Liked this a lot—reframing the goal of CB as optimizing for high alignment and high competence is useful.
I’m not sure I totally agree, though. I want there to be some EA community-building that is optimizing for alignment but not competence: I imagine this would be focused on spreading awareness of the principles—as there (probably) remains a significant number who may be sympathetic but haven’t heard of EA—as well as encouraging personal reflection, application, and general community vibes. I haven’t totally let go of the Singer & GWWC vision of spreading EA memes throughout society.
However, I do think optimizing for alignment + competence is the right direction for meta-EA (e.g., talent search to help tackle X cause), and helps explain why I think field-building is the frontier of meta-EA.
Liked this a lot—reframing the goal of CB as optimizing for high alignment and high competence is useful.
I’m not sure I totally agree, though. I want there to be some EA community-building that is optimizing for alignment but not competence: I imagine this would be focused on spreading awareness of the principles—as there (probably) remains a significant number who may be sympathetic but haven’t heard of EA—as well as encouraging personal reflection, application, and general community vibes. I haven’t totally let go of the Singer & GWWC vision of spreading EA memes throughout society.
However, I do think optimizing for alignment + competence is the right direction for meta-EA (e.g., talent search to help tackle X cause), and helps explain why I think field-building is the frontier of meta-EA.