When I got involved in kick-starting our local student chapter, I noticed most of our ideas initially drifted to some form of influencing, but we ended up “correcting” that to what has become an internal motto: quality over quantity. While I still think it’s a good initial strategy for a student chapter, your argument did make me think about missed opportunities in influence.
For example, I was recently offered the opportunity to help build the syllabus for an Ethics in Computer Science course, as well as helping create social responsibility modules for an Intro to Econ course. My initial reaction was to prioritize the student chapter, but I can now see a potential opportunity to align both.
I think you’re right on the premise that there’s a way to influence people that simultaneously doesn’t run the risk of value drift or unintentionally misrepresenting the EA community to the world; this is probably more in line with traditional education, campaigning, lobbying, and activism. In my (limited) experience in the community, there seem to be many low-hanging fruits in this regard, but there have been advances in this direction, as yesterday’s post on the Social Change Lab seems to show.
When I got involved in kick-starting our local student chapter, I noticed most of our ideas initially drifted to some form of influencing, but we ended up “correcting” that to what has become an internal motto: quality over quantity. While I still think it’s a good initial strategy for a student chapter, your argument did make me think about missed opportunities in influence.
For example, I was recently offered the opportunity to help build the syllabus for an Ethics in Computer Science course, as well as helping create social responsibility modules for an Intro to Econ course. My initial reaction was to prioritize the student chapter, but I can now see a potential opportunity to align both.
I think you’re right on the premise that there’s a way to influence people that simultaneously doesn’t run the risk of value drift or unintentionally misrepresenting the EA community to the world; this is probably more in line with traditional education, campaigning, lobbying, and activism. In my (limited) experience in the community, there seem to be many low-hanging fruits in this regard, but there have been advances in this direction, as yesterday’s post on the Social Change Lab seems to show.