You mentioned some difficulty in getting people from the “periphery” to the “middle” with discussion groups and other activities. This is a common feature of EA groups (certainly the two that I’ve run).
Some things I’ve found to be helpful:
More meetups with students outside your college. Even if there isn’t an EAGx in your area, there might be another college EA group a reasonable distance away, such that you could take a day trip to their school (or vice/versa), or meet at a location in the middle. Examples:
The Yale group visited the Harvard group the night before the 2014 Yale/Harvard football game (a time when lots of students travel from one school to the other).
The Madison (WI) and Chicago groups had a meetup at a vegan restaurant between the two cities.
Encouraging group members to follow EA resources outside the local group—for example, inviting them to the main EA Facebook group, sending a list of EA Twitter accounts (e.g. Rob Wiblin, Kelsey Piper), recommending the 80,000 Hours podcast, or signing them up for the EA Newsletter (with their permission).
What both of these have in common: I suspect that identifying as a member of the EA community is much easier when you see it as a community, rather than a personal philosophy. It’s tough to adapt an unusual, self-sacrificing set of moral principles held by only a few other people you know; it’s easier to do so in a context where you see something EA-related pop up in your life every few days, even during your summer break, and EA becomes just “a normal thing in the world” for you.
(This seems likely to be true for almost any other activity; someone who only ever plays the violin for ~4 hours/week in a casual college string quartet probably won’t play as much after college as someone who also follows lots of fun violin YouTube channels and listens to violin-centric playlists while they study. I don’t have empirical evidence for these assumptions, though.)
Hi Aaron, Thanks for your comment—I think feeling like a member of the community is really key, and it’s something that was definitely in the back of my mind as I wrote this (I even mentioned co-hosting events aand reaching out to nearby EA groups) but never explicitly mentioned, and it seems valuable to do so. Could I add this point and your examples to the google doc?
Thanks for the detailed writeup!
You mentioned some difficulty in getting people from the “periphery” to the “middle” with discussion groups and other activities. This is a common feature of EA groups (certainly the two that I’ve run).
Some things I’ve found to be helpful:
More meetups with students outside your college. Even if there isn’t an EAGx in your area, there might be another college EA group a reasonable distance away, such that you could take a day trip to their school (or vice/versa), or meet at a location in the middle. Examples:
The Yale group visited the Harvard group the night before the 2014 Yale/Harvard football game (a time when lots of students travel from one school to the other).
The Madison (WI) and Chicago groups had a meetup at a vegan restaurant between the two cities.
Encouraging group members to follow EA resources outside the local group—for example, inviting them to the main EA Facebook group, sending a list of EA Twitter accounts (e.g. Rob Wiblin, Kelsey Piper), recommending the 80,000 Hours podcast, or signing them up for the EA Newsletter (with their permission).
What both of these have in common: I suspect that identifying as a member of the EA community is much easier when you see it as a community, rather than a personal philosophy. It’s tough to adapt an unusual, self-sacrificing set of moral principles held by only a few other people you know; it’s easier to do so in a context where you see something EA-related pop up in your life every few days, even during your summer break, and EA becomes just “a normal thing in the world” for you.
(This seems likely to be true for almost any other activity; someone who only ever plays the violin for ~4 hours/week in a casual college string quartet probably won’t play as much after college as someone who also follows lots of fun violin YouTube channels and listens to violin-centric playlists while they study. I don’t have empirical evidence for these assumptions, though.)
Hi Aaron, Thanks for your comment—I think feeling like a member of the community is really key, and it’s something that was definitely in the back of my mind as I wrote this (I even mentioned co-hosting events aand reaching out to nearby EA groups) but never explicitly mentioned, and it seems valuable to do so. Could I add this point and your examples to the google doc?
Sure! Anything I write on the Forum can be used elsewhere.