Let’s say we are going back in time to the early 2000s to advise Eliezer Yudkowsky on how to address AI risks. Do you think he should have aimed to get a high-paying job and paid someone else to blog about them? Or the Givewell guys—should they have paid some other people to start Givewell? How about Cognito Mentoring?
I think your logic makes sense if there are already competent, knowledgable, articulate, funding-constrained activists for your cause who know how to hire and have a pool of qualified, passionate-for-the-cause candidates they’d love to hire if they had the funds. I’m less sure that your idea is the best if there aren’t already such people. In the same way hiring contractors seems like a bad idea for getting all of the work done for your startup, it seems like a bad idea for getting all of the work done for your nonprofit.
You could think of money and qualified passionate volunteers as being the two reagents in a chemical reaction. Sometimes the limiting reagent is going to be money, sometimes volunteers.
It would be coput to say that I mentioned marginal value and supply. So I will repeat my rule of thumb from the “How valuable is volunteering” thread: If the task at hand is low skill, work more and donate the salary, if the task at hand is high skill, learn more and do it yourself.
Let’s say we are going back in time to the early 2000s to advise Eliezer Yudkowsky on how to address AI risks. Do you think he should have aimed to get a high-paying job and paid someone else to blog about them? Or the Givewell guys—should they have paid some other people to start Givewell? How about Cognito Mentoring?
I think your logic makes sense if there are already competent, knowledgable, articulate, funding-constrained activists for your cause who know how to hire and have a pool of qualified, passionate-for-the-cause candidates they’d love to hire if they had the funds. I’m less sure that your idea is the best if there aren’t already such people. In the same way hiring contractors seems like a bad idea for getting all of the work done for your startup, it seems like a bad idea for getting all of the work done for your nonprofit.
You could think of money and qualified passionate volunteers as being the two reagents in a chemical reaction. Sometimes the limiting reagent is going to be money, sometimes volunteers.
It would be coput to say that I mentioned marginal value and supply. So I will repeat my rule of thumb from the “How valuable is volunteering” thread: If the task at hand is low skill, work more and donate the salary, if the task at hand is high skill, learn more and do it yourself.