While I agree to the fact that more money is not inherently valuable, I believe that there is a valid case for patient philantropy, which you haven not engaged with in your critism of the concept.

Moreover, I disagree with the statement that unequal distributions of power are conceptually opposed to distributions that maximise welfare impartially in light of the argument that it is likely good to increase the power of agents who are sufficiently benevolent and intelligent.

I assume that you refer to distributions of power which maximise welfare impartially by saying altruistic distributions. If this interpretation is incorrect, my disagreement might no longer apply.

Epistemic status from here: I do not have a degree in economics and my knowledge of market dynamics is fairly limited so I might have missed some implicit fact which validates the argument I am commenting on.

I believe that it may be inappropriate to see accumulating money as determining influence over scarce resources in a zero-sum manner since gaining money does not necessarily reduce the influence of any other involved parties over existing resources.

To understand this, we can look at the following scenario:

1. Alice and Bob both own $100
2. There are 5 insecticide-treated bet nets which are also owned by Alice
3. Bob earns $100. He now has twice as much money as Alice.
4. However, Alice's 5 bet nets have retained their full effectiveness and she isn't forced to sell any of them to Bob.
5. Therefore, Alice has retained her influence over the scarce resource called bet nets even though the relative value of her financial resources decreased.

In the real world Bob could presumably leverage his financial advantage by hiring mercenaries to steal the bet nets from Alice or using other forms of coercion but he does not necessarily do this.

Thus, Alice has lost potential influence but not influence, which is an important distinction because altruists are highly unlikely to use their money for the purpose of actively taking resources from recipients of charity or their benefactors.

Notably, the evaluation would look different if one believed in strong temporal discounting of money since the altruists would then be diminishing the value they are providing through their donations by delaying them, thereby subtracting from the influence of the charities relative to the counterfactual. But in that case the altruist would not have gained any influence, making the sum negative but not zero.

Introducing Myself

Who I am

My name is Elias Malisi, though my friends call me Prince.

I am an undergraduate student of philosophy & physics at the University of St Andrews and I volunteer as an IT-officer for the physics education non-profit Orpheus e.V.

My mission is to improve the long-term future through research and advocacy that seek to mitigate risks from misaligned incentive structures while advancing the development of safe AI.

I grew up in Germany where I recently graduated high school with a perfect GPA as the best student of ethics in the country on top of receiving multiple awards for academic excellence in physics and English.

My history with EA

I have been introduced to EA through the Atlas Fellowship around May 2023 and have since been reading EA materials intensively. Moreover, I am enrolled in the Introductory EA Virtual Program, the Precipice Reading Group, and the AI Safety Quest Pilot Program at the time of this post.

My interests

I am primarily interested in three sets of related fields:

1. (Complex) systems science, mechanism design, and machine learning as applied to AI safety and improving institutional decision making
2. Acting, video production, and digital outreach as applied to communicating important ideas, building EA, and promoting positive values
3. Rationality and self-improvement as applied to improving my capacity to pursue 1. and 2.

What I can do for you

• I know quite a lot about ways for high-school students and, to a more limited extent, early undergraduates to build career capital through competitions, fellowships, or camps, so feel free to reach out to me if such information would be useful to you.
• Also reach out to me if you want to add a promising young researcher to your network. I expect that I will be able to provide much more value to you in the future.

What you can do for me

I am looking for mentorship, opportunities, and funding to build career capital in the following areas:

• Systems Science
• Machine Learning and Technical AI Safety
• Mechanism Design
• Acting
• Video Production
• Digital Outreach and Copywriting

If you consider providing mentorship or know someone who likely would, I believe the expected value of reaching out to me to see whether I would be a good fit is highly positive since any suitable mentoring opportunity would accelerate my impact significantly.

Think of it as using a bit of your time for hits-based giving.

Additionally, I would love to hear about any EA organisations that specialise in or fund upskilling for aspiring EA communicators.

Furthermore, I would welcome feedback on whether or not you think that acquiring skills in acting and video production would likely be valuable for an aspiring EA communicator, assuming that they are a good fit for it. Vote agree to indicate positive counterfactual impact and disagree to indicate that you believe counterfactuals to be more valuable.

PS: Please let me know about appropriate places for cross-posting this introduction.