What are the arguments/evidence for low social recognition of work outside of EA orgs?
I don't have any data. But anecdotally: * When I think of "famous EAs", I tend to think of people who are running/working in EA orgs to the extent that it is difficult to think of people who are not. * Going to an EAGx, I found that most people that I talked to were connected to an EA org.
Do you think orgs do not bring some evidence to grantmakers in order to gain funding and this would resolve the issue?
Yes, I would expect that orgs bring evidence to grantmakers to gain funding. However, the orgs know the evaluation process after having already participated in it, and know how to optimise their reporting, which puts the grantmakers at a disadvantage.
Depending on the jurisdiction, there may be laws associated with laying off employees, which include salary for several months to enable the person to find employment or government unemployment schemes
There are generally options in these systems to be engaged on fixed-term contracts.
Do you think grantmakers make decisions based on perceived employee insecurity rather than cost-effectiveness?
Not necessarily grantmakers, but quite potentially in the case of individuals within organisations. Ethically, I shouldn't care about my friends' wellbeing more than that of strangers on the other side of the world, but there's not really a switch in my head that I can turn off to make me behave in this manner. Also, with EA being a community, there are social repercussions that can come from making a decision to cut funding to $liked_person that do not come from cutting funding to $bednet_distribution_zone_92.
What are the decisionmaking processes that make it so that relatively cost-ineffective projects continue to be funded?
This could probably be another post, and I'd have to do more research to get a complete response. For this post, the main concern was that grantmakers have inaccurate information because people are not incentivised to give it to them. The culture of tying prestige to the idea of receiving a grant (and with the greater the size of the grant, the greater the prestige) pushes the incentives further in the wrong direction.
Should employees of EA-related orgs that do not provide funding and government funding is not available be encouraged to have several months of savings around grant renewal decision times?
Yes, everyone should be encouraged to do this if they have the means to do so regardless of whether they are an EA or not.
Individuals and organisations aren't guaranteed continued employment/funding - it's conditional on performance.
It's conditional on the appearance of performance, which is something else entirely.
For example, academics making a discovery are incentivised to slowly release the results over multiple papers, where it would clearly be much better for the community if the results to be published quickly in a single paper. However, in the first case, there is more appearance of performance.
I think that would threaten to destroy useful projects. Likewise, it would mean that experienced, valuable staff couldn't continue at their org.
I think this argument would have more merit if there weren't already many organisations that do have term limits and have not been destroyed. In many countries, despite having regular performance reviews (elections), even the highest executive positions are subject to term limits.
There are certainly good things you can do where you can't measure the outcomes to work out how effective these are. As a prior, I would say that the fact that an intervention is non-measurable should count against it. If non-measurable effects are regularly accepted, then you will see a lot of organisations claiming non-measurable benefits and there will be no way to reasonably evaluate which ones are providing legitimate value and which ones aren't.
In addition, even if you don't know if your actions will be effective, you should be able to finish doing the actions at some point.
Yeah, I mean long-term employment in movement EA as a whole, not in any particular org.
I don't have any data. But anecdotally:
* When I think of "famous EAs", I tend to think of people who are running/working in EA orgs to the extent that it is difficult to think of people who are not.
* Going to an EAGx, I found that most people that I talked to were connected to an EA org.
Yes, I would expect that orgs bring evidence to grantmakers to gain funding. However, the orgs know the evaluation process after having already participated in it, and know how to optimise their reporting, which puts the grantmakers at a disadvantage.
There are generally options in these systems to be engaged on fixed-term contracts.
Not necessarily grantmakers, but quite potentially in the case of individuals within organisations. Ethically, I shouldn't care about my friends' wellbeing more than that of strangers on the other side of the world, but there's not really a switch in my head that I can turn off to make me behave in this manner. Also, with EA being a community, there are social repercussions that can come from making a decision to cut funding to $liked_person that do not come from cutting funding to $bednet_distribution_zone_92.
This could probably be another post, and I'd have to do more research to get a complete response. For this post, the main concern was that grantmakers have inaccurate information because people are not incentivised to give it to them. The culture of tying prestige to the idea of receiving a grant (and with the greater the size of the grant, the greater the prestige) pushes the incentives further in the wrong direction.
Yes, everyone should be encouraged to do this if they have the means to do so regardless of whether they are an EA or not.
It's conditional on the appearance of performance, which is something else entirely.
For example, academics making a discovery are incentivised to slowly release the results over multiple papers, where it would clearly be much better for the community if the results to be published quickly in a single paper. However, in the first case, there is more appearance of performance.
I think this argument would have more merit if there weren't already many organisations that do have term limits and have not been destroyed. In many countries, despite having regular performance reviews (elections), even the highest executive positions are subject to term limits.
There are certainly good things you can do where you can't measure the outcomes to work out how effective these are. As a prior, I would say that the fact that an intervention is non-measurable should count against it. If non-measurable effects are regularly accepted, then you will see a lot of organisations claiming non-measurable benefits and there will be no way to reasonably evaluate which ones are providing legitimate value and which ones aren't.
In addition, even if you don't know if your actions will be effective, you should be able to finish doing the actions at some point.