In community building, we often optimise for “value alignment”. This seems to be used to mean lots of different things. One definition that seems reasonably correct, is that one agrees with the basic EA principles. However, I think the trait I look for in budding committee, is not necessarily this. There are members that would self describe as utilitarian, or rationalist, but don’t feel excited about the prospect of a highly impactful career.
On the other hand, there are people who are excited about the EA ideas, will read posts if you mention them, have mixed but strong takes and when they’re unsure, will be agentic to try things out. I think this is much more predictive of people following through on EA concepts, and isn’t frequently correlated with initially agreeing with the values.
In community building, we often optimise for “value alignment”. This seems to be used to mean lots of different things. One definition that seems reasonably correct, is that one agrees with the basic EA principles. However, I think the trait I look for in budding committee, is not necessarily this. There are members that would self describe as utilitarian, or rationalist, but don’t feel excited about the prospect of a highly impactful career.
On the other hand, there are people who are excited about the EA ideas, will read posts if you mention them, have mixed but strong takes and when they’re unsure, will be agentic to try things out. I think this is much more predictive of people following through on EA concepts, and isn’t frequently correlated with initially agreeing with the values.