I broadly agree with your thesis and would love to see more university groups prioritize the types of activities you mention. I think EA university community building needs to hear this critique right now.
But I’m worried people could over-update on this, so I want to introduce three caveats:
1. You need a core group: Placing more emphasis on collectively skilling one another up only seems possible for groups that already have 3+ people seriously committed to doing the most good, which can’t be said for many new EA groups. New groups might benefit from overmarketing to build up a core group.
2. You need to maintain some mass outreach component: Ideally, every student at your uni knows that an EA group exists and roughly what it does. I think there are low-cost ways to do this, like mass email and dept. emails with mail-o-meter that funnel towards an intro event or fellowship (or fellowship alternative). Nevertheless, I’d be worried that a group that focuses too much on self-skill will miss finding many of the “instant EAs” that could be a great fit for the group.
3. It’s hard to onboard new members into a group that’s skilling up: Imagine your friend tells you about this cool new student group that’s all about impact. You’re super excited – you’ve been looking for something like this – and then you attend a co-working session on FTX megaproject sketching. Or a reading group on a GPI report. You would have zero context and I wouldn’t blame you if you walked away unsure what the group does and didn’t come back. If you invite lots of people who are missing context to your event, you also risk seriously degrading the quality of your event. If you don’t have events for them, you’re potentially missing out on a lot of talent and introducing exclusivity concerns. I want organizers to think more about these competing concerns. The easiest potential solution I see to the lack of onboarding is lots of 1-on-1 conversations with people who show interest (which I think every organizer should hear a few more times anyways).
I’m also still genuinely uncertain that the multiplier effect isn’t just that good. I lead a student group, and I’ve people who I think will do cool work have told me they wouldn’t have gotten into EA if it weren’t for me. I’m not sure if skilling up multiplies my impact in the same way. However, the post effectiveness is a conjunction of multipliers makes me think that it can be easy to underestimate the importance of improving your judgment and working on the right problems (and sub-problems) – which you do by skilling up, building models, and good faith debates with friends. Not marketing.
I want to especially +1 item (3) here― the best actions for a skill-focused group will be very different depending on how skilled its group members are. Using my own experience organising a biosecurity-focused group (which fizzled out because the core members skilled up and ended up focused on direct work… not a bad outcome).
Some examples of the purposes of skill-focused groups, at different skill levels:
Newcomer = learn together
Member goals: Figure out if you are interested in an area, or what you are interested in within it.
Core Activities: Getting familiar with foundational papers and ideas in the field.
Possible structures: reading groups, giving talks summarizing current work, watching lectures together, collectively brainstorming questions you have, shared research on basic questions.
Advanced Beginner = sharpen ideas
Member goals: Figure out if your ideas and projects in an area are good, be ready to pivot as you learn more.
Core activities: Get feedback on your ideas, find useful resources or potential collaborators.
Possible structures: lightning talks, one person presents and receives feedback on their project, fireside chats or Q&As with experts.
Expert = keep up with the field
Member Goals: Make progress on your projects while staying aware of relevant of new developments.
Core activities: Find potential synergies with your work, get feedback and critique, find collaborators.
Possible structures: seminar series focused on project updates, research reading groups where summary talks are given by more junior group members.
Strongly agree with (1). I avoided organizing (and when COVID hit, keeping alive) my university’s EA group because “it’s better to skill up” (amplified by an incorrect heavy pessimism about how many other students would be interested in EA). I regret this.
I broadly agree with your thesis and would love to see more university groups prioritize the types of activities you mention. I think EA university community building needs to hear this critique right now.
But I’m worried people could over-update on this, so I want to introduce three caveats:
1. You need a core group: Placing more emphasis on collectively skilling one another up only seems possible for groups that already have 3+ people seriously committed to doing the most good, which can’t be said for many new EA groups. New groups might benefit from overmarketing to build up a core group.
2. You need to maintain some mass outreach component: Ideally, every student at your uni knows that an EA group exists and roughly what it does. I think there are low-cost ways to do this, like mass email and dept. emails with mail-o-meter that funnel towards an intro event or fellowship (or fellowship alternative). Nevertheless, I’d be worried that a group that focuses too much on self-skill will miss finding many of the “instant EAs” that could be a great fit for the group.
3. It’s hard to onboard new members into a group that’s skilling up: Imagine your friend tells you about this cool new student group that’s all about impact. You’re super excited – you’ve been looking for something like this – and then you attend a co-working session on FTX megaproject sketching. Or a reading group on a GPI report. You would have zero context and I wouldn’t blame you if you walked away unsure what the group does and didn’t come back. If you invite lots of people who are missing context to your event, you also risk seriously degrading the quality of your event. If you don’t have events for them, you’re potentially missing out on a lot of talent and introducing exclusivity concerns. I want organizers to think more about these competing concerns. The easiest potential solution I see to the lack of onboarding is lots of 1-on-1 conversations with people who show interest (which I think every organizer should hear a few more times anyways).
I’m also still genuinely uncertain that the multiplier effect isn’t just that good. I lead a student group, and I’ve people who I think will do cool work have told me they wouldn’t have gotten into EA if it weren’t for me. I’m not sure if skilling up multiplies my impact in the same way. However, the post effectiveness is a conjunction of multipliers makes me think that it can be easy to underestimate the importance of improving your judgment and working on the right problems (and sub-problems) – which you do by skilling up, building models, and good faith debates with friends. Not marketing.
I want to especially +1 item (3) here― the best actions for a skill-focused group will be very different depending on how skilled its group members are. Using my own experience organising a biosecurity-focused group (which fizzled out because the core members skilled up and ended up focused on direct work… not a bad outcome).
Some examples of the purposes of skill-focused groups, at different skill levels:
Newcomer = learn together
Member goals: Figure out if you are interested in an area, or what you are interested in within it.
Core Activities: Getting familiar with foundational papers and ideas in the field.
Possible structures: reading groups, giving talks summarizing current work, watching lectures together, collectively brainstorming questions you have, shared research on basic questions.
Advanced Beginner = sharpen ideas
Member goals: Figure out if your ideas and projects in an area are good, be ready to pivot as you learn more.
Core activities: Get feedback on your ideas, find useful resources or potential collaborators.
Possible structures: lightning talks, one person presents and receives feedback on their project, fireside chats or Q&As with experts.
Expert = keep up with the field
Member Goals: Make progress on your projects while staying aware of relevant of new developments.
Core activities: Find potential synergies with your work, get feedback and critique, find collaborators.
Possible structures: seminar series focused on project updates, research reading groups where summary talks are given by more junior group members.
Strongly agree with (1). I avoided organizing (and when COVID hit, keeping alive) my university’s EA group because “it’s better to skill up” (amplified by an incorrect heavy pessimism about how many other students would be interested in EA). I regret this.
I don’t think (3) is that bad. New members are not always better than shooting experienced members into good projects.
I wonder if 2- 3 year cohort models of fellows would be better in established campuses.