Thanks for writing this and contributing to the conversation :)
Relatedly, an “efficient market for ideas” hypothesis would suggest that if MB really was important, neglected, and tractable, then other more experienced and influential EAs would have already raised its salience.
I do think the salience of movement building has been raised elsewhere eg:
80,000 Hours do have a problem profile on it and consider it one of the most pressing problems to work on
The work around patient philanthropy has analogues to movement building (see Nuno Sempere’s in-progress paper extending this thinking to movement growth explicitly)
Having said that, I share the feeling that movement building seems underrated. Given how impactful it seems, I would expect more EAs to want to use their careers to work on movement building.
One resolution to this apparent conflict is that the fraction of people who can be good at movement building long-term might be smaller than it first seems. For lots of the interventions that you suggest, strong social skills and a strong understanding of EA concepts seem important, as well as some general executional or project management ability. Though movement builders don’t necessarily have to be excellent in any of these domains, they have to be at least pretty good at all of them. They also have to be interested enough in all of them to do movement building. This narrows down the pool of people who can work in movement building.
Another possible reason is that within the EA community movement building careers are generally seen as less prestigious than more ‘direct’ kinds of work and social incentives play a large role in career choice. For example, some people would be more impressed by someone doing technical AI safety research than by someone building talent pipelines into AI safety, even if the second one has more impact.
Also, as Aaron says, a lot of direct work has helpful movement building effects.
I also agree with Aaron that looking at funding is a bit complicated with movement building, partly because movement building is probably cheaper than other things, but also that it can be hard to tease apart what’s movement building and what’s not.
Thanks for all those references. Don’t know how I missed the 80,000 page on the topic, but that’s a pretty big strike against it being ignored. Regarding your second point, I largely agree but there are surely some MB interventions that don’t require full-time generalists. For example, message testing and advertising (I assume) can be mostly outsourced with enough money.
Thanks for writing this and contributing to the conversation :)
I do think the salience of movement building has been raised elsewhere eg:
80,000 Hours do have a problem profile on it and consider it one of the most pressing problems to work on
The work around patient philanthropy has analogues to movement building (see Nuno Sempere’s in-progress paper extending this thinking to movement growth explicitly)
A bunch of other places eg. I really like this piece on movement growth
Having said that, I share the feeling that movement building seems underrated. Given how impactful it seems, I would expect more EAs to want to use their careers to work on movement building.
One resolution to this apparent conflict is that the fraction of people who can be good at movement building long-term might be smaller than it first seems. For lots of the interventions that you suggest, strong social skills and a strong understanding of EA concepts seem important, as well as some general executional or project management ability. Though movement builders don’t necessarily have to be excellent in any of these domains, they have to be at least pretty good at all of them. They also have to be interested enough in all of them to do movement building. This narrows down the pool of people who can work in movement building.
Another possible reason is that within the EA community movement building careers are generally seen as less prestigious than more ‘direct’ kinds of work and social incentives play a large role in career choice. For example, some people would be more impressed by someone doing technical AI safety research than by someone building talent pipelines into AI safety, even if the second one has more impact.
Also, as Aaron says, a lot of direct work has helpful movement building effects.
I also agree with Aaron that looking at funding is a bit complicated with movement building, partly because movement building is probably cheaper than other things, but also that it can be hard to tease apart what’s movement building and what’s not.
Thanks for all those references. Don’t know how I missed the 80,000 page on the topic, but that’s a pretty big strike against it being ignored. Regarding your second point, I largely agree but there are surely some MB interventions that don’t require full-time generalists. For example, message testing and advertising (I assume) can be mostly outsourced with enough money.