Worth noting that if there are like 10,000 EAs today in the world with a population of 8,000,000,000, the percentage of EAs globally is 0.000125 percent.
If we keep the same proportion and apply that to the world population in 1776, there would be about 1,000 EAs globally and about 3 EAs in the United States. If they were overrepresented in the United States by a factor of ten, there would be about 30.
I guess on one hand, if this were the case, then EAs would be well-represented in America, given that it’s population in 1776 was just 2.5M, vs. the UK population of 8M.
On the other hand, I’d assume that if they were distributed across the US, many would have been farmers /​ low-income workers /​ slaves, so wouldn’t have been able to contribute much. There is an interesting question on how much labor mobility or inequality there was at the time.
Also, it seems like EAs got incredibly lucky with Dustin Moskovitz + Good Ventures. It’s hard to picture just how lucky we were with that, and what the corresponding scenarios would have been like in 1776.
Worth noting that if there are like 10,000 EAs today in the world with a population of 8,000,000,000, the percentage of EAs globally is 0.000125 percent.
If we keep the same proportion and apply that to the world population in 1776, there would be about 1,000 EAs globally and about 3 EAs in the United States. If they were overrepresented in the United States by a factor of ten, there would be about 30.
I was imagining a split similar to the present, in which over half of EAs were American or British.
I guess on one hand, if this were the case, then EAs would be well-represented in America, given that it’s population in 1776 was just 2.5M, vs. the UK population of 8M.
On the other hand, I’d assume that if they were distributed across the US, many would have been farmers /​ low-income workers /​ slaves, so wouldn’t have been able to contribute much. There is an interesting question on how much labor mobility or inequality there was at the time.
Also, it seems like EAs got incredibly lucky with Dustin Moskovitz + Good Ventures. It’s hard to picture just how lucky we were with that, and what the corresponding scenarios would have been like in 1776.
Could make for neat historical fiction.