Ilverin
Posts 1
Comments9
Investing in assets expected to appreciate can be a form of earning to give (not that Twitter would be a good investment IMO). That's how Warren Buffett makes money and probably nobody in EA has criticized him for doing that. Investing in a for-profit something is very different and is guided by different principles from donating to something, because you are expecting to (at least) get your money back and can invest it again or donate it later (this difference is one of the reasons microloans became so hugely popular for a while).
On the downside, concentrating assets (in any company, not just Twitter) is a bad financial strategy, but on the upside, having some influence at Twitter could be useful to promote things like moderation rules that improve the experience of users and increase the prevalence of genuine debate and other good things on the platform.
Wild guess they were covered at least partially by ftt token (ftx crypto token), which declined significantly in value (especially when CZ sold $500 million). How could anyone afford to pay interest on deposits while also fully covering the deposits? (Noncrypto banks have FDIC insurance) (Also as already mentioned some FTX assets were illiquid)
Maybe hiring nonEAs for certain roles (like "communications assistant" and not like "board member") could improve communications/appearances/maybe outreach?
Either the high-earners or the people who want to hire them have management talent, probably at least some of them could be on an org leadership team. Depending on whether the reasons for not paying high salaries are universal or apply to just particular orgs, splintering could make sense.
For particular organizations, maybe the reasons are good, but we probably shouldn't just look at specific orgs. Funding constrained orgs include definitely GiveDirectly and probably Malaria Consortium's non-chemoprevention budget. Therefore, for a person who can earn $1mil but would be paid $250k at a talent-constrained charity, then if I've done the math right (doubtful), their marginal value over the unhired alternative candidate needs to be 3x more impact than the high-earner's donations to global health. So then it comes down to how much more impact can be had at talent-constrained charities and how bad are the alternative candidates, which are hard to debate in generalities and is where I'm probably wrong.
One could calculate
A="what value over replacement do I have in my earn-to-give job (could be negative) "
plus B="what is the value of my donated money to the best funding-constrained org"
minus C="what is the value of my talent (over replacement) to the talent-constrained org)
(and if the result is negative then direct work makes sense)
I think that if existing organizations have some reason to not pay higher salaries, then a new organization can probably be different. For example, if current organizations have donors and workers who prefer lower salaries (a costly signal of commitment from workers), a new organization could try to use workers who have successfully signalled commitment in other ways and donors who are okay with paying those workers market rate.
"many orgs won't pay such high salaries (and won't "add $100k to the advertised salary""
Why not create more organizations? (And coordinate between organizations). Charity A attracts certain donors and workers, and Charity B attracts different donors and workers, and the costs of coordinating and additional upkeep are probably at most fifty percent of total cost?
I am not an expert, but personally I see the current crop of nuke experts as primarily "evangelizers of the wisdom of the past". The nuke experts of the past, such as Tom Schelling, are more impressive (and more mathematical). If a better approach to nuke risk was easy to find, it would have probably already been found by one of the many geniuses of the 20th century who looked at nuke risk. If so, the best place to make a marginal contribution to nuke risk is by evangelizing the wisdom of the past: this can help avoid backsliding on things like arms control treaties (this also raises the question of the tractability of a geopolitical approach to reducing risk versus preparation/adaptation to nuclear war's environmental damage and versus other non-nuke cause areas).
SBF has demonstrated ineptitude in that FTX did fail. If this is a ploy, it's possible this an inept one (an inept ploy can cause debate over whether it is a ploy) (so can a semicapable ploy).
Maybe SBF was immoral, maybe SBF could be a galaxy-brained EA who bit the St. Petersburg Paradox bullet (which bullet he bit on Tyler Cowen's podcast), maybe something else. Because EA orgs don't know what happened, that's evidence that EA orgs should be preparing against both those things happening in the future. Only one cause was primary in reality, but there are nearby possible worlds where something else was the cause. (Posts have been made on this forum discouraging EAs from being galaxy-brained and immoral, but maybe that's not enough, I don't know. Maybe other things are happening in private that are cost-effective preventions).