suggestion along the same lines: Fight for the Future has been sounding the alarm about consolidated corporate control of communication spaces and the risks that poses, especially to pro-democracy movements and to queer & trans folks. Haven't done a deep dive but have followed them for a while and they seem to be consistently ahead of the curve (alongside EFF) on the wonky things like Section 230, ID checks, net neutrality

hi sarah! yeah i think that's true as well. i think in my head it was already obvious and therefore not realization-worthy that engaged EAs believe AW is underfunded, but i also probably talk to people with this belief disproportionately often due to the climate/AW funding overlap bc i am learning elsewhere on the internet that people think this is weird

hahaha no I know, more seriously I just don't want to vote for a marginal funding post that I wrote! feels like it's not the point of the endeavor, I'd rather support other orgs in the community in a small way~

hmm not sure it's fair to make claims about what "consensus EA" believes based on the donation election honestly

• "consensus EA" seems like it is likely to be something other than "people who are on the Forum between Nov 18 and Dec 3"
  • I only pay attention to climate, but as a cause area it tends to be more prominent in "EA-wide" surveys/giving than it is among the most highly-engaged EAs (Forum readers)^[1]
• people are literally voting based on what OP is not funding

1. ^{^}

   I didn't even vote for GG bc I know it won't win, but it does warm my cold dead heart that four whole people did

I think Siobhan (hi! correct me if I'm wrong!) is primarily trying to say that the assumption of a given set of resources doesn't really hold anymore, and that acting like it does, at least from a comms perspective, can be harmful: i.e. EAs spending a lot of energy criticizing donations to food pantries is causing potential donors to be turned off from EA and therefore not give effectively or not give at all, regardless of whether the criticism is correct or not^[1].

This feels to me like part of the broader growing pains of "EA in a world where people actually listen to us" (which is a phrase I'm stealing because I think it applies even though the motivation for that post is entirely different) -- EA is used to assuming a given set of resources (how should we allocate the amount of money that exists "within EA"?), but for a movement increasingly in the public eye that aims to grow, that's actually no longer the best way to think about good strategy for the movement.

So what Brad is saying here is rightish^[2] for a given set of resources, but not really relevant to the point OP is making as I understand it, which is that EA as a public movement is not just influencing a given set of resources anymore and should stop acting like it. The next marginal bednet dollar is more likely to come from your friend in tech who eats out 5 times a week than it is to come from your grandma who donates to the food pantry (or from a philosophy major doing a bunch of first-principles research on how to donate most effectively, because that audience is already spoken for).

1. ^{^}

   i think this is true fwiw

2. ^{^}

   i say ish because i think everything is warm fuzzies and that food pantry, bednets, and luxury goods are all in fact in competition

not speaking for my employer but as someone who engages a lot with this donor segment both in my paid work and in my volunteer time: (a) I do not think such a thing exists for cause-agnostic lightweight advising (but if it does I would love to hear about it); (b) this is part of the gap Giving Green tries to fill on climate, and maybe there are parallel cause-specific advisories that have the flexibility to advise smaller donors?; (c) I think the most doable thing here for an individual small major donor is to join a community of donors giving at around the same level with the same interests—I'm excited about e.g. GWWC pledge communities, funding circles, etc for this reason. unfortunately for this segment I don't think there's a way around doing some legwork yourself, but at least you can share the load + sometimes pool money/time/connections to get advice or access to funding opportunities that are normally only available to larger donors (I've done this!).

this could be true, i don't have a good sense of who's most prestigious in EA aside from the obvious* - my claim is more that i've seen this happen in examples and that it would be bad if that was happening all the time, but i am not attuned enough to broad EA social dynamics to know if that is happening all the time

*the obvious ones are the ones who are prestigious because they Did Something a long time ago, which I think doesn't really count as a counterexample to the critical tendency as it manifests now

an observation I've had recently across a few examples* is that

• criticizers acquire more social capital than doers (or celebraters of the doers)
• criticizers tend to not pay attention to their social capital relative to the thing they are criticizing - criticizers with social status can easily shut down small or new doers, less so for established doers
• criticizers gain enough social capital that they themselves become above (meaningful) criticism*

I get the idea that all arguments should be taken on their merits in a place like this, but in practice, it's not that hard to imagine that a community that excessively rewards criticism becomes (ironically) prone to groupthink as a failure mode

*I've been sitting on this thought for a year or so but I don't want to further name the examples because the criticizers I would criticize have more social capital than me and it could easily be bad for me to do so lol

I suppose I'm skeptical that quant scores in an auto-sent email will actually give you a nuanced sense - but I do see how, e.g., if over time you realize it's always your interview or always your quant question that scores poorly, that is a good signal

I do think being kind is an underrated part of hiring!