Main points

• On the margin, the amount of money EA spends on software is like an order of magnitude too low
  • Examine: SFF, FTX, OP grants
  • Software made up like 10% of the last funding round of SFF
• Effective Altruism is good at producing ideas but not as good at executing
  • Silicon Valley startups are highly competent
  • “Professionals talk logistics”
• Research writes onto paper; software writes onto minds.
  • E.g. social networks, video games shape the way people think
  • Think about how much time you spend in front of a screen. The ability to change what gets brought up changes how productive you are
• Just like research is a public good, software is a public good
  • So we should expect it to be underfunded, especially on EA teams
• With a good team, software development can be very cheap in terms of time
  • We built the MVP of Manifold in 3 weeks
• Why does EA software suck? (or does not exist)
  • Very surprising given overlap in EA & engineering mindset
  • Also surprising given that roughly all the money in EA came from one of 3 tech initiatives (FB/Asana, Skype, SBF)

Notes

• By software I tend to mean “apps” not “sites”
  • Distinction: “apps” are focus on interaction (Gmail); “sites” focus on static content (80k hours). Definitely a spectrum though.
  • Example EA apps: EA Forum; Ought; Metaculus; Manifold; Guesstimate/QURI
  • For comparison: Number of people in university groups, look at funding tables

Meta Proposals

• YCombinator for EA software
  • Standard terms: $400k for 7% of teams
  • Fly teams in to a physical location; weekly demo days
  • FTX Fellowship, ACX Grant are steps in this direction but not wholly done
  • Incubating new project founders
• Software consultancy for EA orgs
  • Team of 5-10 software eng who are loaned out to different teams to execute on short-term projects
  • Allows for lots of benefits of software teams
    • Code review
    • Infrastructure build-out
    • Consistent ladder
• Directing top software engineers into working on EA projects
  • A lot of software engineers are already sympathetic to EA
  • But the “work” done in EA seems to be mostly by researchers
    • e.g. in terms of full time headcount
  • Reach out to EA groups at Google/Facebook etc
  • Match them up with open headcount roles

Project Proposals

• Utility: Make independent funding much easier to get
  • Lots of funding programs at the moment; hard to navigate
• Shaping the way people think: Actually effective education
  • Not: “here’s a badge for reading this article”
  • E.g. Anki flashcards; see Andy Mutsachak and Quantum Country
• Shaping the way people think: microcovid on steroids
  • Micromorts, micromarriages, microjobs
  • Help people quantify risks and rewards of different actions
  • e.g. “A burger costs 10 micromorts, aka 2 hours off your life”