EA is being warped by the amount of money it has

[paul-crowe]

Example: Some half baked worries about 'EA has loads of money now'

Summary: "This could mean:

• People optimise for applications that look good on a shallow assessment (eg. buzzwords, signalling) than on a deep assessment (eg. deep knowledge of stuff)
• People apply for funding for things/ do things that they think will get funded (eg. things of a list of things) rather than what they think is actually valuable
• Basically this is a principal agent problem probably, or at least something like that. Alice (funders) wants Bob (EAs) to clean her house (do valuable projects). And Bob (EAs) really wants money (money). But Alice (funders) has poor eyesight (doesn’t have much time) and so can’t tell easily between a clean house (good project) and a dirty house (bad project)."

Date: 28th March 2022

Status:

Lag to response:

Current canonical instance:

Prior status of critic:

Fundamental criticism:

Public responses:

• Hoffman: the general problem of criticism

[paul-crowe]

Example: Free-spending might be a big issue for EA optics

Summary: Sending people round the world to retreats, conferences. Funding accomodation.

Date:

Status:

Lag to response:

Current canonical instance:

Prior status of critic:

Fundamental criticism:

Public responses:

• Implications overlap with EA may be attracting grifters
• Future fund clarification (10th May 2022)
• Anxiety about EA's wealth (31st Mar 2022)
• EA orgs shouldn't offer high wages (10th Jun 2022)
• Avoiding luxury accomodation etc as a way to dodge EA being accused of being a cult/pyramid scheme (30th Jun 2022)
• EA orgs should offer high wages (25 July 2022)
• Wasting EA money is bad (22nd Sep 2022)

[g-leech]

Arguably the early suffering-focussed debate was de-emphasised by OpenPhil funding everything else, not by argument.