Excellent story.
Do you have any writing elsewhere?
Excellent story.
Do you have any writing elsewhere?
Value drift seems like a risk. You might start off with a set of altruistic beliefs, but if you spend all your professional and social time around a set of people who don’t share those beliefs then you are likely to adopt those beliefs, for the various well studied psychological effects of conformity and what information you will be being exposed to.
The claim that EA is talent constrained not money constrained always confuses me. Since there are no shortage of young talented people interested in EA, but there seem to be very few jobs for them to do in EA. If there is this huge pile of money sitting around why not give it to pepole in exchange for their labor? As every other industry or cause does.
Its not specific communications so much as it is the level of activity around specific causes. How many posts and how much discussion time is spent on AI and other cool intellectual things, vs. more mundane but important things like malaria. Danger of being seen as just a way for people to morally justify doing the kind of things they already want to do.
There being a lot of funding available in EA also changes the calculus for people deciding if they want to donate their own money. If there are super rich people donating to EA, to the extent that finding ways to spend money is a problem, then the motivation for normal individuals to donate is lower.
The focus on student groups is also inherently redflaggy for some people, as it can be viewed as looking for people who have less scepticism and experience.
So what specific kinds of talented people does EA need more of? Well, the most obvious place to look is the most recent Leader Forum, which gives the following talent gaps (in order):
Is there a place you should go if you meet one of those particular talent gaps?
Sorry I should have been clearer, I was meaning more in psychological terms than economic ones. An extra dollar might still do the same amount of good, but the way people intuitively assess impact it will feel very different depending on the funding context people feel it is in.
Feels like it was a mistake to tell people to change their strategy if it can be reversed by a single donor having issues. All the emphasis on “we’re not funding constrained” may have done long term harm by reducing future donations from a wider pool of people.
Please feel free to “be that guy” as hard as possible when we are talking about massive financial fraud.
How concerned were you about crypto generally being unethical?
Also to add to that, whether or not crypto is in itself ethical its known to be a very unstable sector and one with a particularly negative reputation. Was there any discussion of how to compensate for that potential volatility, and of potential reputational risks of being associated?
A meta level structural problem may be that so much decision making seems to be focused on a relatively small group of people without much oversight. Even with the best people in the world that’s going to lead to group think and blind spots. Other charities and non-profits have extensive oversight systems that may be worth imitating.
Forgive me if there’s a structural reason why this wouldn’t work. But why weren’t you saving a larger share of the money coming in, to provide a buffer in case funding dropped off for whatever reason? Seems like part of the underlying issue here was assuming that funding levels would remain constant in the future
Agreed. Its entirely possible to take someone’s money and spend it for good causes without promoting them and associating ones reputation with them
I feel like a lot of this is downstream from people being reluctant to hire experienced people who aren’t already associated with EA. Particularly for things like operations roles experience doing similar roles is going to make far more of a difference to effectiveness than deep belief in EA values.
When Coke need to hire new people they don’t look for people who have a deep love of sugary drinks brands, they find people in similar roles for other things and offer them money. I feel like the reason EA orgs are reluctant to do this is that there’s a degree of exceptionalism in EA.
Yeah this is my biggest concern. The whole value proposition of EA was to get away from the normal failure modes of charities. If they are falling into the same traps of using shoddy reasoning to justify self serving behaviour that’s a major structural problem, not just a matter of a single decision.
If you’re an organisation that solicits donations part of your basic obligations in your relationship with your donors is to be clear about whatyyou have spent money on in the past, and intend to spend it on in the future, so that people can look at that and make a reasonable judgement about what their donation is likely to be used for
Yeah, lot of the issues in EA are things I recognise from other fields that disproportionately hire academic high achievers straight out of college, who don’t have much real world experience, and who overestimate the value of native intelligence over experience. But conveying the importance of that difference is difficult as, ironically, its something you mostly learn from experience.
There’s a general lack of competence in (and at times active disdain for) skills in PR and communications in EA. Which for a movement that wants to convince people of things and attract membership seems problematic
Same. I’m fairly confident in my writing skills but lack any talent in the other areas and would find doing so embarassing