Sure. While I am a fan of the NLN, a big point of mine is that individual donors is a very tiny portion of the funding ecosystem, especially for larger projects, they canāt really use independent donors to diversify.
Marcus Abramovitch šø
Karma: 2,579
I think there are a lot of roles on the 80k job board and other places that donāt need anyone special but just need good hard generalist workers. A lot of operations roles donāt need anything special but just āwork that needs doingā.
As some examples https://āājobs.lever.co/āāaisafety/āāc5269975-e074-44ee-ad32-9ff521f4d709 this is a good job if someone wants something in AI safety.
This is more of an EA infrastructure role https://āāwww.givingwhatwecan.org/āāget-involved/āācareers/āāoperations-associate
Another AI role https://āācareers.rethinkpriorities.org/āāen/āāpostings/āāb6cbef86-5239-4218-9aaa-8b7fe660db72
Another AI role https://āāwww.arena.education/āāoperations-lead
For animal welfare, I would say the bulk of the jobs donāt need anyone who is some kind of 0.001% person.
https://āāanimal-equality.rippling-ats.com/āājob/āā807514/āāoperations-managerhttps://āāwww.fishwelfareinitiative.org/āāpa
For Global health, there are a ton of jobs at the Clinton Health Initiative that you donāt need to move to Africa to do. Other than that, here are some
This, along with OAI is likely worth investigating.
This is a great point that I strong upvoted.
1 is just a good point. happy you made it. I wish people owned the EA reputation more and we should work towards it having a better brand. I also acknowledge that āwhat is EAā is fuzzy and also that in an ideal analysis, I would have summed up EA organizations (by my definition) receiving funding as opposed to tallying EA sources of funding.
On 2, I agree but I donāt think this will change the calculation very much. Even if I were to grant Schmidt Ventures as an EA funder (I donāt fwiw, they mostly fund science), this doesnāt change much in the realm of being able to significantly diversify funding (there are 2 funding sources and not one).
Withr respect to the org you work for being funded by a donor who isnāt widely considered an āEA billionaireā, thatās awesome but again, I donāt think will change the math very much. It would be similar (at best) to adding another SFF. It would take OPs funding percentage from 89% to say 85%. It helps but doesnāt change the big picture.I should also note that this isnāt surprising. In the hedge fund or VC space, firms usually have a few investors representing the bulk of their funds. Every firm is different but generally speaking, fewer than 5 investors make up 80% of a firmās AUM and it very much follows a power law.
Good point. OpenAI as well.
Ill respond to all thoughts
Correct.
One way of viewing altruism is that you have an energy bar of it and you should spend it wisely. The other way of viewing it is more like exercising muscles at the gym. I think in general, the 2nd view has slightly more merit and much more than we like to give it credit for since itās inconvenient. https://āāforum.effectivealtruism.org/āāposts/āāDBcDZJhTDgig9QNHR/āāaltruism-sharpens-altruism
I donāt think EA says that, at least in practice. I know of no EAs that donate all money above what they absolutely require, have no outside hobbies, etc.
Most of EA is inconvenient. Thatās fair.
I agree, I would also supplement with my comment I left here where similar things were discussed.
My reasons for being vegan have little to do with the direct negative effects of factory farming. They are in roughly descending order of importance.
A constant reminder to myself that non-human animals matter. My current day-to-day activities give nearly no reason to think about the fact that non-human animals have moral worth. This is my 2-5 times per day reminder of this fact.
Reduction of cognitive dissonance. It took about a year of being vegan to begin to appreciate, viscerally, that animals had moral worth. Itās hard to quantify this but it is tough to think that animals have moral worth when you eat them a few times a day. This has flow-through effects on donations, cause prioritization, etc.
The effect it has on others. Iām not a pushy vegan at all. I hardly tell people but every now and then people notice and ask questions about it.
Solidarity with non-EAA animal welfare people. For better or worse, outside of EA, this seems to be a ticket to entry to be considered taking the issue seriously. I want to be able to convince them to donate to THL over a pet shelter and to SWP over dog rescue charities and the the EA AWF over Pets for Vets. They are more likely to listen to me when they see me as one of them who just happens to be doing the math.
Reducing the daily suffering that I cause. Itās still something even though it pales in comparison to my yearly donations but it is me living in accordance with my values and is causing less suffering than I would otherwise.
Another good point. Itās amazing how much donors can influence priorities, even subconsciously
Yup, strong agree here. Many reasons to raise money from non-EA sources. Hard but extremely valuable.
I agree, raising money from non-EA sources is hard but extremely valuable for multiple reasons; the counterfactual probably isnāt as charitable, it grows the EA pie, it might bring them into more effective giving, etc.
FundĀing DiverĀsifiĀcaĀtion for Mid-Large EA OrĀgaĀniĀzaĀtions is Nearly ImĀposĀsiĀble in the Short-Medium Term
Itās not about telling others Iām vegan. Itās about telling them that I think non human animals are worthy of moral consideration. I also tell people that I donate to animal welfare charities and even which ones.
This comment is extremely good. I wish I could incorporate some of it into my comment since it hits the cognitive dissonance aspect far better than I did. Itās near impossible to give significant moral weight to animals and still think it is okay to eat them.
I think a lot of commenters are taking the āmaximizeā bit too literally. EAs are a bit on the neurotic side and like to take things literally, but colloquially, people understand that maximize doesnāt mean maximize at all other costs. I agree that maximization is perilous but in every day language, with which every day people we are trying to appeal to communicate, āmaximizeā doesnāt mean to do so at all costs like maximizing a single function. When my basketball coach would tell me to score as many points as possible, I took it as a given he didnāt think I should hold the referees and other team at gunpoint until they allowed me to score points easily or do any number of other ridiculous actions. When a friend tells me to come as early as I can, they donāt mean for me to floor the gas pedal from my current location.
A pledge summed up in a single sentence isnāt going to have all the caveats and asterisks that EAs like to have when they speak precisely.
Can you maybe expand a bit more on why? I found out about EA when I was 23 and I wish I found out about it when I was perhaps 16ā17 and perhaps earlier. Itās obviously hard to know but I think I would have made better and different choices on career path, study, etc.; so itās advantageous to learn about EA earlier in life despite being far from making direct impact.
I also suspect though correct me if Iām wrong, behind point 1 is an assumption that EA is bad for peopleās personal welfare. I donāt know if this is true.
I listed in descending order of importance. I might be confused for one of those āhyper rationalistā types in many instances. I think rationalist undervalue the cognitive dissonance. In my experience, a lot of rationalists just donāt value non human animals. Even rationalists behave in a much more āvibesā based way than theyād have you believe. It really is hard to hold in your head both āitās okay to eat animalsā and āwe can avert tremendous amounts of suffering to hundreds of animals per dollar and have a moral compulsion to do soā.
I also wouldnāt call what I do virtue signaling. I never forthright tell people and I live in a very conservative part of the world.
My reasons for being vegan have little to do with the direct negative effects of factory farming. They are in roughly descending order of importance.
A constant reminder to myself that non-human animals matter. My current day-to-day activities give nearly no reason to think about the fact that non-human animals have moral worth. This is my 2-5 times per day reminder of this fact.
Reduction of cognitive dissonance. It took about a year of being vegan to begin to appreciate, viscerally, that animals had moral worth. Itās hard to quantify this but it is tough to think that animals have moral worth when you eat them a few times a day. This has flow-through effects on donations, cause prioritization, etc.
The effect it has on others. Iām not a pushy vegan at all. I hardly tell people but every now and then people notice and ask questions about it.
Solidarity with non-EAA animal welfare people. For better or worse, outside of EA, this seems to be a ticket to entry to be considered taking the issue seriously. I want to be able to convince them to donate to THL over a pet shelter and to SWP over dog rescue charities and the the EA AWF over Pets for Vets. They are more likely to listen to me when they see me as one of them who just happens to be doing the math.
Reducing the daily suffering that I cause. Itās still something even though it pales in comparison to my yearly donations but it is me living in accordance with my values and is causing less suffering than I would otherwise.
I basically think so, yes. I think it mainly caused by, as you put it, āthe amount of money from six-figure donations was nonetheless dwarfed by Open Philanthropyā and therefore people have scaled back/āstopped since they donāt think itās impactful. I basically donāt think thatās true, especially in this case of animal welfare but also just in terms of absolute impact which is what actually matters as opposed to relative impact. FWIW, this is the same (IMO, fallacious) argument ānormiesā have against donating āmy potential donations are so small compared to billionaires/āgovernments/āNGOs that I may as well just spend it on myselfā.
But yes, the amount of people I know who would consider themselves to be effective altruists, even committed effective altruists who earn considerable salaries donate relatively little, at least compared to what they could be donating.
Iāll take a crack at some of these.
On 3, I basically donāt think this matters. I hadnāt considered it largely because it seems super irrelevant. It matters far more if any individual people shouldnāt be there or some individuals should be there who arenāt. AFAICT without much digging, they all seem to be doing a fine job and I donāt see the need for a male/āpoc though feel free to point out a reason. I think nearly nobody feels they have a problem to report and then upon finding out that they are reporting to a white woman feel they can no longer do so. I would really hate to see EA become a place where we are constantly fretting and questioning demographic makeups of small EA organizations to make sure that they have enough of all the traits. Itās a giant waste of time, energy and other resources
On 4, this is a risk with basically all nonprofit organizations. Do we feel AI safety organizations are exaggerating the problem? How about SWP? Do you think they exaggerate the number of shrimp or how likely they are to be sentient? How about Givewell? Should we be concerned about their cost-effectiveness analyses? Itās always a question to ask but usually, a concern would come with something more concrete or a statistic. For example, the charity Will Macaskill talks about in the UK that helps a certain kind of Englishperson who is statistically ahead (though I canāt remember if this is Scotts or Irishmen or another group)
On 7, university groups are limited in resources. Very limited. It is almost always done part-time while managing a full time courseload and working on their own development among other things and so they focus on their one comparative advantage of recruitment (since it would be difficult for others to do that) and outsource the training to other places (80k, MATS, etc.).
On 10, good point, I would like to see some movement within EA to increase the intensity.
On 11, another good point. Iād love to read more about this.
On 12, another good point but this is somewhat how networks work, unfortunately. Thereās just so many incentives for hubs to emerge and then to have a bunch of gravity. It kinda started in the Bay area and then for individual actors, it nearly always makes sense to go around there and then there is a feedback loop.
@Greg_Colbourn while I disagree on Pause AI and the beliefs that lead up to it, I want to commend you for this for:
1) Taking your beliefs seriously.2) Actually donating significant amounts. I donāt know how this sort of fell off as a thing EAs do.
I think people should stop thinking of conservatives as racist/āsexist/ābigoted. Iām not a conservative (Iām a libertarian) but I know a few EAs who are and they are silent about it until you get to know them well. I havenāt found them to be transphobic (they respect trans pronouns). I havenāt found them to be racist (they donate significantly to Africans). The majority are vegan (at least, i donāt know about all of them).
One thing EA could do is push the progressiveness a bit less. The vast majority of the world would laugh at the fact that at EAG, people try to get you to wear a pin with your pronoun and are a bit repulsed at how āin your faceā the polyamorous stuff is. For me, itās normal since Iām from Canada but it wont be for most of the world (and even about half of America). Nearl all of latin American, most of asia (where the majority of the world live) etc. would be described as āconservativeā by this standard and we shouldnāt be turning them off unnecessarily.