I’m less confident about WWOTF greatly increasing the amount of funding we have access to as we already have access to quite a significant amount of funding. That said, the current sources of EA funding are a bit too correlated, so anything that broadens the pool is great :-).
Maybe the biggest difference is that EA is transitioning from mostly staying out of the public spotlight to entering it (when EA first started there was more of an effort to get EA into the media, but this seems to have been de-emphasised when it was realised that it wasn’t really persuading people to join vs. appearances on niche podcasts). But as EA has become more influential, we naturally started drawing more attention and so there really wasn’t any option apart from engaging with the public more.
I’m less confident about WWOTF greatly increasing the amount of funding we have access to as we already have access to quite a significant amount of funding. That said, the current sources of EA funding are a bit too correlated, so anything that broadens the pool is great :-).
Maybe the biggest difference is that EA is transitioning from mostly staying out of the public spotlight to entering it (when EA first started there was more of an effort to get EA into the media, but this seems to have been de-emphasised when it was realised that it wasn’t really persuading people to join vs. appearances on niche podcasts). But as EA has become more influential, we naturally started drawing more attention and so there really wasn’t any option apart from engaging with the public more.
I think it is likely that increased attention will lead to increased funding, but the question is on what timescales, and by what magnitude. Relatively recent numbers showed that the clear majority of people, even among US college students, had not heard of EA, which means it’s very unlikely that the potential funder pool is already saturated https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qQMLGqe4z95i6kJPE/how-many-people-have-heard-of-effective-altruism