I think most of the better-funded EA organizations would not prefer most LWers working there for $1M/yr, nor for a more typical salary, nor for free.
(Even though many of these same LW-ers are useful many other places.)
I think many of the better-funded EA organizations would prefer (being able to continue employing at least their most useful staff members) to (receiving an annual donation equal to 30x what that staff member could make in industry).
If a typical LWer somehow really decided, deep in themselves, to try to do good with all their heart and all their mind and creativity… or to do as much of this as was compatible with still working no more than 40 hrs/week and having a family and a life… I suspect this would be quite considerably more useful than donating 10% of their salary to some already-funded-to-near-saturation EA organization. (Since the latter effect is often small.) (Though some organizations are not that well-funded! So this varies by organization IMO.)
2 and 3 are as far as I can get toward agreeing with the OPs estimated factor of 300. It doesn’t get me all the way there (well, I guess it might for the mean person, but certainly not for the median; plus also there’re assumptions implicit in trying to use a multiplier here that I don’t buy or can’t stomach.). But it makes me sort of empathize with how people can utter sentences like those.
In terms of what to make of this:
Sometimes people jam 1 and 2 together, to get a perspective like “most people are useless compared to those who work at EA organizations.” I think this is not quite right, because “scaling an existing EA organization’s impact” is not at all the only way to do good, and my guess is that the same people may be considerably better at other ways to do good than they are at adding productivity to an [organization that already has as many staff as it knows how to use].
One possible alternate perspective:
“Many of the better funded EA organizations don’t much know how to turn additional money, or additional skilled people, into doing their work faster/more/better. So look for some other way to do good and don’t listen too much to them for how to do it. Rely on your own geeky ideas, smart outside friends who’ve done interesting things before, common sense and feedback loops and experimentation and writing out your models and looking for implications/inconsistencies, etc. in place of expecting EA to have a lot of pre-found opportunities that require only your following of their instructions.”
Some components of my own models, here:
I think most of the better-funded EA organizations would not prefer most LWers working there for $1M/yr, nor for a more typical salary, nor for free.
(Even though many of these same LW-ers are useful many other places.)
I think many of the better-funded EA organizations would prefer (being able to continue employing at least their most useful staff members) to (receiving an annual donation equal to 30x what that staff member could make in industry).
If a typical LWer somehow really decided, deep in themselves, to try to do good with all their heart and all their mind and creativity… or to do as much of this as was compatible with still working no more than 40 hrs/week and having a family and a life… I suspect this would be quite considerably more useful than donating 10% of their salary to some already-funded-to-near-saturation EA organization. (Since the latter effect is often small.) (Though some organizations are not that well-funded! So this varies by organization IMO.)
2 and 3 are as far as I can get toward agreeing with the OPs estimated factor of 300. It doesn’t get me all the way there (well, I guess it might for the mean person, but certainly not for the median; plus also there’re assumptions implicit in trying to use a multiplier here that I don’t buy or can’t stomach.). But it makes me sort of empathize with how people can utter sentences like those.
In terms of what to make of this:
Sometimes people jam 1 and 2 together, to get a perspective like “most people are useless compared to those who work at EA organizations.” I think this is not quite right, because “scaling an existing EA organization’s impact” is not at all the only way to do good, and my guess is that the same people may be considerably better at other ways to do good than they are at adding productivity to an [organization that already has as many staff as it knows how to use].
One possible alternate perspective:
“Many of the better funded EA organizations don’t much know how to turn additional money, or additional skilled people, into doing their work faster/more/better. So look for some other way to do good and don’t listen too much to them for how to do it. Rely on your own geeky ideas, smart outside friends who’ve done interesting things before, common sense and feedback loops and experimentation and writing out your models and looking for implications/inconsistencies, etc. in place of expecting EA to have a lot of pre-found opportunities that require only your following of their instructions.”