I’m on the side of value alignment being much more important than people often think as it’s hard to get anywhere if people want to go five different ways and it’s easy for organisational culture to be diluted in the absence of an explicit effort to maintain it.
That said, outside of community-building roles, particular frames are more important than whether a person identifies as EA (someone can have these frames without identifying as EA or lack them when identifying as an EA). These include attempting to do the most good that you can do[1], respect for evidence and reason and a willingness to step outside of the social reality. You can find people like this outside of the EA community, but it’s much rarer outside of people who are at least EA adjacent.
I’d be much more open to bringing in experienced non-EA’s who don’t necessarily have these attributes in advisory capabilities.
I’m on the side of value alignment being much more important than people often think as it’s hard to get anywhere if people want to go five different ways and it’s easy for organisational culture to be diluted in the absence of an explicit effort to maintain it.
That said, outside of community-building roles, particular frames are more important than whether a person identifies as EA (someone can have these frames without identifying as EA or lack them when identifying as an EA). These include attempting to do the most good that you can do[1], respect for evidence and reason and a willingness to step outside of the social reality. You can find people like this outside of the EA community, but it’s much rarer outside of people who are at least EA adjacent.
I’d be much more open to bringing in experienced non-EA’s who don’t necessarily have these attributes in advisory capabilities.
This does not imply being a naive maximiser.