I haven't read much deep ecology either. Seth Baum has written that some people think there is intrinsic value in functioning ecosystems - presumably these people would want the ecosystems to continue as a garden world. Other people value biodiversity (number of species). But you're right that some just want whatever would have happened naturally.

Fixed. Thank you.

Thank you so much for writing this up, I'm sure it will be really valuable for teams considering a similar move, whether right for them or not, in the future.

Thanks for posting this here. I think it makes an important point as to why EA is important.

Btw, you might want to consider spacing out posting your old blog posts here just a little more :) I'm glad to see more good content here, but it feels a little spammy to me at the moment.

Hi John, thanks for your comment (and sorry for the delay getting back to you)! These metrics were selected by CEA, but we gave current recipients the opportunity to provide feedback on the proposed evaluation procedure.

We think that one of the main route to value of EA Groups is to cause people to change their career trajectory such that they end up contributing to solving some of the world’s most important problems. It does seem that people who are willing to make such changes are more likely to be younger, however there are a number of senior management positions (e.g. Chief of Staff, Chief Operating Officer etc) available within organisations that we would accredit that one could imagine would be more suitable for people more advanced in their careers.

As mentioned in the post, we don’t think career changes are the only route to value for EA Groups, and that there are likely ways in which people who are unlikely to change careers can contribute. Though given that we think career change is a major route to value, we’ve chosen to assess this specifically. We also hope to find out the extent of the value of contributions from individuals who don’t change their career by using a case-by-case, after-the-fact assessment.

That is a really good point Denis!

The only thing we put in to help with preferences, is to allow donors to "reject the swap" - e.g. if they don't like the charity they are instructed to donate to. But that is clearly insufficient. They could be given more information before they choose to reject.

I'm trying to think of a way of asking for easily accessible information from donors to avoid these problems. This info would be shared with the match. Would "If you don't get matched where would your donation go?"

with the options

• Same charity, and I'll get tax benefits
• Same charity, and I won't get tax benefits
• Charity X and I'll get tax benefits

Would that be sufficient to avoid the worst of the problems?

If that's true, then "getting AI safety right" leaves a lot of things unaddressed, because in most scenarios "getting AI safety" right is only a small portion of the picture.

I didn't understand this. Could you explain more?

It seems plausible that people who earn on the very high end of the spectrum might not have filled in the survey due to time constraints (selection bias).

Kerry Vaughan talks about his experience with EA Ventures in this panel discussion: https://youtu.be/Y4YrmltF2I0?t=169

Thanks, mingyuan!

It might be a good idea for LEAN, CEA, and LessWrong to get together and discuss this?

We actually did! With resources.eahub.org, we wanted to share LEAN's idea of what texts you should look into when you're a group organizer. We discussed this with our partners at CEA and decided that offering 2 perspectives is better than offering 1 and that we should work together on 2 independent products.

We figured out we don't want the Resources to be a fixed, static list, but an open, collaborative platform. This way, you're all invited to decide on its shape and content.

LEAN wants to make sure we only add features that offer a lot of value to the community, which is why we rely on your feedback. As a matter of fact, this is why we released this humble feature before the whole thing is ready.

The new Hub will come with a number of new features, some of which offer integration across multiple platforms like forum.effectivealtruism.org or www.lesswrong.com. One of those is a cross-platform search allowing for searching through a multitude of sources with a single search box [that can be implemented across multiple platforms].

Thanks for your feedback and stay tuned!