It might be good to disclaim that you don’t think that the survey is such a representative sample of anything in particular. We’ve caught maybe a quarter or a half of EAs, but we’ve probably caught a lot more LessWrongers and users of the Facebook groups at the neglect of some in-person meetups. (The methodology was to try to get as many people as possible to complete the survey by posting it to LW and relevant facebook groups, emailing it via group leaders, etc.)
So probably fewer people came to EA from LW than are represented here. Still, it could be a lot. So it’s interesting to think that maybe a lot of EAs had started out by reading HPMOR or other stuff by Eliezer Yudkowsky and speaks to the fact that a bunch of EAs owe LW a bunch of big ideas.
Oh, as for my personal origin story, I met people who helped start the EA movement by discussing Peter Singer’s ideas online.
Likewise, I think this survey will make your beliefs more accurate if you treat it as a survey of EAs on LessWrong. But it may make your beliefs less accurate if you view it as a survey of EAs as a whole.
This isn’t right, as a significant majority of survey-takers came from places other than LessWrong—to get a picture of those people, you’d instead look at the breakdown for them, which Peter includes in his draft analysis.
Yes that’s right, it’s best to take these numbers as count data: absolute numbers of people who fit these categories, providing a lower bound for the numbers of EAs in the world who fit them, but likely not in the same proportions as all EAs in the world would be. In particular, they probably do as you say include disproportionately many people who frequent online venues like the Facebook group and LessWrong.
However I still would have expected more survey respondents to have picked out local groups. Many of the groups shared the survey with their members, so it’s not like we didn’t reach these people, and I know that many people who took the survey do attend local groups.
It might be good to disclaim that you don’t think that the survey is such a representative sample of anything in particular. We’ve caught maybe a quarter or a half of EAs, but we’ve probably caught a lot more LessWrongers and users of the Facebook groups at the neglect of some in-person meetups. (The methodology was to try to get as many people as possible to complete the survey by posting it to LW and relevant facebook groups, emailing it via group leaders, etc.)
So probably fewer people came to EA from LW than are represented here. Still, it could be a lot. So it’s interesting to think that maybe a lot of EAs had started out by reading HPMOR or other stuff by Eliezer Yudkowsky and speaks to the fact that a bunch of EAs owe LW a bunch of big ideas.
Oh, as for my personal origin story, I met people who helped start the EA movement by discussing Peter Singer’s ideas online.
Thanks for this post!
Likewise, I think this survey will make your beliefs more accurate if you treat it as a survey of EAs on LessWrong. But it may make your beliefs less accurate if you view it as a survey of EAs as a whole.
This isn’t right, as a significant majority of survey-takers came from places other than LessWrong—to get a picture of those people, you’d instead look at the breakdown for them, which Peter includes in his draft analysis.
Yes that’s right, it’s best to take these numbers as count data: absolute numbers of people who fit these categories, providing a lower bound for the numbers of EAs in the world who fit them, but likely not in the same proportions as all EAs in the world would be. In particular, they probably do as you say include disproportionately many people who frequent online venues like the Facebook group and LessWrong.
However I still would have expected more survey respondents to have picked out local groups. Many of the groups shared the survey with their members, so it’s not like we didn’t reach these people, and I know that many people who took the survey do attend local groups.