Your points about âHow can we structure the EA community in such a way that it can âabsorbâ very large numbers of people while also improving the allocation of talent or other resources?â are perhaps particularly thought-provoking for me. I think I find your points less convincing/âsubstantive than you do, but I hadnât thought about them before and I think they do warrant more thought/âdiscussion/âresearch.
On this, readers may find the value of movement growth entry/âtag interesting. (Iâve also made a suggestion on the Discussion page for a future editor to try to incorporate parts from your comment into that entry.)
Here are some quick gestures at the reasons why I think Iâm less convinced by your points than you. But I donât actually know my overall stance on how quickly, how large, and simply how the EA movement should grow. And I expect youâve considered things like this alreadyâthis is maybe more for the readers benefit, or something.
As you say, âperhaps maths relies crucially on there being a consensus of what important research questions are plus it being easy to verify what counts as their solution, as well as generally a better ability to identify talent and good work that is predictive of later potential. Maybe EA is just too âpreparadigmaticâ to allow for something like that.â
I think we currently have a quite remarkable degree of trust, helpfulness, and coordination. I think that that becomes harder as a movement grows, and particularly if it grows in certain ways
E.g., if we threw 2000 additional randomly chosen people into an EA conference, it would no longer make sense for me to spend lots of time having indiscriminate 1-1 chats where I give career advice (currently I spend a fair amount of time doing things like this, which reduces how much time I have for other useful things). Iâd either have to stop doing that or find some way of âscreeningâ people for it, which could impose costs and awkwardness on both parties
Currently we have the option of either growing more, faster, or differently in future, or not doing so. But certain growth strategies/âoutcomes would be hard-to-reverse, which would destroy option value
You say âIâm worried that we gave up too earlyâ, but I donât think weâve come to a final stance on how, how fast, and how large the movement should grow, weâre just not now pushing for certain types or speeds of growth
We can push for it later
(Of course, there are also various costs to delaying our growth)
I mean Iâm not sure how convinced I am by my points either. :) I think I mainly have a reaction of âsome discussions Iâve seen seem kind of off, rely on flawed assumptions or false dichotomies, etc.ââbut even if thatâs right, I feel way less sure what the best conclusion is.
One quick reply:
I think we currently have a quite remarkable degree of trust, helpfulness, and coordination. I think that that becomes harder as a movement grows, and particularly if it grows in certain ways
I think the âparticularly if it grows in certain waysâ is the key part here, and that basically we should talk 90% about how to grow and 10% about how much to grow.
I think one of my complaints is precisely that some discussions seem to construe suggestions of growing faster, or aiming for a larger community, as implying âadding 2,000 random people to EAGâ. But to me this seems to be a bizarre strawman. If you add 2,000 random people to a maths conference, or drop them into a maths lecture, it will be a disaster as well!
I think the key question is not âwhat if we make everything we have bigger?â but âcan we build a structure that allows separation between, and controlled flow of talent and other resources, different subcommunities?â.
A somewhat grandiose analogy: Suppose that at the dawn of the agricultural revolution youâre a central planner tasked with maximizing the human population. You realize that by introducing agriculture, much larger populations could be supported as far as the food supply goes. But then you realize that if you imagine larger population densities and group sizes while leaving everything else fixed, various things will breakâe.g., kinship-based conflict resolution mechanisms will become infeasible. What should you do? You shouldnât conclude that, unfortunately, the population canât grow. You should think about division of labor, institutions, laws, taxes, cities, and the state.
FWIW, I used âif we threw 2000 additional randomly chosen people into an EA conferenceâ as an example precisely because itâs particularly easy to explain/âsee the issue in that case. I agree that many other cases wouldnât just be clearly problematic, and thus I avoided them when wanting a quick example. And I can now see how that example therefore seems straw-man-y.)
Your points about âHow can we structure the EA community in such a way that it can âabsorbâ very large numbers of people while also improving the allocation of talent or other resources?â are perhaps particularly thought-provoking for me. I think I find your points less convincing/âsubstantive than you do, but I hadnât thought about them before and I think they do warrant more thought/âdiscussion/âresearch.
On this, readers may find the value of movement growth entry/âtag interesting. (Iâve also made a suggestion on the Discussion page for a future editor to try to incorporate parts from your comment into that entry.)
Here are some quick gestures at the reasons why I think Iâm less convinced by your points than you. But I donât actually know my overall stance on how quickly, how large, and simply how the EA movement should grow. And I expect youâve considered things like this alreadyâthis is maybe more for the readers benefit, or something.
As you say, âperhaps maths relies crucially on there being a consensus of what important research questions are plus it being easy to verify what counts as their solution, as well as generally a better ability to identify talent and good work that is predictive of later potential. Maybe EA is just too âpreparadigmaticâ to allow for something like that.â
I think we currently have a quite remarkable degree of trust, helpfulness, and coordination. I think that that becomes harder as a movement grows, and particularly if it grows in certain ways
E.g., if we threw 2000 additional randomly chosen people into an EA conference, it would no longer make sense for me to spend lots of time having indiscriminate 1-1 chats where I give career advice (currently I spend a fair amount of time doing things like this, which reduces how much time I have for other useful things). Iâd either have to stop doing that or find some way of âscreeningâ people for it, which could impose costs and awkwardness on both parties
Currently we have the option of either growing more, faster, or differently in future, or not doing so. But certain growth strategies/âoutcomes would be hard-to-reverse, which would destroy option value
You say âIâm worried that we gave up too earlyâ, but I donât think weâve come to a final stance on how, how fast, and how large the movement should grow, weâre just not now pushing for certain types or speeds of growth
We can push for it later
(Of course, there are also various costs to delaying our growth)
I mean Iâm not sure how convinced I am by my points either. :) I think I mainly have a reaction of âsome discussions Iâve seen seem kind of off, rely on flawed assumptions or false dichotomies, etc.ââbut even if thatâs right, I feel way less sure what the best conclusion is.
One quick reply:
I think the âparticularly if it grows in certain waysâ is the key part here, and that basically we should talk 90% about how to grow and 10% about how much to grow.
I think one of my complaints is precisely that some discussions seem to construe suggestions of growing faster, or aiming for a larger community, as implying âadding 2,000 random people to EAGâ. But to me this seems to be a bizarre strawman. If you add 2,000 random people to a maths conference, or drop them into a maths lecture, it will be a disaster as well!
I think the key question is not âwhat if we make everything we have bigger?â but âcan we build a structure that allows separation between, and controlled flow of talent and other resources, different subcommunities?â.
A somewhat grandiose analogy: Suppose that at the dawn of the agricultural revolution youâre a central planner tasked with maximizing the human population. You realize that by introducing agriculture, much larger populations could be supported as far as the food supply goes. But then you realize that if you imagine larger population densities and group sizes while leaving everything else fixed, various things will breakâe.g., kinship-based conflict resolution mechanisms will become infeasible. What should you do? You shouldnât conclude that, unfortunately, the population canât grow. You should think about division of labor, institutions, laws, taxes, cities, and the state.
(Yeah, this seems reasonable.
FWIW, I used âif we threw 2000 additional randomly chosen people into an EA conferenceâ as an example precisely because itâs particularly easy to explain/âsee the issue in that case. I agree that many other cases wouldnât just be clearly problematic, and thus I avoided them when wanting a quick example. And I can now see how that example therefore seems straw-man-y.)
Interesting discussion. What if there was a separate brand for a mass movement version of EA?