“Decision-making and decentralisation in EA” by William_MacAskill

This post is a slightly belated contribution to the Strategy Fortnight. It represents my personal takes only; I’m not speaking on behalf of any organisation I’m involved with. For some context on how I’m now thinking about talking in public, I’ve made a shortform post here [link]. Thanks to the many people who provided comments on a draft of this post.  Intro and OverviewHow does decision-making in EA work? How should it work?  In particular: to what extent is decision-making in EA centralised, and to what extent should it be centralised? These are the questions I’m going to address in this post. In what follows, I’ll use “EA” to refer to the actual set of people, practices and institutions in the EA movement, rather than EA as an idea.My broad view is that EA as a whole is currently in the worst of both worlds with respect to centralisation. We get the downsides of appearing (to some) like a single entity without the benefits of tight coordination and clear decision-making structures that centralised entities have.It’s hard to know whether the right response to this is to become more centralised or less. In this post, I’m mainly hoping just to start a discussion of this issue, as it’s one that impacts a wide number of decisions in EA. [1] At a high level, though, I currently think that the balance of considerations tends to push in favour of decentralisation relative to where we are now. But centralisation isn’t a single spectrum, and we can break it down into sub-components.  I’ll talk about this in more depth later in the post, but here are some ways in which I think EA should become more decentralised:Perception: At the very least, wider perception should reflect reality on how (de)centralised EA is. That means:Core organisations and people should communicate clearly (and repeatedly) about their roles and what they do and do not take ownership for. (I agree with Joey Savoie’s post, which he wrote independently of this one.)We should, insofar as we can, cultivate a diversity of EA-associated public figures.[Maybe] The EA Forum could be renamed. (Note that many decisions relating to CEA will wait until it has a new executive director).[Maybe] CEA could be renamed. (This is suggested by Kaleem here.)Funding: It’s hard to fix, but it would be great to have a greater diversity of funding sources. That means:Recruiting more large donors.Some significant donor or donors start a regranters program.More people pursue earning to give, or donate more (though I expect this “diversity of funding” consideration to have already been baked-in to most people’s decision-making on this). Luke Freeman has a moving essay about the continued need for funding here.Decision-making: Some projects that are currently housed within EV could spin out and become their own legal entities. The various different projects within EV have each been thinking through whether it makes sense for them to spin out. I expect around half of the projects will ultimately spin out over the coming year or two, which seems positive from my perspective.[Maybe] CEA could partly dissolve into sub-projects.Culture:We could [...] --- First published: June 26th, 2023 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DdSszj5NXk45MhQoq/decision-making-and-decentralisation-in-ea --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.