Questions about a potential EA graphic novel
Hi! im vincent Söderberg, Been interested in EA for 7 years now. I have an arts education, and have been thinking on and off about an potential introduction to EA in the style of different Non-fiction graphic novels like bryan caplan and zach weinersmiths “open borders”. Im not certain that i could pull it off, but it is something i want to attempt.
some questions to everyone here:
What sorts of things or question would you have wanted from an introduction to EA?
What is the likelyhood that an Book like this would help EA, and introduce more people?
What balance of Introduction and Ease of learning vs Substance and important ideas should something like this have?
Have something similar to this been done? How should this be different from existing introductions like doing good better?
Does anyone here have experience in non fiction writing, or in Graphic novels and comics?
i was thinking that i would prototype this by Making shorter test comics about certain EA ideas, like Tractability or scope neglect for example. As im not an established professionall 8and have some disabilities), i would expect a whole graphic novel like this to take 3-4 years.
An intro-to-EA comic would be a lot of fun to see! There is some good introductory material out there on websites like 80,000 Hours, or the main “effectivealtruism.org” homepage. I think the biggest challenge for a comic would be finding good concrete images and stories with which to illustrate the abstract concepts of Effective Altruism.
To that end, I would love to see a series of short comics that mixed together:
individual EA concepts, like from each section of effectivealtruism.org’s introduction
some engaging graphs, maps, and etc data visualisation, maybe taking inspiration from the work of OurWorldInData
a few concrete stories of people who worked to make things better—like Norman Borlaug’s contributions to the “green revolution”, or the campaign to eradicate smallpox stretching from the invention of vaccines in the 1700s to the final push for eradication as organized by Victor Zhdanov. This fancy video about the unintended disaster caused by the invention of leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons kinda has the tone I am thinking of, using an interesting personal story as a way to talk about environmental issues and EA-adjacent ideas.
For instance, there is probably a great comic that could be written about existential risk and nuclear war—outlining a history of the cold war through some of the individual stories mentioned in this article, plus famous close-calls like the cuban missile crisis, sprinkling in some graphs and maps where appropriate, and using all that to support an overall message about the importance of protecting humanity’s long-term future.
For some more inspiration, you can peruse the Forum’s “Effective Altruism Art & Fiction” tag, or you can check out some previous comments of mine on similar topics.