This is something we discussed at length and are still thinking about.
As you write in the end, the usual “I’ll experiment and see” is true, but we have some more specific thoughts as well:
I think there’s a meaningful difference between someone who uses “shoddy” methodology to someone who’s thoughtfully trying to figure out the best course of action and has either not got there yet or still didn’t overcome some bad priors or biases. While I’m sure there are some edge cases, I think most cases aren’t on the edge.
I think most of our decisions are easier in practice than in theory. The content we’ll write will be (to the best of our ability) good content that will showcase how we (and the EA community) believe these issues should be considered. 1:1s or workshops will prioritize people we believe could benefit and could have a meaningful impact, and since we expect us to not live up to demand any time soon, I doubt we’ll have to consider cases that seem detrimental to the community. Finally, our writing, while aiming to be accessible and welcoming to people with a wide variety of views, will describe similar thought processes and discuss similar scopes to the broader EA community (albeit not 80K). As a result, I think it will be comparable to other gateways to the community that exist today.
The above point makes the practical considerations of the near future simpler. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have a lot to think, talk through and figure out regarding what we mean by ‘Agnostic EA’. That’s something that we haven’t stopped discussing since the idea for this came up and I don’t think we’ll stop any time soon.
This is something we discussed at length and are still thinking about.
As you write in the end, the usual “I’ll experiment and see” is true, but we have some more specific thoughts as well:
I think there’s a meaningful difference between someone who uses “shoddy” methodology to someone who’s thoughtfully trying to figure out the best course of action and has either not got there yet or still didn’t overcome some bad priors or biases. While I’m sure there are some edge cases, I think most cases aren’t on the edge.
I think most of our decisions are easier in practice than in theory. The content we’ll write will be (to the best of our ability) good content that will showcase how we (and the EA community) believe these issues should be considered. 1:1s or workshops will prioritize people we believe could benefit and could have a meaningful impact, and since we expect us to not live up to demand any time soon, I doubt we’ll have to consider cases that seem detrimental to the community. Finally, our writing, while aiming to be accessible and welcoming to people with a wide variety of views, will describe similar thought processes and discuss similar scopes to the broader EA community (albeit not 80K). As a result, I think it will be comparable to other gateways to the community that exist today.
The above point makes the practical considerations of the near future simpler. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have a lot to think, talk through and figure out regarding what we mean by ‘Agnostic EA’. That’s something that we haven’t stopped discussing since the idea for this came up and I don’t think we’ll stop any time soon.