Via this article on the dangers of the longtermism philosophy (written by a former longtermist, so a good read if you are new here), I found the article by EA on just how much money they have. (45 billion, of which 1% is donated for use by EA each year).
The ‘which roles are most needed’ made me pull a certain type of face:
We could break down some of the key leadership positions needed to deploy these funds as follows:
- Researchers able to come up with ideas for big projects, new cause areas, or other new ways to spend funds on a big scale
- EA entrepreneurs/managers/research leads able to run these projects and hire lots of people
- Grantmakers able to evaluate these projects
(I was just amazed at the massive amount of money, which they are apparently just looking to grow bigger (guess that is a no on the becoming anti capitalist), and the fact that they seem to have nobody to actually do, nor evaluate the altruism part effectively).
It’s probably worth noting that ~9 billion of that estimate is from just two mega-donors: Dustin Moskovitz and Sam Bankman-Fried. Not really sure if that makes things better or worse, but yeah.
That was a somewhat disturbing read.
There’s a trend in rationalism of sticking to untestable theories, which can of course prove anything you want with the right rationalizing. This looks like a way of encouraging real decision-makes to do that even more than they already do.
sorry this is only partially relevant
longtermism is just a way of pretending to care about things whilst not actually giving a shit about currently existing humans, right? it’s scifi fantasy land?
i ask because it seems pretty obvious that, using the linked article’s example of frank ramsey, stephen jay gould’s famous quote would seem to want to drive their actions towards more egalitarian economic ones?
this is literally Dune, except Paul is a huge nerd (e: Muad’dib and the Methods of Rationality)
the real hitlers are the people we sneered at along the way
what if there are aliens out there and they’re better people than us?
From that article about EA funding:
Because when you think of Altruism, you think of Facebook and cryptocurrency. Nothing more altruistic than those!
(yes, I’m aware this is because of who’s donated this money and where it came from. But still, you’d think a group supposedly devoted to thinking about the best ways to Do Good would do some amount of thinking about whether they are investing in companies that are Doing Bad. Which I suppose is the point of the first article.)