‘When EA becomes cool, people who don’t care about EA show up to secure money and status. When EA becomes cool, that reputation needs defending, which is often corrosive to truth.’
I think that’s very well said.
SiobhanBall
Karma: 853
P.S I’m also unsure of how hiring from near-misses = fewer charities. There’s probably a large stockpile of finalists, just from the final 1% of previous rounds.
Hi Joey, thanks for replying. Zooming in on this point: ‘If we did closed rounds including people from prior cohorts, we would likely lose ~50% of our talent pool but save ~90% of team time on vetting and comms.’
What’s a ballpark figure for the amount of money that 90% of team time represents? This is the amount that could potentially be saved per round.
Having that figure is important; it would help one to assess whether it’s a potentially good trade-off. If the amount would be substantial, then the savings could fund the fewer charities that are incubated, for example.
They may be, although absolute candidate quality doesn’t seem to be the only consideration; for context, the feedback I received as a finalist suggested a different mechanism. I was told that a main consideration was that I was relatively locked into a single idea, and that this idea was among the most popular in the cohort. ‘This does mean we have to make the difficult decision of turning down talented potential founders like yourself who are better suited to some popular ideas.’
The implication was that they expected to be able to find founders for that idea regardless, so they prioritised more flexible candidates or those interested in less popular ideas in order to maximise the total number of charities launched.So I don’t think there’s a pure ‘fixed-bar’. Some candidates who clear the bar might still be turned down due to idea-level constraints.
I’m not sure to what extent both of these are operating simultaneously (e.g. a minimum bar + then matching), but if the latter is a meaningful factor, it seems to strengthen the case for tracking near-miss candidates across rounds rather than resetting the pool each time.
P.S I originally posted this as a quick take and have been thinking about this question in more detail since.
Lol you had me for a moment there!
This looks great! When will the date be determined?
This is great! I’m excited to see some potentially high-impact, real-world interventions. It also helps to make the area of WAW more tangible for readers.
Since you explicitly asked for criticism:
- Pie chart labels are too small.
- I don’t like the thick partial border around the work segment—makes it look like a clock, which is perhaps deliberate as it’s gesturing at time—but I look at it and think ‘this is a book about 5 o’ clock’.
- I don’t like The Cornerstone Press label going vertically, and I’m unsure of how it relates to the Penguin logo.
- I think ‘that does good’ is a bit of a flat subtitle. Too vague. I much prefer the wording on the site: ridiculously in-depth is ballsy, and I like it! That should be on the cover.
- I would’ve tried for an endorsement from a more mainstream figure in society, like a celebrity or something… I don’t know, Stephen Fry? Lex Friedman? Rutger Bregman is very known in EA, I’m not sure how known outside of EA, and since he’s written a book on a similar topic, one might see that and think ‘why should I read both?’
Also the link to the alternative design doesn’t work.
Learning of this book launch also has me wondering: how is this book different to Moral Ambition or the HIP playbook?
Anyway, there’s my tuppence worth. Are you asking because the cover is still editable? Congratulations on the launch!
Question for AIM folks: what’s the thinking behind running a very involved process twice per year, as opposed to recruiting from near-misses from previous rounds?
Are there savings to be made here? Asking as someone deeply concerned with cost effectiveness as a vital principle of EA… and a former finalist!
That seems like a very high rate of remission to me, congratulations! And on the EAIF funding as well.
It seems that this problem is best solved by regulation + import controls, with industry-wide agreements being an ‘in the meantime’ solution. Doesn’t this make a case for redirecting more resources toward legislative strategy, and less toward corporate campaigns?
Hahaha, alright. I appreciate the self-awareness. :) I, too, have words to live by, even Spanish ones.
And they call us a cult. A 𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑡!
I skimmed your examples and think neither should meet the bar for a ‘little telling off.’
In light of the Netflix doccos coming out later this year, and whatever other scandal might be waiting around the corner, I think we ought to ease up on this level of public language policing. The critics are coming; let’s not make their job easy for them (nor convert from within our own community).
Hi Zachary, do you have any notion of the success rate in going from recommitment → realised changes?
Also, thanks for your service! 6+ years is a lot of volunteering.
Finally, indeed! I hope the changes materialise.
Indeed! I asked the same questions in a recent LinkedIn post and am planning to address this topic in a new substack post soon (so now I’m wondering if we know each other 🥷🏽).
To answer your last question—pretty common. The majority I think, though estimates differ.
I started off at 100% but, having reflected on this for a few days, I’m now unsure. I stand by the point I alluded to elsewhere on the forum—that language has been used as a class gatekeeping tool since forever, AI levels the field, and this is good—but on the other hand, the slop is out of control.
You can’t get a read of the writer’s personality if AI is used (that might be beneficial in some cases, but I believe it’s worse overall); it represents the next level of performative twoddle that I’ve decided I do not like (even if I engage in it myself sometimes), and we don’t need another way to distance ourselves from being seen by one another.
So, @NickLaing changed my mind.
Oh, no. I had no idea they could be this bad. And I’m speaking from experience… is anybody working on this?