″… on the margin, it sounds like we have more cost-effective forms of outreach.”
Could you say more about what you have in mind?
(Asking because I personally don’t see any compelling alternative to a substantial fraction of EA folks raising children, especially when I consider a > 20-year time horizon.)
He basically agrees with Michael that having children and raising them as EAs is unlikely to be as cost-effective as spreading EA to existing adults. He also seems to feel somewhat uncomfortable about the idea of raising children as EAs.
I’m personally not sure, but this is what I hear from others in this thread and elsewhere. I’d be thinking the EA Community fund, university groups, running EA fellowships, GWWC, TLYCS, EA orgs to take volunteers/interns. Maybe we are close to saturation with the people who would be sympathetic to EA, and we just need to make more people at this point, but I don’t think this is the case, since there’s still room for more local groups.
I’ve been the primary organizer for the EA club at my university for a couple years, and I think a few of the members would not have been into EA at all or nearly as much without me (no one else would have run it if I didn’t when I did, after the previous presidents left the city), but maybe they would have found their way into EA eventually anyway, and there’s of course a risk of value drift. This is less work than raising a child (maybe 5-10 hours/week EDIT: or is that similar to raising a child or more? Once they’re in school, it might take less work?), has no financial cost, and I made close friends doing it. I think starting a local group where there isn’t one (or running an otherwise fairly inactive one) can get you at least one new fairly dedicated EA per year, but I’m not sure how many dedicated EA person-years that actually buys you.
How likely is the child of an EA to be an EA in the long run? And does it lead to value drift for the parents?
″… on the margin, it sounds like we have more cost-effective forms of outreach.”
Could you say more about what you have in mind?
(Asking because I personally don’t see any compelling alternative to a substantial fraction of EA folks raising children, especially when I consider a > 20-year time horizon.)
By the way, Toby Ord weighs in on this at 24:33 in his Global Reconnect interview.
He basically agrees with Michael that having children and raising them as EAs is unlikely to be as cost-effective as spreading EA to existing adults. He also seems to feel somewhat uncomfortable about the idea of raising children as EAs.
I’m personally not sure, but this is what I hear from others in this thread and elsewhere. I’d be thinking the EA Community fund, university groups, running EA fellowships, GWWC, TLYCS, EA orgs to take volunteers/interns. Maybe we are close to saturation with the people who would be sympathetic to EA, and we just need to make more people at this point, but I don’t think this is the case, since there’s still room for more local groups.
I’ve been the primary organizer for the EA club at my university for a couple years, and I think a few of the members would not have been into EA at all or nearly as much without me (no one else would have run it if I didn’t when I did, after the previous presidents left the city), but maybe they would have found their way into EA eventually anyway, and there’s of course a risk of value drift. This is less work than raising a child (maybe 5-10 hours/week EDIT: or is that similar to raising a child or more? Once they’re in school, it might take less work?), has no financial cost, and I made close friends doing it. I think starting a local group where there isn’t one (or running an otherwise fairly inactive one) can get you at least one new fairly dedicated EA per year, but I’m not sure how many dedicated EA person-years that actually buys you.
How likely is the child of an EA to be an EA in the long run? And does it lead to value drift for the parents?