This is a heartening reply. I’m also glad you put yours in and got in. Let me ask you from your observations, when you say diverse, could you expand on that. Is it really all mixed up or is it mostly 25 year olds and one 37 year old. Was there anyone post 45? Your point about it being more doable for younger people is a good one, but I think we mostly are known about by young people. There’s plenty of 35-55 year olds in career transitions that if they knew would apply, and often they have some security so the transition is affordable. I’d love to hear more about how actively AIM pursues them. I’d be glad to update. 

Yes in publishing stories there’s plenty of suspect motives. But really I’m basing this on my own personal experience in seeing so many not obvious leaders blow everyone away and the obvious winners not at all so guaranteed to succeed. So many get into high level schools for reasons beyond their personal talent, and so many others blossom late. The pool of people enabled by society/parents to get into elite schools is much smaller than the huge pool of average grade, lower income people who didn’t give a shite about school when they’re were 18 and later blossom with their tough background giving them huge grit and ambition. EA tends to fail to see this to their diminishment. Spreadsheet criteria doesn’t capture grit and ambition. Mentoring pipelines do.  

I appreciate what you're saying. If you want to be EA orthodox. I'm talking about evolving EA and changing some things. 

It is most assuredly NOT expensive to run a mentoring program. It's a hugely significant pipeline of candidates coming in that you are getting a much deeper insight into than just a short application process, and it's value greatly exceeds its cost. All you have to do is spread it to all the members of AIM, rather than pay for a new department, ie. each member of AIM takes on mentoring a few people. That's great for the whole org and infuses it with exactly the culture a charity enabling org should have. 

As for the quota, isn't that self set, so the budget is there to choose 25 people. If instead you choose only 20 because your criteria rejected the rest, now you have a budget excess. Don't do that, it's far better to take a risk on the five you weren't sure of, because the budget is already there, and if even one of them turned out to be a hidden gem, you got them instead of losing them. 

In hits based thinking, which is an EA staple, that's what you do, you sign 25 bands and only a few make a hit record, but that's enough to support the whole process. The point is that the researcher's in AIMs back room choosing the cause priorities are most definitely not the arbiters able to pick the best hits. They can't do it alone, they never will, and it was a fools errand to think they could. Everyone knows there's no magic formula for picking a hit record, you just have to sign a bunch of bands and let them go crazy and see what happens. EA is effectively saying, "No. We think we can use science and spreadsheets to pick the hit songs". Nope. Doesn't work (world too big). But most definitely get some people in the back room working on that (Go researchers, we love you!), just don't let that be the only thing you do...you also have to go out to the clubs and see what the kids are dancing to. (ie. bring in more veteran field workers into the process, have a mentoring pipeline, change your criteria a lot to include more and reject less, rather than just researchers in the back room). 

Both in science, in music, in movies, nobody knows where the next hit will come from, so get broader and accept more. 

Yes there’s always going to be an Andres where it works out well. And everyone knows AIM has done well…but I think they could have done ten times better. EA could be five to ten times bigger if they would cure the ailment you so love. 

The difference between my view and AIM/EA broadly is the difference between on the ground real life experience in how humans are motivated and an attempt to figure out reality via spreadsheet & analysis in a room. Believe me I’m an EA and I love EA very much. I never digressed to hedging my love by being "EA adjacent" as some. I've maintained being fully public EA. I’m not rejecting EA’s core project to use science to be more effective in altruism,  I’m saying to modify it with some common sense. EA funding all sorts of new charities from 25 year olds with a napkin plan and not seeking veterans is one example. I love the 25 year olds with a napkin, but don’t only do that. Go find some veterans too. Don’t only do six causes each new round at AIM, open it up and do “both and”, both the new one's and the ongoing list of past one's. 

Some donors like EAs current narrow way, probably ten times more would like it to be far more pragmatic with deeply experienced field advisors and not only a few researchers in a room calling shots. Both and. EA is religious in its legalism. 

By the way, you do a good job here, I appreciate you. 

Yes that’s valuable, but I’d say it’s pretty easy to synthesize their cause priorities with founders own motivations. For example, keep the list going for every new round, so there’s 20-30 choices, all just as worthy as they were last year. Two orgs coming at one cause with different approaches is great. This same problem exists throughout EA when we imagine we can truly figure out what needs to be done based on the ITN framework. It’s a great framework, I love it, but the reality of making impact in the real world in a cause you’ve prioritized is that there are infinite angles to approach each one. Between two broad approaches are infinite degrees of adjustment to approach it. The world is too big to figure it out in advance, so allow founder interest to guide to which approach you will take. To imagine researchers in a room in the U.K., not in the field, having no personal knowledge of the cause overall and specific challenges on the ground, to be able to figure it out on paper is an intellectual arrogance. The world is too big, you can’t figure it out. So be practical and let talent guide you. We can only do what we have the talent to do. Don’t muzzle your one pragmatic chance to do something. 

Given leadership literature is rife with stories of rejected individuals going on to become great leaders, and your current problem from this post. Wouldn’t it make sense to just recalibrate your criteria and accept more you might have rejected before? Maybe you’ve been off. Always accept enough to hit your quota. To miss your quota and still have many rejected applicants sitting there seems way too high confidence in yourselves and your criteria. Disrupt yourself. 

I call these the hidden gems, maybe you’re not good at identifying them. 

Also, why don’t you put out more open calls to have applicant’s come start any kind of animal welfare org they want, not just your four pre-imagined ones? This issue always seems so bassackward to me with AIM. Motivation arises within people’s own hearts and minds — not from an outside party who assigns them four choices. In a million years I couldn’t imagine rising with motivation to someone else’s idea rather than to my own. Certainly to modifying my idea, yes. (I’m a serial social entrepreneur and have mentored hundreds). 

It’s not just AIM, all of EA has been shooting its own foot since inception with its criteria for accepting people. Don’t follow their example. Find more experienced veterans. Don’t consider so highly academic backgrounds. Develop new creative criteria and testing like Facilitative Interpersonal Skills (FIS) screening to find highly socially gifted people, a major need in founders. 

Many people don’t mature enough to pursue high status colleges when young, later they might have, but it just wasn’t in them to bother with that at age 18, yet they became leaders of various things in their lower status college. Holding choices they made when having barely emerged from childhood against them and rejecting them because of it is insanity if you sanely want to mentor world changing leaders. Smart on paper but socially awkward works sometimes, other times the opposite is better, gems can go either way, you have to get better at sussing them out. Pairing them is good. Disrupt your own thinking and EA culture. 

Rather than just applications run a mentoring program and suss them out. The ones who aren’t founders might be operations champions or tech leads. Have two cofounders come out with an OPs/admin person, enlarge your budgets to accommodate. 

We are mostly Western in EA which is 15% of humanity. Add in a few non Western hot spots and around 25% of the world does almost all science, research and innovation. That means 75% of human brains are sitting on the sideline and not in the game. With all our existential and long term challenges, humanity is only deploying 25% of its resources. If longterm future humans could look back at us today, they’d be aghast. Deploying MORE of us is the only winning path, not rejecting more. 

Or don’t disrupt and carry on with the small EA we have which could and should be five times bigger. Einstein had something to say on this. 

ps. If you want to imagine and start more charities, the 75% is there ready to get in the game. That’s my gig. 

It is possible to rationally prioritise between causes without engaging deeply on philosophical issues

I think GiveWell's criteria of Effective Charities needing to be 10x better than direct cash transfers is greatly flawed for so many reasons. 

- We each might consider giving to local needs in our own neighborhood as well as top charities no matter how far away. Why? Because you can't allow your own neighborhood to decay while you optimize bang for buck elsewhere. the argument that only a few will optimize and plenty will give locally is good for adjusting your ratio, but you still are responsible for where you live. The other side is so many don't give at all, so you're needed locally. 

- it is a big gigantic reality we live in and all important considerations are not knowable, some hide in areas we are ignorant of, so balance with common sense that is purely subjective is our only recourse and it's kept humanity alive so far, we shouldn't abandon it. 

- following the above idea one might imagine there are many specific benefits of a particular cause area and specific charities within it whose impact is just not measurable by comparing it to the specific criteria's used to measure in current effective giving formula's and that it be 10x...what kind of random thing is 10x?? There just has to be more, and philosophy is part of that, but so is deep ancient wisdom and common sense. What about root causes that affect so much upstream? Maybe a root cause is vastly more important because of how it affects so much upstream and it can't be compared apples to apples with a 10X measurement. Maybe the criteria of how they're measuring is so missing this root issue multiplier at times that it is in reality way off. 

- giving to causes you care for has value. If we are to disconnect with our own emotional experiences and values we become not humans but robots optimizing on algorithms. Losing our humanity leads to things like FTX. Not optimal. 

- in the end there should be a balance that suits you. GiveWell should be a trusted source weaved in with others in the mix of your best balance. We should continually spread awareness of Effective Giving so others can add this to their balance. it's not either/or but both/and. If your best balance imbues you with a sense you are holding responsibility locally with optimizing globally and that injects some turbo into your engine, then you are going much faster and it feels great, which makes you more effective at everything in your life. If you are at all feeling anxiety about your contribution to good in this world, you might consider how your balance is, have certain pressures pushed you from what is best for you? Lots of EA's have suffered guilt at not doing enough...I'd suggest be both EA and other ways of thinking too. Balance. 

I think the reluctance toward confrontation may also be because of collective personality traits of STEMs, they tend to work in the backroom developing stuff. The frontroom people who are more creative and social and do sales and marketing are the one's more willing to be confrontational or persuasive. Tech has both rooms, EA only has a backroom to its diminishment (which you can notice by the utter absence of art/creativity/marketing). I wonder what the personality spectrum is in SMA? You can tell by the contrast of their focus and culture in the article they are likely more of a blend of science & humanities, while EA is pure science.