(note that I’m not speaking about CEEALAR or any other specific EAIF applicants/grantees specifically)
I understand that CEEALAR has created a low-cost hotel/coworking space in the UK for relatively junior people to stay while they work on research projects relevant to GCRs. I think that you had some strategic updates recently so some of my impression of your work may be out of date. Supporting people early on in their impact-focused careers seems really valuable, I’ve seen lots of people go through in-person retreats and quickly start doing valuable work.
At the same time, I think projects that take lots of junior people and put them in the same physical space for an extended period whilst asking them to work on important and thorny questions have various risks (e.g. negative effects on mental health, attracting negative press to EA, trapping people in suboptimal learning environments).
I think some features of projects in this reference class I’d be excited to see (though it’s NOT a list of requirements): * located in an existing hub so that program participants have plenty of people outside the program to interact with * generally taking people with good counterfactual options outside of EA areas so that people don’t feel “trapped” and because this is correlated with being able to do very useful stuff within EA cause areas quickly * trying to foster an excellent intellectual environment—ideally, there would be a critical mass of thoughtful people and truth-seeking epistemic norms * having a good track record of a high proportion of people leaving and entering high-impact roles * taking community health seriously, incidents should be handled in a professional manner and generally, projects should adhere to sensible best practices (e.g. amongst full-time staff, there shouldn’t be romantic relationships between managers and their direct reports)
I recently spent some time in the Meridian Office, a co-working space in Cambridge UK for people working on pressing problems, which seems to be doing a good job on all of the points above (though I haven’t evaluated them properly).
(Note that I don’t mean to imply that CEEALAR is or isn’t doing well on the above points, as I don’t want to talk about specific EAIF grantees.)
located in an existing hub so that program participants have plenty of people outside the program to interact with
I don’t understand this consideration. It seems to me that people located in a place with a more robust existing community are the people that would counterfactually benefit the least from a place to interact with other EAs, because they have plenty of opportunities to do so already.
I’m assuming by “hub” you mean “EA hub”, but if by “hub” you mean “a place with high population density/otherwise a lot of people to talk to”, then this makes sense.
(Full disclosure: I was a grantee of CEEALAR last year; but I’m thinking about this in the context of non-residential office/co-working spaces like Meridian Office).
I agree that people in existing EA hubs are more likely to come across others doing high value work than people located outside of hubs.
That said, on the current margin, I still think many counterfactually connections happen at office spaces in existing EA hubs. In the context of non residential spaces, I’m not really sure who would use an EA office space outside existing EA hubs so I’m finding the comparison between office in a hub vs office outside a hub a little confusing (whereas with CEEALAR I understand who would use it).
I imagine there could be a useful office in a city with ~20 people using it regularly and ~100 people interested enough in EA to come to some events, and I wouldn’t think of that city as an “EA hub”.
I also think eg. a London office has much more value than an eg. an Oxford or Cambridge office (although I understand all three to be hubs), even though Oxford and Cambridge have a higher EA-density.
(note that I’m not speaking about CEEALAR or any other specific EAIF applicants/grantees specifically)
I understand that CEEALAR has created a low-cost hotel/coworking space in the UK for relatively junior people to stay while they work on research projects relevant to GCRs. I think that you had some strategic updates recently so some of my impression of your work may be out of date. Supporting people early on in their impact-focused careers seems really valuable, I’ve seen lots of people go through in-person retreats and quickly start doing valuable work.
At the same time, I think projects that take lots of junior people and put them in the same physical space for an extended period whilst asking them to work on important and thorny questions have various risks (e.g. negative effects on mental health, attracting negative press to EA, trapping people in suboptimal learning environments).
I think some features of projects in this reference class I’d be excited to see (though it’s NOT a list of requirements):
* located in an existing hub so that program participants have plenty of people outside the program to interact with
* generally taking people with good counterfactual options outside of EA areas so that people don’t feel “trapped” and because this is correlated with being able to do very useful stuff within EA cause areas quickly
* trying to foster an excellent intellectual environment—ideally, there would be a critical mass of thoughtful people and truth-seeking epistemic norms
* having a good track record of a high proportion of people leaving and entering high-impact roles
* taking community health seriously, incidents should be handled in a professional manner and generally, projects should adhere to sensible best practices (e.g. amongst full-time staff, there shouldn’t be romantic relationships between managers and their direct reports)
I recently spent some time in the Meridian Office, a co-working space in Cambridge UK for people working on pressing problems, which seems to be doing a good job on all of the points above (though I haven’t evaluated them properly).
(Note that I don’t mean to imply that CEEALAR is or isn’t doing well on the above points, as I don’t want to talk about specific EAIF grantees.)
I don’t understand this consideration. It seems to me that people located in a place with a more robust existing community are the people that would counterfactually benefit the least from a place to interact with other EAs, because they have plenty of opportunities to do so already.
I’m assuming by “hub” you mean “EA hub”, but if by “hub” you mean “a place with high population density/otherwise a lot of people to talk to”, then this makes sense.
(Full disclosure: I was a grantee of CEEALAR last year; but I’m thinking about this in the context of non-residential office/co-working spaces like Meridian Office).
I agree that people in existing EA hubs are more likely to come across others doing high value work than people located outside of hubs.
That said, on the current margin, I still think many counterfactually connections happen at office spaces in existing EA hubs. In the context of non residential spaces, I’m not really sure who would use an EA office space outside existing EA hubs so I’m finding the comparison between office in a hub vs office outside a hub a little confusing (whereas with CEEALAR I understand who would use it).
I imagine there could be a useful office in a city with ~20 people using it regularly and ~100 people interested enough in EA to come to some events, and I wouldn’t think of that city as an “EA hub”.
I also think eg. a London office has much more value than an eg. an Oxford or Cambridge office (although I understand all three to be hubs), even though Oxford and Cambridge have a higher EA-density.