Hereâs a question that comes to mind: if local EA communities make people 3x more motivated to pursue high-impact careers, or make it much easier for newcomers to engage with EA ideas, then even if these local groups are only operating at 75% efficiency compared to some theoretical global optimum, you still get significant net benefit.
I am sympathetic to this argument vibes wise and I thought this was an elegant numerate utilitarian case for it. Part of my motivation is that I think it would be good if a lot of EA-ish values were a lot more mainstream. Like, I would even say that you probably get non-linear returns to scale in some important ways. You kind of need a critical mass of people to do certain things.
It feels like, necessarily, these organizations would also be about providing value to the members as well. That is a good thing.
I think there is something like a âbut what if we get watered down too muchâ concern latent here. I can kind of see how this would happen, but I am also not that worried about it. The tent is already pretty big in some ways. Stuff like numerate utilitarianism, empiricism, broad moral circles, thoughtfulness, tough trade-offs doesnât seem in danger of going away soon. Probably EA growing would spread these ideas rather than shrink them.
Also, I just think that societies/âpeople all over the world could significantly benefit from stronger third pillars and that the ideal versions of these sorts of community spaces would tend to share a lot of things in common with EA.
Picture it. The year is 2035 (9 years after the RSI near-miss event triggered the first Great Revolt). You ride your bitchinâ electric scooter to the EA-adjacent community center where you and your friends co-work on a local voter awareness campaign, startup idea, or just a fun painting or whatever. An intentional community.
That sounds like a step towards the glorious transhumanist future to me, but maybe the margins on that are bad in practice and the community centers of my day dreams will remain merely EA-adjacent. Perhaps, I just need to move to a town with cooler libraries. I am really not sure what the Dao here is or where the official EA brand really fits into any of this.
Picture it. The year is 2035 (9 years after the RSI near-miss event triggered the first Great Revolt). You ride your bitchinâ electric scooter to the EA-adjacent community center where you and your friends co-work on a local voter awareness campaign, startup idea, or just a fun painting or whatever. An intentional community.
We run something similar in Munich, where we have a coworking space that also hosts EA-adjacent events (including crafting events), located in the middle of the city, allowing people to bike there. So, very sympathetic to the idea of having local groups doing this.
Picture it. The year is 2035 (9 years after the RSI near-miss event triggered the first Great Revolt). You ride your bitchinâ electric scooter to the EA-adjacent community center where you and your friends co-work on a local voter awareness campaign, startup idea, or just a fun painting or whatever. An intentional community.
One could think of religious congregations as a sort of rough analogue here. At least in theory, they have both member-service and broader-benefit objectives (of course, your opinion on the extent to which this is true may depend on the congregation and religion in question). While something that near-exclusively benefits the broader community may get external funding (e.g., the church soup kitchen), at least in the US everything else is probably being paid for by member/âattendee donations.
And in a sense, the self-funding mechanism provides something of a check on concerns that a membership-based democratic organization will weight its membersâ welfare too much. If self-funding is predominant, then the members have implicitly decided that the extent to which they value the personal benefits of the organization plus their estimate of the organizationâs broader altruist achievements justifies the expenses.
In contrast, I would be hesitant to draw too many conclusions from EA Norwayâs ability to attract non-member/âsupporter funding. As a practical matter, âEA org in a small countryâ may be a pseudo-monopoly in the sense that having multiple organizations in the same ecological niche may not be healthy or sustainable. External funder decisions could merely reflect the reality that the niche is occupied adequately enough, rather than a belief that the EA Norway approach would outcompete alternative approaches. Thatâs relevant insofar as other meta functions may have a larger organizational carrying capacity than âEA org in a small countryâ does.
I am sympathetic to this argument vibes wise and I thought this was an elegant numerate utilitarian case for it. Part of my motivation is that I think it would be good if a lot of EA-ish values were a lot more mainstream. Like, I would even say that you probably get non-linear returns to scale in some important ways. You kind of need a critical mass of people to do certain things.
It feels like, necessarily, these organizations would also be about providing value to the members as well. That is a good thing.
I think there is something like a âbut what if we get watered down too muchâ concern latent here. I can kind of see how this would happen, but I am also not that worried about it. The tent is already pretty big in some ways. Stuff like numerate utilitarianism, empiricism, broad moral circles, thoughtfulness, tough trade-offs doesnât seem in danger of going away soon. Probably EA growing would spread these ideas rather than shrink them.
Also, I just think that societies/âpeople all over the world could significantly benefit from stronger third pillars and that the ideal versions of these sorts of community spaces would tend to share a lot of things in common with EA.
Picture it. The year is 2035 (9 years after the RSI near-miss event triggered the first Great Revolt). You ride your bitchinâ electric scooter to the EA-adjacent community center where you and your friends co-work on a local voter awareness campaign, startup idea, or just a fun painting or whatever. An intentional community.
That sounds like a step towards the glorious transhumanist future to me, but maybe the margins on that are bad in practice and the community centers of my day dreams will remain merely EA-adjacent. Perhaps, I just need to move to a town with cooler libraries. I am really not sure what the Dao here is or where the official EA brand really fits into any of this.
We run something similar in Munich, where we have a coworking space that also hosts EA-adjacent events (including crafting events), located in the middle of the city, allowing people to bike there. So, very sympathetic to the idea of having local groups doing this.
One could think of religious congregations as a sort of rough analogue here. At least in theory, they have both member-service and broader-benefit objectives (of course, your opinion on the extent to which this is true may depend on the congregation and religion in question). While something that near-exclusively benefits the broader community may get external funding (e.g., the church soup kitchen), at least in the US everything else is probably being paid for by member/âattendee donations.
And in a sense, the self-funding mechanism provides something of a check on concerns that a membership-based democratic organization will weight its membersâ welfare too much. If self-funding is predominant, then the members have implicitly decided that the extent to which they value the personal benefits of the organization plus their estimate of the organizationâs broader altruist achievements justifies the expenses.
In contrast, I would be hesitant to draw too many conclusions from EA Norwayâs ability to attract non-member/âsupporter funding. As a practical matter, âEA org in a small countryâ may be a pseudo-monopoly in the sense that having multiple organizations in the same ecological niche may not be healthy or sustainable. External funder decisions could merely reflect the reality that the niche is occupied adequately enough, rather than a belief that the EA Norway approach would outcompete alternative approaches. Thatâs relevant insofar as other meta functions may have a larger organizational carrying capacity than âEA org in a small countryâ does.