All of Drew Spartz's Comments + Replies

Longform CPMs for YouTube’s ad platform are roughly $3-10 for every 1,000 views. 

I don't really understand the CPM scaling between the length of videos. On my longest video of 40 minutes, I made roughly $7 per 1000 views. On my shortest video of 10 minutes, I made $4 per 1000 views. But that is just because Youtube shows more ads in that time. However, I'm not entirely sure how many ads they display per viewer per minute. I'm pretty sure the longer your content is the less ads they show per minute.

Sponsorships are usually 5-10x the ad CPM. So if you h... (read more)

A way you can quantify this is by looking at ad CPMs - how much advertisers are willing to pay for ads on your content.

This is a pretty objective metric for how much "influence" a creator has over their audience.

Podcasters can charge much more per view than longform Youtubers, and longform Youtubers can charge much more than shortform and so on. 

This is actually understating it. It's incredibly hard for shortform only creators to make money with ads or sponsors.

There is clearly still diminishing returns per viewer minute, but the curve is not that ste... (read more)

Just wanted to say (without commenting on the points in the dialogue) that I appreciate you and Robert having this discussion, and I think the fact you're having it is an example of good epistemics.

Appreciate you saying this, Michel. As you can imagine, it’s been rough. Perhaps accidentally, this post seems to often lump me in with situations I wasn’t really a part of.

Appreciate the comments! 

My personal context: I joined Nonlinear full-time in April 2022. We've gone back and forth from being AI safety-focused to more generally x-risk-focused. We removed the fund from our name because we didn't just want to fund projects but also launch relevant ones ourselves, like the Nonlinear Library.

Happy to provide more context here.

Nonlinear is or used to be a project of Spartz Philanthropies. According to the IRS website, Spartz Philanthropies had its 501(c)(3) status revoked in 2021 since it had not filed the necessary paperwork for three years straight. Now the Nonlinear website no longer mentions Spartz Philanthropies, and I am unsure whether Nonlinear is a tax-exempt nonprofit or what legal status it has.

Nonlinear, Inc is a 501c3. Spartz Philanthropies was an inactive entity that Emerson set up in 2018. We were initially planning on using ... (read more)

We aim to send it out to funders within the next 48 hours.

Nonlinear funded it through a bounty, but I'm unaware of any future plans. If anyone has any ideas for improvement or expansion, feel free to reach out. 

Just read it and liked it a lot! Added to the recruiting/hiring category. 

I haven't! Do you recommend it?

Interesting, that updates me! I've added more qualifiers to that point.

Hi Aman, 

Appreciate the question. We’ve received funding from different sources like the Survival and Flourishing Fund, Future Fund, and other private donors, with Emerson Spartz donating six figures annually.

This project would not fall under the scope of what the Future Fund granted us, so we will not be using their funding for this. 

This is coming directly out of our operating budget, so we're aiming to make payouts that have a higher counterfactual likelihood of impact.

Hi! Thanks for the questions. 

I remember hearing that Emerson/Nonlinear invested quite a lot into crypto - presumably with the current markets, his/Nonlinear's portfolio must've taken a hit? 

Yes, most crypto people have taken a hit, including Emerson. As far as I know, he has no plans to slow down his donations to Nonlinear.

Secondly,  Nonlinear received a Future Fund grant: https://ftxfuturefund.org/our-grants/?_search=nonlinear Are you potentially concerned about clawbacks to the money you hand out, especially if you're dispersing smal

I can see how you might think that, and thanks for sharing your thoughts. 

My opinion is that the presumption of innocence is not just a legal principle, it is a foundational principle of most justice systems because one accusation can forever ruin someone’s reputation whether or not they are proven innocent in the future.

Accusations can draw a lot of attention, but retractions receive far less attention.

I believe it’s very important to be careful damaging someone’s reputation before hearing both sides because it’s really hard to repair it.

Ad... (read more)

Good suggestion! Updated the description.

Getting legal counsel advice was always the intended procedure internally. Thanks for pointing out that the way I worded it had the potential to be misconstrued so I've updated it again :)

Thanks for the flag! Was already aware of this but added a qualifier in the post above and added this to our org payout guidelines for extra redundancy.

Ryan, glad you liked the prize, and thanks for your feedback! Our partner has significant IP law and branding experience and does not share your concerns.

His perspective: the general case is that

1. Celebrating our ancestors is common practice. Long-dead famous people frequently get things named after them. 
2. Negative outcomes are unlikely. What you're proposing could happen, but is quite an edge case.
3. Branding is important. A better-named prize can lead to more impact and improved community health.

So why are we calling this “The Truman P... (read more)

Great idea. If anyone wants to run a prize like this, I'd be open to funding it.

This is super helpful, thanks!

Highly recommend trying out the Top-Grading interview from Who.

You go through a candidate's entire work history, from start to finish in chronological order, and ask these questions:

1. What were you hired to do?
2. What accomplishments are you most proud of?
   1. How did your performance compare to the previous year’s performance? (For example, this person achieved sales of $2 million and the previous year’s sales were only $150,000.)
   2. How did your performance compare to the plan? (For example, this person sold $2 million and the plan was $1.2 million.)
   3. How did your perfo

I think you're missing a few billionaires in your 5-6 number.

Jed McCaleb (founder of Ripple) is a funder of SFF.

There are many wealthy crypto people that have either donated to EA causes or are heavily involved that have an illiquid or highly fluctuating net worth due to the crypto markets. I would guess there are 5-10 that were billionaires at some point but likely have high 9 figure net worths now.

Also do you count people that sympathize with EA ideas as EAs? Fred Ehrsam and Brian Armstrong have both wrote positively about EA in the past. I have seen on ... (read more)

Thanks for doing this!

I also have x-risks.com and may or may not use it, so feel free to DM me if you have a creative use case for it.

The "bureaucrat's curse" reminds me of Vitalik's bulldozer vs vetocracy political axis: https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/12/19/bullveto.html

Vetocracy can be beneficial if a system's strength depends on it not changing. e.g. People invest in Bitcoin because it's incredibly difficult to change its monetary policy. Bitcoin doesn't need to innovate. 

But if Ethereum is too vetocratic and fails to innovate - it could get outcompeted by other more nimble startups like Solana or Avalanche.

The current mood in the AI Safety community appears to be pessimistic. F... (read more)