I would like to note (although I don’t quite know what to do with this information) that the proposed method of gathering feedback leaves out at least 3 billion people who don’t have internet access. In practice, it’s probably also limited to gathering information from countries/in languages with at least some EA presence already (and mainly English speaking). Now, from a “optimize spread of EA ideas” perspective, it might be reasonable to focus in wealthier countries to reach people with more leverage (ie. expected earnings), but there are reasons to pay attention to this:
1) It could be very useful to have a population of EAs with background/lived experience in developing countries, to aid in idea generation for new international development programs.
2) EA might end up not spreading very much to people living in countries like China/India, which will become more economically important in the future.
3) We might end up making a mistake on some philosophically important issue due to biases in the background of most people in the EA movement. (I don’t have a good example of what this looks like, but there might be, say, system 1 factors arising from the culture where you grow up that influence your position on issues of population ethics or something).
I also don’t know how to go about this on the object level, or whether it’s the best place for marginal EA investment right now. (I also think that EA orgs involved in international development will have access to more of these diverse perspectives, but the point I make is that they aren’t present in the meta-level discussions).
I would like to note (although I don’t quite know what to do with this information) that the proposed method of gathering feedback leaves out at least 3 billion people who don’t have internet access. In practice, it’s probably also limited to gathering information from countries/in languages with at least some EA presence already (and mainly English speaking). Now, from a “optimize spread of EA ideas” perspective, it might be reasonable to focus in wealthier countries to reach people with more leverage (ie. expected earnings), but there are reasons to pay attention to this:
1) It could be very useful to have a population of EAs with background/lived experience in developing countries, to aid in idea generation for new international development programs. 2) EA might end up not spreading very much to people living in countries like China/India, which will become more economically important in the future. 3) We might end up making a mistake on some philosophically important issue due to biases in the background of most people in the EA movement. (I don’t have a good example of what this looks like, but there might be, say, system 1 factors arising from the culture where you grow up that influence your position on issues of population ethics or something).
I also don’t know how to go about this on the object level, or whether it’s the best place for marginal EA investment right now. (I also think that EA orgs involved in international development will have access to more of these diverse perspectives, but the point I make is that they aren’t present in the meta-level discussions).