I enjoyed this post! 

In professions, Epistemic Responsibility is described as Professional Judgement which is a key virtue in addition to your expertise required to gain entry to membership. ICAS (my membership body) just added Moral Courage to their list of ethical principles

I don't think it is protected enough in society more generally (and tbh within professions these days)

Yes that'd be my sense.

Capital expenditure is money spent on an asset which can reasonably be assumed to generate future value for the entity either by increasing productivity or reducing costs. Expenses (including both cost of program/outcome and overhead costs) wouldn't really be an investment, it'd be a cost for something that doesn't have the ability to generate future returns or reduce the future marginal expenditure needed to generate the outcome again.

High quality assets like content, software and infrastructure can generate passive impact with minimal maintenance. Eg. 80k and Scott Alexander's content are still cited as the most common sources for new GWWC pledges.

Employees aren't usually considered assets for external financial reporting purposes because they are not owned by the shareholders and are free to leave. However, for a movement of people who all share ownership of EA and are not tied to any one cause area or charity, I think they can reasonably be defined as assets and a key insight from 80k is that for those with a motivation to do good effectively, there is a clear incentive to invest in your own career capital (as well as positive sum to invest time multiplying the impact of others).

The highest value assets IMO are EAs that can demonstrate a strong ability to apply the core skills (ie. cause prioritisation, impact evaluation and reasoning about evidence) AND can independently contribute. I've been somewhat concerned about the reduction in opportunities for low investment contribution since I don't think passive consumption of content is as effective for building EA knowledge that can be applied on high impact projects. The purpose of providing these opportunities (like wiki contributing, encouraging running events, volunteering etc) is more about investing in future capacity of EAs than the direct impact.

More detailed accounting answer you can skip 👇🏻

Capex isnt an expense as it doesn't go through the income statement (AKA Profit and Loss statement ie. part of the accounts focused on annual finance performance). Capex creates an asset that sits on the statement of financial position (AKA balance sheet ie. part of the accounts focussed on the value of the business/charity).

Capex doesn't go through the income statement all at once, rather the costs go through incrementally as depreciation (where there is a clear useful life of the asset like machinery or equipment) or as amortization (this is less useful for charities as it's mostly for tax purposes). The accounting problem this solves is that putting the full cost of the asset through the income statement all at once in the year of purchase is not a fair representation of the economic reality for the business since it isn't an expense for that one year.

hmmmm I'd disagree based on my experience running GWWC events and EA Taskmaster but I'm probably not going in with the mindset of optimising for short term impact/urgency based on recruitment into AI safety.

I think getting the ratio of newbies / experienced EAs right can be hard so I try to think carefully about how to attract the "hard side" of the network (experienced EAs). My approach is more creating a fun environment where people who are currently doing direct work and/or donating significantly and effectively want to hang out or find useful.

My model is that significant behaviour change requires multiple positive interactions and time in between for reflection.

Hell yeah! I've got a draft with something similar about the importance of judgement in the application of EA principles. I think this is underrated within EA. 

Weird the bottom half of the table got cut off 

Here it is

This post was interesting - sorry I'm replying so late. As a community builder on the side of my day-job where I'm an accountant. I see your table above a bit differently and think it would be better to think of the costs being split into:

* Capital expenditure (ie. an investment into infrastructure that can be used over the long term but unlikely to see a large return in the short term eg. Assets like content that can be referenced at any point in time, infrastructure that people can use to productively contribute)
* Operating expenditure (ie. Recurring costs that do not create an asset that can be used at a later date. E.g. Marketing, event expenditure, salaries)

As standard you want to keep your operating expenses as low as you can while still growing and invest as much as you can in infrastructure that enables long term growth. 

Curious about your thoughts @Ben_West🔸 
 

I really liked the post on where CEA employee were donating

❤️❤️❤️ Thank you for everything you've done for all these years! In awe of your commitment and drive to improve the world and make GWWC all it is today (I'm sure the 7am video calls with volunteers on the other side of the world was just a taste 😮).

Hope you enjoy the time off with your wee one! Excited to see what you do next!

We've got the back area booked out - I'm in all black with my pledge pin on my belt