Mission-correlated investing

Yes! Let's talk, Sanjay!!

To summarize: As partial owners of corporations, shareholders have some power to protect the corporation’s interests. For example, when an investigation revealed mistreatment of Costco’s birds, two shareholders stepped into Costco’s shoes and sued Costco’s executives for making the company violate state animal neglect laws.

Can you say any more about what you plan to do?

Is there anyone here who actually does mission hedging, by investing in meat or egg companies? 

(CALM, JBS, TSN, etc.?)

If so, please reach out!

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3
Sanjay
1mo
Can you say any more about what you plan to do?
3
alene
1mo
Yes! Let's talk, Sanjay!! To summarize: As partial owners of corporations, shareholders have some power to protect the corporation’s interests. For example, when an investigation revealed mistreatment of Costco’s birds, two shareholders stepped into Costco’s shoes and sued Costco’s executives for making the company violate state animal neglect laws.
Applied to Index Investing and EA 2y ago

Thanks for checking and sharing that update, Pablo! 

By the way, I expect to see 'mission hedging' continue to be the most 'commonly' used term in this area because this is arguably the right way to describe the AI portfolio Open Philanthropy has publicly mentioned considering. That is, if we label short AI timelines as a bad thing, then this is 'hedging'. Still, I do like to put it in the overall 'mission-correlated' bucket so we remember that the key bet with this portfolio is that short timelines lead to higher cost-effectiveness (i.e. we're betting timelines and cost-effectiveness are correlated).

One person working in this area privately expressed a preference for 'mission-correlated investing', so I now lean weakly towards using that as the name of the entry (and discuss both mission-correlated investing and mission hedging in the body of the entry). But let's wait a couple more days in case others also want to chime in.

Yes, original research is totally acceptable (even encouraged) on the Forum—just not on the Wiki. The purpose of the latter is to summarize existing research and, derivatively, to adopt the established terminology used in that research.

As Stefan notes, in principle a Wiki article can discuss not only the topic named by its title, but also related topics judged not to deserve their own entry. For example, the hinge of history article also briefly discusses the hinge of history hypothesis, and the quadratic voting article will discuss quadratic payments (though it doesn't currently, since it was only created last week and I haven't had time to update it). So the 'mission hedging' article could also discuss 'mission-correlated investing'. (Though I was aware that the former is a specific instance of the latter, I phrased my original comment in a way that didn't make this sufficiently clear.)

My only remaining concern is that it seems you are the only person using 'mission-correlated investing' for the superset. However, if the other EA researchers working on this topic are happy with this terminology, I think it's fine to use it in the Wiki article. I will point Hauke Hillebrandt and Michael Dickens (who seem to be the main other people who have discussed mission hedging on the Forum) to this thread in case they want to chime in.

Is a series of 'original research' EA Forum posts on mission-correlated investing acceptable?

Certainly - the function of forum posts are totally different from those of Wiki tags.

Then as the 'mission-correlated investing' Wiki tag summarizes these posts it is a summary of existing research.

In general, I'd say that the more posts there are using a particular concept, the stronger is the case for a tag on that concept - yes. It's a bit hard for me to tell what the exact cut-off point is though. Pablo would have a better sense of that, since he works on the Wiki.

So, obviously you and Pablo surely have a better sense of what is desired on the Forum/Wiki in general. I am just going based on intuition.

If this is important it would be helpful to know in more detail what place original research is supposed to have on Forum/Wiki. The same with  summaries of existing research. Is a series of 'original research' EA Forum posts on mission-correlated investing acceptable? Then as the 'mission-correlated investing' Wiki tag summarizes these posts it is a summary of existing research.

"I think you might have mistaken 'mission-correlated investing' as a replacement/equivalent for 'mission hedging'? Rather, the latter is a subset of the former."

I don't think he has, but that he understands that it's a subset. I think it's fine to have an article on a subset of X and then discuss X as part of that article (if one wants to focus more on the subset. for whatever reason).

In general, I share the intuition that the Wiki isn't the place for original research, but should summarise original research and usage. That means that I'd put a lot of weight on Pablo's point that "the expression "mission-correlated investing" is not established EA terminology".