I don’t mean to be rude, but this feels a bit like a non-result, since as your conclusion puts it effective altruists are basically people who like to act altruistically and like to be effective. Also seems not surprising that there’s a small confluence of the two based on the fact that EA growth has slowed after quickly reaching most of the people who were going to be interested in it. It’s nice to have some studies to back up the anecdotes powering the Basyesian evidence we already had about these claims, but am I correct that this is basically what you found?
Has EA growth slowed?
Has EA reached most of the people who were going to be interested in it?
Where are you getting this from?
The Spanish-speaking community is growing fast. I assume there are other countries/languages that are yet to be significantly reached, all of which are bound to have some amount of people with significant E and A factors.
Yes, I suppose I left out non-English. I should have more properly made my claim that growth has slowed in English-speaking countries where the ideas have already had time to saturate and reach more of the affected people.
I forget where I got this from. I’m sure I can dig something up, but I seem to recall other posts on this forum showing that the growth of EA in places where it was already established had slowed.
It’s unclear to me we’ve really investigated deeply enough to say that. We just know these factors matter, but it still seems quite possible that lots of other factors matter or that those other factors cause these two.
I don’t mean to be rude, but this feels a bit like a non-result, since as your conclusion puts it effective altruists are basically people who like to act altruistically and like to be effective. Also seems not surprising that there’s a small confluence of the two based on the fact that EA growth has slowed after quickly reaching most of the people who were going to be interested in it. It’s nice to have some studies to back up the anecdotes powering the Basyesian evidence we already had about these claims, but am I correct that this is basically what you found?
Has EA growth slowed? Has EA reached most of the people who were going to be interested in it? Where are you getting this from?
The Spanish-speaking community is growing fast. I assume there are other countries/languages that are yet to be significantly reached, all of which are bound to have some amount of people with significant E and A factors.
Yes, I suppose I left out non-English. I should have more properly made my claim that growth has slowed in English-speaking countries where the ideas have already had time to saturate and reach more of the affected people.
I forget where I got this from. I’m sure I can dig something up, but I seem to recall other posts on this forum showing that the growth of EA in places where it was already established had slowed.
I don’t think that the supposed lack of EA growth is evidence that there’s small correlation between the two factors. Seems like hindsight bias to me.
At least for myself, it wouldn’t have been obvious in advance that there would be exactly two factors, as opposed to (say) one, three or four.
It’s unclear to me we’ve really investigated deeply enough to say that. We just know these factors matter, but it still seems quite possible that lots of other factors matter or that those other factors cause these two.
Fair. In that case this seems like a necessary prerequisite result for doing that deeper investigation, though, so valuable in that respect.