To use EA terms, this was an absolute banger of a post. As someone who’s 2 weeks from the process of starting up a club from scratch I will certainly use the tips and tricks in this post in the future, great fricking job man!
On a side note I’ve had some ideas about running an EA related competition on campus, have you thought about something similar before? I was thinking it would be like an essay competition with the goal of coming up with an idea that saves the most lives. You give the people interested information that they can evaluate their ideas with (EA stuff) and when they’re done you rate the idea on estimated effectiveness. This should increase interest in EA ideas as they get to do something interactive. I am planning on running a small scale experiment of this and some reflections on whether and how to do it would be appreciated!
That’s very sweet, thank you Jonas! I have been in some conversations about EA essay/idea competitions similar to what you’ve mentioned, but haven’t thought much about it. I think we’re also thinking about ideas like hackathons as experimental outreach mechanisms to try out. How do you think something like what you’re proposing would compare to the more standard intro EA programming (like intro talks and fellowships)?
One of the bigger parts is probably that it would have a public prize attached to it. I get the feeling from people outside EA that altruism is charity and nothing that you can actually do a career within. A person has a certain threshold of motivation before digging into EA. I believe this threshold would be easier to get through if you had a potential explicit reward at the end of it (a carrot on a stick). It might also generate some interesting ideas that could be tried out. Essentially, the idea is that it would turbocharge the fellowships as they would have something to apply the ideas of EA to.
To use EA terms, this was an absolute banger of a post. As someone who’s 2 weeks from the process of starting up a club from scratch I will certainly use the tips and tricks in this post in the future, great fricking job man!
On a side note I’ve had some ideas about running an EA related competition on campus, have you thought about something similar before? I was thinking it would be like an essay competition with the goal of coming up with an idea that saves the most lives. You give the people interested information that they can evaluate their ideas with (EA stuff) and when they’re done you rate the idea on estimated effectiveness. This should increase interest in EA ideas as they get to do something interactive. I am planning on running a small scale experiment of this and some reflections on whether and how to do it would be appreciated!
That’s very sweet, thank you Jonas! I have been in some conversations about EA essay/idea competitions similar to what you’ve mentioned, but haven’t thought much about it. I think we’re also thinking about ideas like hackathons as experimental outreach mechanisms to try out. How do you think something like what you’re proposing would compare to the more standard intro EA programming (like intro talks and fellowships)?
One of the bigger parts is probably that it would have a public prize attached to it. I get the feeling from people outside EA that altruism is charity and nothing that you can actually do a career within. A person has a certain threshold of motivation before digging into EA. I believe this threshold would be easier to get through if you had a potential explicit reward at the end of it (a carrot on a stick). It might also generate some interesting ideas that could be tried out. Essentially, the idea is that it would turbocharge the fellowships as they would have something to apply the ideas of EA to.