One problem I think especially worth highlighting is not exactly the added “risk” of added meta-layers, but over-determination: i.e. you have a lot of people, orgs and even backgrounds news articles and culture floating around, all persuading people to get involved in EA, it’s very hard to know how much any of them are contributing.
Another way of thinking about this is that in an overdetermined environment it seems like there would be a point at which the impact of EA movement building will be “causing a person to join EA sooner” instead of “adding another person to EA” (which is the current basis for evaluating EA movement building impact), which would be much less valuable.
From my point of view, I can’t tell that EA wont be a distraction from already altruist and effective people in all cases, especially now as there are more people than direct-enough projects.
I agree with all this Peter.
One problem I think especially worth highlighting is not exactly the added “risk” of added meta-layers, but over-determination: i.e. you have a lot of people, orgs and even backgrounds news articles and culture floating around, all persuading people to get involved in EA, it’s very hard to know how much any of them are contributing.
Another way of thinking about this is that in an overdetermined environment it seems like there would be a point at which the impact of EA movement building will be “causing a person to join EA sooner” instead of “adding another person to EA” (which is the current basis for evaluating EA movement building impact), which would be much less valuable.
From my point of view, I can’t tell that EA wont be a distraction from already altruist and effective people in all cases, especially now as there are more people than direct-enough projects.