Purchasing a prestigious, tastemaking institution (like a social media site, newspaper, university, or scientific journal), has repeatedly been proposed as an “EA megaproject”.
That seems like a very ineffective use of money. Instead, gaining the ear of people like Musk who can use their wealth and/or clout to influence a media outlet would give a lot more leverage.
The EA movement does indeed have the ear of people like Musk, and especially people like Dustin Moskovitz, Sam Bankman-Fried, etc! I agree that getting billionaires on board with EA is a key objective, but at this point we’ve already done that a bit, and maybe the best way to get further billionaires on board is probably some combination of:
Doing great object-level stuff to show we’re worth funding.
Thinking up scalable uses of additional funds that could absorb literal billions, while retaining at least a pretty strong level of effectiveness.
Trying to influence elite culture to make the EA worldview more salient and prestigious and legible to billionaires and other powerful decisionmakers (like white house staffers, etc).
That seems like a very ineffective use of money. Instead, gaining the ear of people like Musk who can use their wealth and/or clout to influence a media outlet would give a lot more leverage.
The EA movement does indeed have the ear of people like Musk, and especially people like Dustin Moskovitz, Sam Bankman-Fried, etc! I agree that getting billionaires on board with EA is a key objective, but at this point we’ve already done that a bit, and maybe the best way to get further billionaires on board is probably some combination of:
Doing great object-level stuff to show we’re worth funding.
Thinking up scalable uses of additional funds that could absorb literal billions, while retaining at least a pretty strong level of effectiveness.
Trying to influence elite culture to make the EA worldview more salient and prestigious and legible to billionaires and other powerful decisionmakers (like white house staffers, etc).