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:
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.
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.