing something blatantly non-work, like reading Twitter or walking around outside). I think my work output is constrained by energy levels, not clock time, so I don’t really worry about working longer hours or trying to stay more focused, but I do try to optimize work tasks and non-work errands to reduce their mental burdens.