most people who are sufficiently interested in EA and also sufficiently open to considering various causes will have already found most of these or will do so relatively quickly on their own.
This is definitely a possibility and I certainly don’t have enough evidence to claim that this isn’t the case. A survey to determine existing knowledge could be interesting, and I may get in touch with Rethink Priorities to see if they think such a survey might be useful.
Having said that, I have thought about all this a bit more since originally posting and I generally agree that doing more to spread EA to those who don’t know about it is more important, on the current margin, than doing more to spread important ideas within the existing EA community. I expect this balance to flip at some point, but that may not be for a while.
This is definitely a possibility and I certainly don’t have enough evidence to claim that this isn’t the case. A survey to determine existing knowledge could be interesting, and I may get in touch with Rethink Priorities to see if they think such a survey might be useful.
Having said that, I have thought about all this a bit more since originally posting and I generally agree that doing more to spread EA to those who don’t know about it is more important, on the current margin, than doing more to spread important ideas within the existing EA community. I expect this balance to flip at some point, but that may not be for a while.