5. There is lot of truth in Taleb’s position that research should not be a source of your income, rather a hobby.
Is this specific to research? Given unaligned incentives and Goodheart, I think you could make an argument that _nothing important_ should be a source of income. All long-term values-oriented work should be undertaken as hobbies.
(Note—this is mostly a reductio argument. My actual opinion is that the split between hobby and income is itself part of the incorrect incentive structure, and there’s no actual way to opt out. As such, you need to thread the needle of doing good while accepting some and rejecting other incentives.)
Is this specific to research? Given unaligned incentives and Goodheart, I think you could make an argument that nothing important should be a source of income. All long-term values-oriented work should be undertaken as hobbies.
This is an interesting argument for funding something like the EA Hotel over traditional EA orgs.
If the EA Hotel is easily confirmed as real, as in it is offering what it claims it is offering at a reasonable quality level at the price it claims to be offering that thing, then I am confused why it has any trouble being funded. This is yet another good reason for that.
I understand at least one good reason why there aren’t more such hotels—actually doing a concrete physical world thing is hard and no one does it.
It’s possible the hotel’s funding troubles have more to do with weirdness aversion than anything else.
I personally spent 6 months at the hotel, thought it was a great environment, and felt the time I spent there was pretty helpful for my career as an EA. The funding situation is not as dire as it was a little while ago. But I’ve donated thousands of dollars to the project and I encourage others to donate too.
Some important things can be a source of income, such as farming. Farming is pretty important and there are no huge issues with farmers doing it for profit.
Problems happen when there is a huge disconnect between the value and reward. This happens in a basic research a lot, because researchers don’t have any direct customers.
Arguably, in a basic research, you principally can’t have any customers. Your customers are future researchers that will build on top of your research. They would be able to decide whether your work was valuable or whether it was crap, but you’d be pretty old or dead by that time.
Is this specific to research? Given unaligned incentives and Goodheart, I think you could make an argument that _nothing important_ should be a source of income. All long-term values-oriented work should be undertaken as hobbies.
(Note—this is mostly a reductio argument. My actual opinion is that the split between hobby and income is itself part of the incorrect incentive structure, and there’s no actual way to opt out. As such, you need to thread the needle of doing good while accepting some and rejecting other incentives.)
This is an interesting argument for funding something like the EA Hotel over traditional EA orgs.
If the EA Hotel is easily confirmed as real, as in it is offering what it claims it is offering at a reasonable quality level at the price it claims to be offering that thing, then I am confused why it has any trouble being funded. This is yet another good reason for that.
I understand at least one good reason why there aren’t more such hotels—actually doing a concrete physical world thing is hard and no one does it.
There’s been a great deal of discussion of the EA Hotel on the EA Forum. Here’s one relevant thread:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ek299LpWZvWuoNeeg/usd100-prize-to-best-argument-against-donating-to-the-ea
Here’s another:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JdqHvyy2Tjcj3nKoD/ea-hotel-with-free-accommodation-and-board-for-two-years#vLtqSuEh7ZPm7jwYT
It’s possible the hotel’s funding troubles have more to do with weirdness aversion than anything else.
I personally spent 6 months at the hotel, thought it was a great environment, and felt the time I spent there was pretty helpful for my career as an EA. The funding situation is not as dire as it was a little while ago. But I’ve donated thousands of dollars to the project and I encourage others to donate too.
Some important things can be a source of income, such as farming. Farming is pretty important and there are no huge issues with farmers doing it for profit.
Problems happen when there is a huge disconnect between the value and reward. This happens in a basic research a lot, because researchers don’t have any direct customers.
Arguably, in a basic research, you principally can’t have any customers. Your customers are future researchers that will build on top of your research. They would be able to decide whether your work was valuable or whether it was crap, but you’d be pretty old or dead by that time.