I agree with your general point, i.e., we shouldn’t forget that EA meta work is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. I’m also very suspicious of most ‘X but for EAs’ initiatives.
However, I also think it’s useful to have proximate objectives, and ‘entertain EAs’ is probably a good proximate objective for someone doing your work (if I’ve understood your role correctly[1]). Similarly, I think ‘build a community for Dutch EAs’ is a good proximate objective for us at EA Netherlands.
My general vibes-based take is that most people doing analogous work in the social impact space over-prioritise these proximate objectives, but most people in the meta EA space currently under-prioritise them.
The failure mode we want to avoid isn’t ‘EAs are entertained/​find community through my work’. Instead, it’s either ‘EAs are entertained/​find community through my work but it doesn’t improve their thinking or coordination’ OR ‘EAs are not entertained/​finding community through my work and therefore it doesn’t improve their thinking or coordination’.
(To be clear: I don’t think we should spend more resources on inward-facing work—in fact I think we should reallocate towards outward-facing work. I just think those doing inward-facing work should put more weight on proximate objectives.)
Interesting—why do you think that?
I agree with your general point, i.e., we shouldn’t forget that EA meta work is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. I’m also very suspicious of most ‘X but for EAs’ initiatives.
However, I also think it’s useful to have proximate objectives, and ‘entertain EAs’ is probably a good proximate objective for someone doing your work (if I’ve understood your role correctly[1]). Similarly, I think ‘build a community for Dutch EAs’ is a good proximate objective for us at EA Netherlands.
My general vibes-based take is that most people doing analogous work in the social impact space over-prioritise these proximate objectives, but most people in the meta EA space currently under-prioritise them.
The failure mode we want to avoid isn’t ‘EAs are entertained/​find community through my work’. Instead, it’s either ‘EAs are entertained/​find community through my work but it doesn’t improve their thinking or coordination’ OR ‘EAs are not entertained/​finding community through my work and therefore it doesn’t improve their thinking or coordination’.
(To be clear: I don’t think we should spend more resources on inward-facing work—in fact I think we should reallocate towards outward-facing work. I just think those doing inward-facing work should put more weight on proximate objectives.)
Faciliate the creation of EA-related content → EAs engage with it → this improves their thinking/​coordination/​decisions → better impact