In the most respectful way possible, I strongly disagree with the overarching direction put forth here. A very strong predictor of engaged participation and retention in advocacy, work, education and many other things in life is the establishment of strong, close social ties within that community.
I think this direction will greatly reduce participation and engagement with EA, and I’m not even sure it will address the valid concerns you mentioned.
I say this despite the fact that I didn’t have super close EA friends in the first 3-4 years, and still managed to motivate myself to work on EA stuff as well as policy successful advocacy in other areas. When it comes to getting new people to partake in self-motivated, voluntary social causes/projects, one of the first things I do is to make sure they find a friend to keep them engaged, and this likelihood is greatly increased if they simply meet more people.
I am also of the opinion that long-term engagement relying on unpaid, ad-hoc community organising is much more unreliable than paid work. I think other organisers will agree when I say: organising a community around EA for the purpose of deeply engaging EAs is time-consuming, and greatly benefits from external guidance and financial support. If you want to get people engaging deeply with EA ideas and actually taking EA roles, unpaid volunteer organisers are a significant bottleneck. You’re expecting one organiser to regularly host events, perform tasks and engage multiple people at a deep level without central support, and that’s a very difficult ask.
I will add also that I am from a non-EA hub, and the only people I know who work full-time with EA orgs directly cite EAGs as a catalyst for their long-term involvement.
I’m just … skeptical of the theory of change put forth here.
I think that social ties are useful, yet having a sprawling global community is not. I think that you’re attacking a bit of a straw man, one which claims that we should have no relationships or community whatsoever.
I also think that there is an unfair binary you’re assuming, where on one side you have “unpaid, ad-hoc community organising” and on the other you have the current abundance of funding for community building. Especially in EA hubs like London, the Bay Area, and DC, the local community can certainly afford to pay for events and event managers without needing central funding, and I’d be happy for CEA to continue to do community building—albeit with the expectation that communities do their own thing and pay for events, which would be a very significant change from the current environment. Oh, and I also don’t live in an EA hub, and have never attended an EAG—but I do travel occasionally, and have significant social interaction with both EAs and non-EAs working in pandemic preparedness, remotely. The central support might be useful, but it’s far from the only way to have EA continue.
In the most respectful way possible, I strongly disagree with the overarching direction put forth here. A very strong predictor of engaged participation and retention in advocacy, work, education and many other things in life is the establishment of strong, close social ties within that community.
I think this direction will greatly reduce participation and engagement with EA, and I’m not even sure it will address the valid concerns you mentioned.
I say this despite the fact that I didn’t have super close EA friends in the first 3-4 years, and still managed to motivate myself to work on EA stuff as well as policy successful advocacy in other areas. When it comes to getting new people to partake in self-motivated, voluntary social causes/projects, one of the first things I do is to make sure they find a friend to keep them engaged, and this likelihood is greatly increased if they simply meet more people.
I am also of the opinion that long-term engagement relying on unpaid, ad-hoc community organising is much more unreliable than paid work. I think other organisers will agree when I say: organising a community around EA for the purpose of deeply engaging EAs is time-consuming, and greatly benefits from external guidance and financial support. If you want to get people engaging deeply with EA ideas and actually taking EA roles, unpaid volunteer organisers are a significant bottleneck. You’re expecting one organiser to regularly host events, perform tasks and engage multiple people at a deep level without central support, and that’s a very difficult ask.
I will add also that I am from a non-EA hub, and the only people I know who work full-time with EA orgs directly cite EAGs as a catalyst for their long-term involvement.
I’m just … skeptical of the theory of change put forth here.
I think that social ties are useful, yet having a sprawling global community is not. I think that you’re attacking a bit of a straw man, one which claims that we should have no relationships or community whatsoever.
I also think that there is an unfair binary you’re assuming, where on one side you have “unpaid, ad-hoc community organising” and on the other you have the current abundance of funding for community building. Especially in EA hubs like London, the Bay Area, and DC, the local community can certainly afford to pay for events and event managers without needing central funding, and I’d be happy for CEA to continue to do community building—albeit with the expectation that communities do their own thing and pay for events, which would be a very significant change from the current environment. Oh, and I also don’t live in an EA hub, and have never attended an EAG—but I do travel occasionally, and have significant social interaction with both EAs and non-EAs working in pandemic preparedness, remotely. The central support might be useful, but it’s far from the only way to have EA continue.
Both of you now seem to be focusing specifically on funding for community building, whereas the original post was much broader:
… maybe if those broader issues were addressed, the question of which community-building to fund would then be easier to work out?