Thanks for this! Can someone clarify the difference between “EA movement building” and “Meta (Other than EA movement building)”?
I’m not sure why that distinction was made, or what the distinction is. I’m not sure if survey respondents would have understood the distinction either. If this distinction is going to be kept for future surveys, explaining the difference between those two in the survey might be needed.
The context here was that we’ve always asked about “Meta” since the first surveys, but this year an org was extremely keen that we ask explicitly about “EA movement building” and separate out Meta which was not movement building.
In future years, we could well move back to just asking about Meta, or just ask about movement building, given that non-EA movement building meta both received relatively low support and was fairly well correlated with movement building.
Thanks for clarifying! But I’d still like to hear more about you or the org’s conception of the difference between EA movement building and Meta work that is not movement building.
I can’t speak for others, but I don’t think there’s any specific theoretical conception of the categories beyond the formal specification of the categories (EA movement building and Meta (other than EA movement building). Other people might have different substantive views about what does or does not count as EA movement building, specifically.
I think the pattern of results this year, when we split out these options, suggests that most respondents understood our historical “Meta” category to primarily refer to EA movement building. As noted, EA movement building received much higher support this year than non-EA movement meta; EA movement building also received similar levels of support to “Meta” in previous years; EA movement building and Meta (other than EA movement building) were quite well correlated, but only ~12% of respondents rated Meta (other than EA movement building) higher than EA movement building (44% rated movement building higher, and 43% rated them exactly the same).
I think this suggests either that we could have just kept the Meta category as in previous years or that in future years we could consider dropping Meta other than movement building as a category (though, in general, it is strongly preferable not to change categories across years).
Got it! I would guess that engaged EAs would think Meta work that is not movement building might be referring to fundraising for other causes. So I think it makes sense that it’s not a high priority, given the large amount of funding already committed to EA.
Thanks for this! Can someone clarify the difference between “EA movement building” and “Meta (Other than EA movement building)”?
I’m not sure why that distinction was made, or what the distinction is. I’m not sure if survey respondents would have understood the distinction either. If this distinction is going to be kept for future surveys, explaining the difference between those two in the survey might be needed.
The context here was that we’ve always asked about “Meta” since the first surveys, but this year an org was extremely keen that we ask explicitly about “EA movement building” and separate out Meta which was not movement building.
In future years, we could well move back to just asking about Meta, or just ask about movement building, given that non-EA movement building meta both received relatively low support and was fairly well correlated with movement building.
Thanks for clarifying! But I’d still like to hear more about you or the org’s conception of the difference between EA movement building and Meta work that is not movement building.
I can’t speak for others, but I don’t think there’s any specific theoretical conception of the categories beyond the formal specification of the categories (EA movement building and Meta (other than EA movement building). Other people might have different substantive views about what does or does not count as EA movement building, specifically.
I think the pattern of results this year, when we split out these options, suggests that most respondents understood our historical “Meta” category to primarily refer to EA movement building. As noted, EA movement building received much higher support this year than non-EA movement meta; EA movement building also received similar levels of support to “Meta” in previous years; EA movement building and Meta (other than EA movement building) were quite well correlated, but only ~12% of respondents rated Meta (other than EA movement building) higher than EA movement building (44% rated movement building higher, and 43% rated them exactly the same).
I think this suggests either that we could have just kept the Meta category as in previous years or that in future years we could consider dropping Meta other than movement building as a category (though, in general, it is strongly preferable not to change categories across years).
Got it! I would guess that engaged EAs would think Meta work that is not movement building might be referring to fundraising for other causes. So I think it makes sense that it’s not a high priority, given the large amount of funding already committed to EA.