Edit: The screenshots below no longer reflect the exact look of the site, since I went ahead and did some of the reshuffling of the “Key Ideas” series that I mentioned. But the only change to the content of that series was the removal of “Crucial Considerations and Wise Philanthropy, which I’d been meaning to get to for a while. Thanks for the prompt!
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Though I’m a bit confused by this comment (see below), I’m really glad you’ve been keeping up the conversation! At any given time, there are many things I could be working on, and it’s quite plausible that I’ve invested too little time in EA.org relative to other things with less readership. I’m glad to be poked and prodded into rethinking that approach.
Which reading list are you referring to? (Edit: see here)
The “Key Ideas” list of introductory articles (see the bottom of this page) has always included the GHD article (at least since I started working at CEA in late 2018):
I think it would be perfectly reasonable to have more than one article on this topic (as we will once the Fellowship content becomes our main set of intro resources). And I do plan to reshuffle the article list a bit this week to move the Global Health and Animal Welfare articles towards the top (I agree they should be more prominent). But I wanted to make sure we didn’t have some other part of the site where this article isn’t showing up.
As for future variants on our intro content:
You can see the EA Fellowship curriculum here. That set of articles is almost identical to what will show up on the Forum soon (I have several sequences published in “hidden” mode, and will publicize them once my project partner signs off).
To briefly summarize, there are eight separate “sequences” in the Fellowship:
Two on general EA principles + cost-effectiveness calculation (mostly explained through examples from global health)
One on moral circle expansion (mostly animal welfare)
One on longtermism, generally
One on existential risk, generally
One on biorisk + AI risk
One on epistemics and forecasting
One on “putting it into practice” (careers + donations + research ideas)
Once we’ve adapted EA.org to refer to this content as our default introduction, I anticipate we’ll remove most of our current intro articles from prominent places on the site (though I’m not certain of which will remain).
I’ve already shared this list of articles with a lot of people in the categories “focuses on non-longtermist causes” and/or “has written good critiques of EA things”, to get feedback on what they think of the topic balance/exact articles chosen. I’d also welcome feedback from anyone seeing this — and of course, once we actually publish the Forum version, I’ll be hoping to get lots of suggestions from the hundreds of people who will see it soon afterward.
Thank you for making these changes Aaron, and for your openness to this discussion and feedback!
You’re correct, I was referring to the reading list on the homepage. The changes you made there, to the key ideas series, and to the resources page (especially when you complete the planned reordering) all seem like substantial improvements. I really appreciate that you’ve updated the site!
I took a quick look at the Fellowship content, and it generally looks like you’ve chosen good content and done a reasonable job of providing a balanced overview of EA (thanks for getting input from the perspectives you mentioned). Ironically, my main quibble with the content (and it’s note a huge one) is that it’s too EA-centric. For example, if I was trying to convince someone that pandemics are important I’d show them Bill Gates’ TED Talk on pandemics rather than an EA podcast as the former approach leverages Gates’ and TED’s credibility.
While I generally think the Fellowship content appears good (at least after a brief review), I still think it’d be a very big mistake to “adapt EA.org to refer to this content as our default introduction.” The Fellowship is for people who opt into participating in an 8 week program with an estimated 2-3 hours of preparation for each weekly session. EA.org is for people who google “effective altruism”. There’s an enormous difference between those two audiences, and the content they see should reflect that difference.
As an example, the first piece of core content in the Fellowship is a 30 minute intro to EA video, whereas I’d imagine EA.org should try to communicate key ideas in just a few minutes and then quickly try to get people to e.g. sign up for the EA Newsletter. That said, we shouldn’t have to guess what content works best on the EA.org homepage, we should be able to figure it out experimentally through A/B testing.
It generally looks like you’ve chosen good content and done a reasonable job of providing a balanced overview of EA.
Credit goes to James Aung, Will Payne, and others (I don’t know the full list) who created the curriculum! I was one of many people asked to provide feedback, but I’m responsible for maybe 2% of the final content, if that.
Ironically, my main quibble with the content (and it’s note a huge one) is that it’s too EA-centric. For example, if I was trying to convince someone that pandemics are important I’d show them Bill Gates’ TED Talk on pandemics rather than an EA podcast as the former approach leverages Gates’ and TED’s credibility.
I think this is a very reasonable quibble. In the context of “this person already signed up for a fellowship”, the additional credibility may be less important, but this is definitely a consideration that could apply to “random people finding the content online”.
The Fellowship is for people who opt into participating in an 8 week program with an estimated 2-3 hours of preparation for each weekly session. EA.org is for people who google “effective altruism”. There’s an enormous difference between those two audiences, and the content they see should reflect that difference.
I wholly agree, and I certainly wouldn’t subject our random Googlers to eight weeks’ worth of material! To clarify, by “this content” I mean “some of this content, probably a similar amount to the amount of content we now feature on EA.org″, rather than “all ~80 articles”.
The current introduction to EA, which links people to the newsletter and some other basic resources, will continue to be the first piece of content we show people. Some of the other articles are likely to be replaced by articles or sequences from the Fellowship — but with an emphasis on relatively brief and approachable content.
I certainly wouldn’t subject our random Googlers to eight weeks’ worth of material! To clarify, by “this content” I mean “some of this content, probably a similar amount to the amount of content we now feature on EA.org″, rather than “all ~80 articles”.
Ah, thanks for clarifying :) The devil is always in the details, but “brief and approachable content” following the same rough structure as the fellowship sounds very promising. I look forward to seeing the new site!
Edit: The screenshots below no longer reflect the exact look of the site, since I went ahead and did some of the reshuffling of the “Key Ideas” series that I mentioned. But the only change to the content of that series was the removal of “Crucial Considerations and Wise Philanthropy, which I’d been meaning to get to for a while. Thanks for the prompt!
*****
Though I’m a bit confused by this comment (see below), I’m really glad you’ve been keeping up the conversation! At any given time, there are many things I could be working on, and it’s quite plausible that I’ve invested too little time in EA.org relative to other things with less readership. I’m glad to be poked and prodded into rethinking that approach.
Regarding my confusion:
Which reading list are you referring to? (Edit: see here)
The “Key Ideas” list of introductory articles (see the bottom of this page) has always included the GHD article (at least since I started working at CEA in late 2018):
So has the Resources page:
I think it would be perfectly reasonable to have more than one article on this topic (as we will once the Fellowship content becomes our main set of intro resources). And I do plan to reshuffle the article list a bit this week to move the Global Health and Animal Welfare articles towards the top (I agree they should be more prominent). But I wanted to make sure we didn’t have some other part of the site where this article isn’t showing up.
As for future variants on our intro content:
You can see the EA Fellowship curriculum here. That set of articles is almost identical to what will show up on the Forum soon (I have several sequences published in “hidden” mode, and will publicize them once my project partner signs off).
To briefly summarize, there are eight separate “sequences” in the Fellowship:
Two on general EA principles + cost-effectiveness calculation (mostly explained through examples from global health)
One on moral circle expansion (mostly animal welfare)
One on longtermism, generally
One on existential risk, generally
One on biorisk + AI risk
One on epistemics and forecasting
One on “putting it into practice” (careers + donations + research ideas)
Once we’ve adapted EA.org to refer to this content as our default introduction, I anticipate we’ll remove most of our current intro articles from prominent places on the site (though I’m not certain of which will remain).
I’ve already shared this list of articles with a lot of people in the categories “focuses on non-longtermist causes” and/or “has written good critiques of EA things”, to get feedback on what they think of the topic balance/exact articles chosen. I’d also welcome feedback from anyone seeing this — and of course, once we actually publish the Forum version, I’ll be hoping to get lots of suggestions from the hundreds of people who will see it soon afterward.
Thank you for making these changes Aaron, and for your openness to this discussion and feedback!
You’re correct, I was referring to the reading list on the homepage. The changes you made there, to the key ideas series, and to the resources page (especially when you complete the planned reordering) all seem like substantial improvements. I really appreciate that you’ve updated the site!
I took a quick look at the Fellowship content, and it generally looks like you’ve chosen good content and done a reasonable job of providing a balanced overview of EA (thanks for getting input from the perspectives you mentioned). Ironically, my main quibble with the content (and it’s note a huge one) is that it’s too EA-centric. For example, if I was trying to convince someone that pandemics are important I’d show them Bill Gates’ TED Talk on pandemics rather than an EA podcast as the former approach leverages Gates’ and TED’s credibility.
While I generally think the Fellowship content appears good (at least after a brief review), I still think it’d be a very big mistake to “adapt EA.org to refer to this content as our default introduction.” The Fellowship is for people who opt into participating in an 8 week program with an estimated 2-3 hours of preparation for each weekly session. EA.org is for people who google “effective altruism”. There’s an enormous difference between those two audiences, and the content they see should reflect that difference.
As an example, the first piece of core content in the Fellowship is a 30 minute intro to EA video, whereas I’d imagine EA.org should try to communicate key ideas in just a few minutes and then quickly try to get people to e.g. sign up for the EA Newsletter. That said, we shouldn’t have to guess what content works best on the EA.org homepage, we should be able to figure it out experimentally through A/B testing.
Credit goes to James Aung, Will Payne, and others (I don’t know the full list) who created the curriculum! I was one of many people asked to provide feedback, but I’m responsible for maybe 2% of the final content, if that.
I think this is a very reasonable quibble. In the context of “this person already signed up for a fellowship”, the additional credibility may be less important, but this is definitely a consideration that could apply to “random people finding the content online”.
I wholly agree, and I certainly wouldn’t subject our random Googlers to eight weeks’ worth of material! To clarify, by “this content” I mean “some of this content, probably a similar amount to the amount of content we now feature on EA.org″, rather than “all ~80 articles”.
The current introduction to EA, which links people to the newsletter and some other basic resources, will continue to be the first piece of content we show people. Some of the other articles are likely to be replaced by articles or sequences from the Fellowship — but with an emphasis on relatively brief and approachable content.
Ah, thanks for clarifying :) The devil is always in the details, but “brief and approachable content” following the same rough structure as the fellowship sounds very promising. I look forward to seeing the new site!