I found this post very informative. Thank you for sharing.
Some miscellaneous questions:
There was significant disagreement whether OP should start a separate program (distinct from Claire’s and James’ teams) focused on “EA-as-a-principle”/”EA qua EA”-grantmaking.
1. Is there information on why Open Phil originally made the decision to bifurcate community growth funding between LT and GHWB? (I’ve coincidentally been trying to better understand this and was considering asking on the Forum!) My impression is that this has had extreme shaping effects on EA community-building efforts, possibly more so than any other structural decision in EA.
There was consensus that it would be good if CEA replaced one of its (currently) three annual conferences with a conference that’s explicitly framed as being about x-risk or AI-risk focused conference.
Open Phil’s Longtermist EA Community Growth team expects to rebalance its field-building investments by proportionally spending more on longtermist cause-specific field building and less on EA field building than in the past
2. There are two perspectives that seem in opposition here:
The first is that existing organizations that have previously focused on “big tent EA” should create new x-risk programming in the areas they excel (e.g. conference organizing) and it is okay that this new x-risk programming will be carried out by an EA-branded organization.
The second is that existing organizations that have previously focused on “big tent EA” should, to some degree, be replaced by new projects that are longtermist in origin and not EA-branded.
I share the concern of “scaling back on forms of outreach with a strong track-record and thereby ‘throwing out the baby with the bathwater.’” But even beyond that, I’m concerned that big tent organizations with years of established infrastructure and knowledge may essentially be dismantled and replaced with brand new organizations, instead of recruiting and resourcing the established organizations to execute new, strategic projects. Just like CEA’s events team is likely better at arranging an x-risk conference than a new organization started specifically for that purpose, a longstanding regional EA group will have many advantages in regional field-building compared to a brand-new, cause-specific regional group. We are risking losing infrastructure that took years to develop, instead fo collectively figuring out how we might reorient it.
In March 2023, Open Philanthropy’s Alexander Berger invited Claire Zabel (Open Phil), James Snowden (Open Phil), Max Dalton (CEA), Nicole Ross (CEA), Niel Bowerman (80k), Will MacAskill (GPI), and myself (Open Phil, staffing the group) to join a working group on this and related questions.
3. Finally, I would love to see a version of this that incorporates leaders of cause area and big tent “outreach/recruitment/movement-building” organizations who engage “on the ground” with members of the community. I respect the perspectives of everyone involved. I also imagine they have a very different vantage point than our team at EA NYC and other regional organizations. We directly influence hundreds of people’s experiences of both big-tent EA and cause-specific work through on-the-ground guidance and programming, often as one of their first touchpoints to both. My understanding of the value of cause-specific work is radically different from what it would have been without this in-person, immersive engagement with hundreds of people at varying stages of the engagement funnel, and at varying stages of their individual progress over years of involvement. And though I don’t think this experience is necessary to make sound strategic decisions on the topics discussed in the post, I’m worried that the disconnect between the broader “on the ground” EA community and those making these judgments may lead to weaker calibration.
I found this post very informative. Thank you for sharing.
Some miscellaneous questions:
1. Is there information on why Open Phil originally made the decision to bifurcate community growth funding between LT and GHWB? (I’ve coincidentally been trying to better understand this and was considering asking on the Forum!) My impression is that this has had extreme shaping effects on EA community-building efforts, possibly more so than any other structural decision in EA.
2. There are two perspectives that seem in opposition here:
The first is that existing organizations that have previously focused on “big tent EA” should create new x-risk programming in the areas they excel (e.g. conference organizing) and it is okay that this new x-risk programming will be carried out by an EA-branded organization.
The second is that existing organizations that have previously focused on “big tent EA” should, to some degree, be replaced by new projects that are longtermist in origin and not EA-branded.
I share the concern of “scaling back on forms of outreach with a strong track-record and thereby ‘throwing out the baby with the bathwater.’” But even beyond that, I’m concerned that big tent organizations with years of established infrastructure and knowledge may essentially be dismantled and replaced with brand new organizations, instead of recruiting and resourcing the established organizations to execute new, strategic projects. Just like CEA’s events team is likely better at arranging an x-risk conference than a new organization started specifically for that purpose, a longstanding regional EA group will have many advantages in regional field-building compared to a brand-new, cause-specific regional group. We are risking losing infrastructure that took years to develop, instead fo collectively figuring out how we might reorient it.
3. Finally, I would love to see a version of this that incorporates leaders of cause area and big tent “outreach/recruitment/movement-building” organizations who engage “on the ground” with members of the community. I respect the perspectives of everyone involved. I also imagine they have a very different vantage point than our team at EA NYC and other regional organizations. We directly influence hundreds of people’s experiences of both big-tent EA and cause-specific work through on-the-ground guidance and programming, often as one of their first touchpoints to both. My understanding of the value of cause-specific work is radically different from what it would have been without this in-person, immersive engagement with hundreds of people at varying stages of the engagement funnel, and at varying stages of their individual progress over years of involvement. And though I don’t think this experience is necessary to make sound strategic decisions on the topics discussed in the post, I’m worried that the disconnect between the broader “on the ground” EA community and those making these judgments may lead to weaker calibration.