The Nonlinear Library EA - Cause-Generality Is Hard If Some Causes Have Higher ROI by Ben West
Jan 12, 2024
10:49
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Cause-Generality Is Hard If Some Causes Have Higher ROI, published by Ben West on January 12, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Summary
Returns to community building are higher in some cause areas than others
For example: a cause-general university EA group is more useful for AI safety than for global health and development.
This presents a trilemma: community building projects must either:
Support all cause areas equally at a high level of investment, which leads to overinvestment in some cause areas
Support all cause areas equally at a low level of investment, which leads to underinvestment in some cause areas, or
Break
cause-generality
This trilemma feels fundamental to EA community building work, but I've seen relatively little discussion of it, and therefore would like to raise awareness of it as a consideration
This post presents the trilemma, but does not argue for a solution
Background
A lot of community building projects have a theory of change which aims to generate labor
Labor is more valuable in some cause areas than others
It's slightly hard to make this statement precise, but it's something like: the
output elasticity of labor (OEL) depends on cause area
E.g. the amount by which animal welfare advances as a result of getting one additional undergraduate working on it is different than the amount by which global health and development advances as a result of getting one additional undergraduate working on it[1]
Note: this is not a claim that some causes are more valuable than others; I am assuming for the sake of this post that all causes are equally valuable
I will take as given that this difference exists now and is going to exist into the future (although I would be interested to hear arguments that it doesn't/won't)
Given this, what should we do?
My goal with this post is mostly to point out that we probably should do something weird, and less about suggesting a specific weird thing to do
What concretely does it mean to have lower or higher OEL?
I'm using CEA teams as examples since that's what I know best, though I think similar considerations apply to other programs. (Also, realistically, we might decide that some of these are just too expensive if OEL goes down or redirect all resources to some projects with high starting cost if OEL goes up.)
Program
How it looks with high investment[2]
How it looks with low investment
Events
Catered
Coffee/drinks/snacks
Recorded talks
Convenient venues
Bring your own food
Venues in inconvenient locations
Unconference/self-organized picnic vibes
Groups
Paid organizers
One-on-one advice/career coaching
Volunteer-organized meet ups
Maybe some free pizza
Online
Actively organized Forum events (e.g. debates)
Curated newsletter, highlights
Paid Forum moderators
Engineers and product people who develop the Forum
A place for people to post things when they feel like it, no active solicitation
Volunteer-based moderation
Limited feature development
Communications
Pitching op-ed's/stories to major publications
Create resources like lists of experts that journalists can contact
Fund publications (e.g. Future Perfect)
People post stuff on Twitter, maybe occasionally a journalist will pick it up
What are Community Builders' options?
I see a few possibilities:
Don't change our offering based on the participant's[3] cause area preference
…through high OEL cause areas subsidizing the lower OEL cause areas
This has historically kind of been how things have worked (roughly: AI safety subsidized cause-general work while others free-rode)
This results in spending more on the low OEL cause areas than is optimal
And also I'm not sure if this can practically continue to exist, given funder preferences
…through everyone operating at the level low OEL cause areas choose
This results in spending less on high OEL cause areas than is op...
Summary
Returns to community building are higher in some cause areas than others
For example: a cause-general university EA group is more useful for AI safety than for global health and development.
This presents a trilemma: community building projects must either:
Support all cause areas equally at a high level of investment, which leads to overinvestment in some cause areas
Support all cause areas equally at a low level of investment, which leads to underinvestment in some cause areas, or
Break
cause-generality
This trilemma feels fundamental to EA community building work, but I've seen relatively little discussion of it, and therefore would like to raise awareness of it as a consideration
This post presents the trilemma, but does not argue for a solution
Background
A lot of community building projects have a theory of change which aims to generate labor
Labor is more valuable in some cause areas than others
It's slightly hard to make this statement precise, but it's something like: the
output elasticity of labor (OEL) depends on cause area
E.g. the amount by which animal welfare advances as a result of getting one additional undergraduate working on it is different than the amount by which global health and development advances as a result of getting one additional undergraduate working on it[1]
Note: this is not a claim that some causes are more valuable than others; I am assuming for the sake of this post that all causes are equally valuable
I will take as given that this difference exists now and is going to exist into the future (although I would be interested to hear arguments that it doesn't/won't)
Given this, what should we do?
My goal with this post is mostly to point out that we probably should do something weird, and less about suggesting a specific weird thing to do
What concretely does it mean to have lower or higher OEL?
I'm using CEA teams as examples since that's what I know best, though I think similar considerations apply to other programs. (Also, realistically, we might decide that some of these are just too expensive if OEL goes down or redirect all resources to some projects with high starting cost if OEL goes up.)
Program
How it looks with high investment[2]
How it looks with low investment
Events
Catered
Coffee/drinks/snacks
Recorded talks
Convenient venues
Bring your own food
Venues in inconvenient locations
Unconference/self-organized picnic vibes
Groups
Paid organizers
One-on-one advice/career coaching
Volunteer-organized meet ups
Maybe some free pizza
Online
Actively organized Forum events (e.g. debates)
Curated newsletter, highlights
Paid Forum moderators
Engineers and product people who develop the Forum
A place for people to post things when they feel like it, no active solicitation
Volunteer-based moderation
Limited feature development
Communications
Pitching op-ed's/stories to major publications
Create resources like lists of experts that journalists can contact
Fund publications (e.g. Future Perfect)
People post stuff on Twitter, maybe occasionally a journalist will pick it up
What are Community Builders' options?
I see a few possibilities:
Don't change our offering based on the participant's[3] cause area preference
…through high OEL cause areas subsidizing the lower OEL cause areas
This has historically kind of been how things have worked (roughly: AI safety subsidized cause-general work while others free-rode)
This results in spending more on the low OEL cause areas than is optimal
And also I'm not sure if this can practically continue to exist, given funder preferences
…through everyone operating at the level low OEL cause areas choose
This results in spending less on high OEL cause areas than is op...