Make the best case against: “Some non-trivial fraction of highly talented EAs should be part- or full-time community builders.”
The argument in favor would be pointing to the multiplier effect.
Assume you could attract the equivalent of one person as good as yourself to EA within one year of full-time community building. If this person is young and we assume the length of a career to be 40 years, then you have just invested 1 year and gotten 40 years in return.
By the most naive / straightforward estimate then, a chance of about 1⁄40 of you attracting one you-equivalent would be break even. Arguably that’s too optimistic and the true break-even point is somewhat bigger than 1⁄40; maybe 1⁄10. But that seems prima facie very doable in a full-time year. Hence, a non-trivial fraction of highly-talented EAs should do community building.
(I have a few arguments against the above reasoning in mind, but I believe listing them here would be against the spirit of this question. I still would be genuinely interested to see this question be red-teamed.)
Make the best case against: “Some non-trivial fraction of highly talented EAs should be part- or full-time community builders.” The argument in favor would be pointing to the multiplier effect. Assume you could attract the equivalent of one person as good as yourself to EA within one year of full-time community building. If this person is young and we assume the length of a career to be 40 years, then you have just invested 1 year and gotten 40 years in return. By the most naive / straightforward estimate then, a chance of about 1⁄40 of you attracting one you-equivalent would be break even. Arguably that’s too optimistic and the true break-even point is somewhat bigger than 1⁄40; maybe 1⁄10. But that seems prima facie very doable in a full-time year. Hence, a non-trivial fraction of highly-talented EAs should do community building.
(I have a few arguments against the above reasoning in mind, but I believe listing them here would be against the spirit of this question. I still would be genuinely interested to see this question be red-teamed.)