I expect a project like this is not worth the cost. I imagine doing this well would require dozens of hours of interviews with people who are more senior in the EA movement, and I think many of those people’s time is often quite valuable.
Regarding the pros you mention:
I’m not convinced that building more EA ethos/identity based around shared history is a good thing. I expect this would make it even harder to pivot to new things or treat EA as a question, it also wouldn’t be unifying for many folks (e.g. who having been thinking about AI safety for a decade or who don’t buy longtermism). According to me, the bulk of people who call themselves EAs, like most groups, are too slow to update on new arguments and information and I would expect that having a written and agreed upon history would not help with this. Then again, my point might be made better if I could reference common historical cases of what I mean lol
I don’t see how this helps build trust.
I don’t see how having a written history makes the movement less likely to die. I also don’t know what it looks like for the EA movement to die or how bad this actually is; the EA movement is largely instrumental toward other things I care about: reducing suffering, increasing the chances of good stuff in the universe, my and my friends’ happiness to a lesser extent.
With ideas like this I sometimes ask myself “why hasn’t somebody done this yet”. Some reasons that come to mind: too busy doing other things they think are important, might come across as self aggrandizing, who’s going to read it?-and ways I expect it to get read are weird and indoctorinaty (“welcome to the club, here’s a book about our history”, as opposed to “oh, you want to do lots of good, here are some ideas that might be useful”), it doesn’t directly improve the world and the indirect path to impact is shakier than other meta things.
I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad idea. But so far I don’t see strong reasons to do this over the many other things openphil/cea/Kelsey piper/interviewees could be doing.
I’ve addressed the point on costs in other commentary, so we may just disagree there!
I think the core idea is that the EA ethos is about constantly asking how we can do the most good and updating based on new information. So the book would hopefully codify that spirit rather than just talk about how great we’re doing.
I find it easier to trust people whose motivations I understand and who have demonstrated strong character in the past. History can give a better sense of those two things. Reading about Julia Wise in Strangers Drowning, for example, did that for me.
Humans often think about things in terms of stories. If you want someone to care about global poverty, you have a few ways of approaching it. You could tell them how many people live in extreme poverty and that by donating to GiveDirectly they’ll get way more QALYs per dollar than they would by donating elsewhere. You could also tell them about your path to donating, and share a story from the GiveDirectly website about how a participant benefited the money they received. In my experience, that’s the better strategy. And absolutely, the EA community exists to serve a purpose. Right now I think it’s reasonably good at doing the things that I care about, so I want it to continue to exist.
Agreed!
I think there could be a particular audience for this book, and it likely wouldn’t be EA newbies. The project could also take on a lot of different forms, from empirical report to personal history, depending on the writer. Hopefully the right person sees this and decides to go for it if and when it makes sense! Regardless, your commentary is appreciated.
I expect a project like this is not worth the cost. I imagine doing this well would require dozens of hours of interviews with people who are more senior in the EA movement, and I think many of those people’s time is often quite valuable.
Regarding the pros you mention:
I’m not convinced that building more EA ethos/identity based around shared history is a good thing. I expect this would make it even harder to pivot to new things or treat EA as a question, it also wouldn’t be unifying for many folks (e.g. who having been thinking about AI safety for a decade or who don’t buy longtermism). According to me, the bulk of people who call themselves EAs, like most groups, are too slow to update on new arguments and information and I would expect that having a written and agreed upon history would not help with this. Then again, my point might be made better if I could reference common historical cases of what I mean lol
I don’t see how this helps build trust.
I don’t see how having a written history makes the movement less likely to die. I also don’t know what it looks like for the EA movement to die or how bad this actually is; the EA movement is largely instrumental toward other things I care about: reducing suffering, increasing the chances of good stuff in the universe, my and my friends’ happiness to a lesser extent.
This does seem like a value add to me, though the project I’m imagining only does a medium job at this given it’s goal is not “chronology of mistakes and missteps”. Maybe worth checking out https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/some-case-studies-in-early-field-growth/
With ideas like this I sometimes ask myself “why hasn’t somebody done this yet”. Some reasons that come to mind: too busy doing other things they think are important, might come across as self aggrandizing, who’s going to read it?-and ways I expect it to get read are weird and indoctorinaty (“welcome to the club, here’s a book about our history”, as opposed to “oh, you want to do lots of good, here are some ideas that might be useful”), it doesn’t directly improve the world and the indirect path to impact is shakier than other meta things.
I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad idea. But so far I don’t see strong reasons to do this over the many other things openphil/cea/Kelsey piper/interviewees could be doing.
I’ve addressed the point on costs in other commentary, so we may just disagree there!
I think the core idea is that the EA ethos is about constantly asking how we can do the most good and updating based on new information. So the book would hopefully codify that spirit rather than just talk about how great we’re doing.
I find it easier to trust people whose motivations I understand and who have demonstrated strong character in the past. History can give a better sense of those two things. Reading about Julia Wise in Strangers Drowning, for example, did that for me.
Humans often think about things in terms of stories. If you want someone to care about global poverty, you have a few ways of approaching it. You could tell them how many people live in extreme poverty and that by donating to GiveDirectly they’ll get way more QALYs per dollar than they would by donating elsewhere. You could also tell them about your path to donating, and share a story from the GiveDirectly website about how a participant benefited the money they received. In my experience, that’s the better strategy. And absolutely, the EA community exists to serve a purpose. Right now I think it’s reasonably good at doing the things that I care about, so I want it to continue to exist.
Agreed!
I think there could be a particular audience for this book, and it likely wouldn’t be EA newbies. The project could also take on a lot of different forms, from empirical report to personal history, depending on the writer. Hopefully the right person sees this and decides to go for it if and when it makes sense! Regardless, your commentary is appreciated.