You're a bridge generation that wonderfully even knows to have this awareness to write such a piece. I fear the youngest EA's don't even know of the childhood drills we underwent. I didn't know they were called duck and cover, I just remember, get under your desk drills when I started kindergarten in 1968. Everything on TV then was reflecting the Vietnam war, some of my earliest memories are of praying for the soldiers, and of course that war was a proxy war between the US and Soviet Union to limit communist expansion and ultimately global power to get more money. 

Maybe because humanity did come together and solve that, as well as bio danger, I have a sense in me that we will do it again for AI. All the more reason to pile on resources to do so. And I'm glad to see an EA post that brings art into it with your writing and introducing of the great Wendell Berry who meant so much to many of us, particularly those who love nature and also spirituality. Such an interesting man, a farmer, a naturalist and internationally renowned writer, poet and thinker. He's a good source to assuage young EA's fears, and I think another very relevant artistic piece is Sting's early solo piece, "Russians" from the 1985 album, "The Dream of The Blue Turtles", in which he sings, "I hope the Russians love their children too", artistically saying, we all love our children and that's why we'll come together and solve these problems. Maybe we could redo it as: 

I hope people driving AI 
In China and USA
Love their children too

How would you compare this to human collective intelligence (CI). In a way all AI is a form of CI because training comes from humans collective output. In the case of swarms it's like how many people are in the CI room. But with human CI it's not parallel, it gets better with more (generally and beyond distinctions of optimal # of participants) because we all have such richly diverse experiences, sensing focuses and abilities, aptitudes, knowledge focus, inner passions and motivations, etc. With AI, parallelism seems reasonable because they all share the same training, so I guess diversity of swarms may have an impact because they have different training and approaches, or you might say, thinking. Shaping diverse swarms under control may be optimal and could include token costs as a criteria. I'd like to hear your view on this and forgive any poorly worded parts, I don't speak your research language.

How could it work for prioritizing funding within a single cause area? I am in mental health and there are many different forms of interventions spread across different geographies and a major factor is huge portions of earth with near zero interventions and comparable zero research. From a small emergent beginning we have many decisions to make early before significant scaling builds momentum. Because we are so small, so emergent, CCF could significantly help shape our approaches for decades. If that is possible, a follow-up question is can a collaborative group of funders and implementers fund a team of researchers focused on running a CCF model in our cause area? If possible the next question is (also to stir your thinking of) how to do it? ie. how you package and sell your newly developed product...in house consulting only, outside modules linked to central? etc. This comment is also marketing research data for you, customers may want this. Thanks.

I understand this, but I would counter that people in altruism are highly motivated by the work, regardless of the pay. And so if you remove that need to gamify motivation, then the question is simply, how can we pay people a good living wage and how can we attract the best people. 

I would say as a worker I’d rather be paid a good wage and leave it up to me to be motivated, I don’t need the overlords carrot. That way I can get my whole life going, afford to partner up and make a family. Afford to help my aging parents. Join various community orgs and be able to hang out and eat out with them. Or have the money to afford a campaign to find that person to hitch up with. Living your life well while working hard is all the motivation you need. There is a principle in life I was taught a long time ago during a staff conversation about artificially making something harder on our team to develop them through hardship — the wise leader said, “there is no way we would ever do that, life is hard enough on its own without us adding to it.” Leaders should make the life of their workers as good as they possibly can afford to and motivation will take care of itself.  

A few years ago I had a conversation with AIM that is very connected to this article, and that is pay for senior lifelong altruists, as you say, "The truth is that there's a norm, from AIM to the Bay, that founders – for-profit and non-profit alike – typically earn little at the start of their founder journey." 

What happens is that the closer you get to retirement age, the more serious those investments become. There's another aspect; Overall, EA orgs pay pretty well, I've personally been shocked at how high the salaries are, 30 or 40 years ago many nonprofits paid tiny salaries, it was just part of the sacrifice of being in the field. Consequently, many of us didn't have much to put away for retirement. It also depends what kind of work you were passionate about, things at the cutting edge were poorly funded because nobody knew about them yet, so you got even less.

I brought all this up with AIM and said I wouldn't be able to work at the levels they were paying, they courteously refused. I felt it was deeply unthoughtful. You would think the people that more than most get the sacrifice aspect, would be willing to note lifelong sacrifice and make up for it now. Not to mention the benefits of bringing senior people around, they add lifelong experience and wisdom that is priceless...even though you do have to pay for it with a higher salary. 

Wow Nick thank you for the poetic gratefulness for all the medical pioneers. I have often felt that but without the specific knowledge of the actual stories. It was beautiful and inspiring to read. 

As a very similar professional, I know that feeling of solidarity. For eight years overseas I always used local medical clinics and wouldn’t have found myself by any means in the fancy rich expat hospital. But then I got cancer in Cambodia. They happen to be far behind in oncology. I also happen to be one of those dummies who doesn’t attend to my own health enough and I was stuck there during Covid for a while but eventually I could have gotten out with a medical leave but I didn’t. I waited too long, nobody there could really warn me properly. It spread. I finally realized I just had to go back the USA and they caught it in time so that after the typical difficult six months of surgery, radiation and chemo I survived. But it was close. I’m also permanently disfigured with facial palsy. I’m handsome on the left and a little scary from the right. But for some strange reason I’m cool with it, that’s a gift. 

As for the solidarity, I’ve changed my mind. Here’s how I would ask a thought experiment question; If you had the ability to put one of the people in the hallway on a plane to guaranteed survival in a rich country and death was probably looming if not, would you do it?

The reality in this painful world is we can’t fix it all today (you can’t charter a plane and empty the hallway), but most of us would save the person we could. If that person happened to be you or a family member because of the luck of the draw, you should do it. It’s sad we can’t do it for everyone but we should for anyone we can, is how I answer the question. 

You got lucky with your child, I got unlucky with my face but lucky with my life. 

Hi George, thrilled to meet you. Yes, I wish I was as chill as you and what you say is true and also every generation shall try to save the next from repeating mistakes. 

When I was only a boy I figured out that adults were really far smarter than me and sought to learn from them. Later I worked with the elderly for a while and learned it was a mixed bag, some were old and bitter obviously having made bad choices and failed to forgive. But others were clearly life experience geniuses and so you just had to be discerning in who you listened to. So probably because of this and my eventual passion for CI I just find the failure to seek the value of all perspectives as just leaving so much value on the table, to use a popular EA term. I’m going to DM you, can’t bypass a CI pioneer!

This is totally relevant to EA because it’s another case of youthful hubris vs veteran experience. EA is a place an elite graduate can meet in a bar with some other cool kids and do a napkin pitch for their first charity with zero field experience and soon bring in a million and where a 43 year old veteran with 20 years in the field in his cause area is virtually ignored because he doesn’t have the youthful EA vibe. 

FTX was all EA in the beginning including Aschenbrenner himself who must have still been using a practice razor when he worked there. 

The point is EA needs to create a culture that draws in more experienced people who bring their common sense which is informed by real life experience not just classes they had in college. To do this requires thoughtful planning and execution, which should have happened post FTX and maybe this is a reminder. And it’s not just experience, there’s a host of human variety of perspectives that need to all be here so the table benefits from many viewpoints and ways of thinking. 

One of the studies on where intelligent people go wrong is that they all follow each other to the same fail point, and they had nobody saying hey, there’s another possible point over here. They lacked perspective. It’s called “Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers,” which is just common sense to people who love collective intelligence. And love is actions.

Do you mean like portraits of nerds with pocket protectors full of pens and heavy guilt feelings on their face?

A few comments. EA has not been good at bringing in career veterans. So I would focus more on early or mid-career officers. I would love for you to find a niche where you could bring in Generals, but that’s a stretch culturally at this point. 

The reason it is so hard to find a job in EA is that EA hasn’t expanded as much as its promise would seem. It should be rapidly expanding and creating plenty of jobs for all the new and excited joiners. The reality is they join with excitement then hit the wall of how hard it is to get a job or funding. The smallness of EA is causing this problem. Bear this in mind, you’ll be giving newcomers a pep talk right before they run off to hit the wall. Pray for reform, more openness, less applications and just throw open the gates and let everyone in (ie. the reality of how movements work). 

Higher officers might be better as founders, consider that model and make funding connections. 

Good luck and love the last sentence about the spelling of defence. GSTQ. (Although I don’t actually hold to that since I’m American).