Some things from EA Global London 2022 that stood out for me (I think someone else might have mentioned one of them):
An email to everyone promoting Will’s new book (on longtermism)
Giving out free bookmarks about Will’s book when picking up your pass.
These things might feel small but considering this is one of the main EA conferences, having the actual conference organisers associate so strongly with the promotion of a longtermist (albeit yes, also one of the main founders of EA) book made me think “Wow, CEA is really trying to push longtermism to attendees”. This seems quite reasonable given the potential significance of the book, I just wonder if CEA have done this for any other worldview-focused books recently (last 1-3 years) or would do so in the future e.g. a new book on animal farming.
Curious to get someone else’s take on this or if it just felt important in my head.
Other small things:
On the sidebar of the EA Forum, there’s three recommended articles: Replacing Guilt, the EA Handbook (which as you mentioned here, is mostly focused on longtermism) and the most important century by Holden. Again, essentially 1.5 longtermist texts to <0.5 from other worldviews.
As the main landing page for EA discussion, this also feels like a reasonably significant nudge in a specific direction.
On a somewhat related point, I do generally think there are many less ‘thought-leaders’ for global health or animal-inclusive worldviews relative to the longtermist one. For example, we have people such as Holden, Ben Todd, Will McAskill etc. who all produce reasonably frequent and great content on why longtermism is compelling, yet very few (if anyone?) is doing content creation or thought leadership on that level for neartermist worldviews. This might be another reason why longtermist content is much more frequently sign-posted too, but I’m not 100% sure on this.
[FWIW I do find longtermism quite compelling, but it also seems amiss to not mention the cultural influence longtermism has in certain EA spaces]
Having the actual conference organisers associate so strongly with the promotion of a longtermist (albeit yes, also one of the main founders of EA) book made me think “Wow, CEA is really trying to push longtermism to attendees”
I don’t know, it just feels weird to focus on this point vs. other points that seem much more solid.
He’s a founder of the movement, so if he wrote a book on anything, I’m pretty sure they’d be promoting it hard as well.
Some things from EA Global London 2022 that stood out for me (I think someone else might have mentioned one of them):
An email to everyone promoting Will’s new book (on longtermism)
Giving out free bookmarks about Will’s book when picking up your pass.
These things might feel small but considering this is one of the main EA conferences, having the actual conference organisers associate so strongly with the promotion of a longtermist (albeit yes, also one of the main founders of EA) book made me think “Wow, CEA is really trying to push longtermism to attendees”. This seems quite reasonable given the potential significance of the book, I just wonder if CEA have done this for any other worldview-focused books recently (last 1-3 years) or would do so in the future e.g. a new book on animal farming.
Curious to get someone else’s take on this or if it just felt important in my head.
Other small things:
On the sidebar of the EA Forum, there’s three recommended articles: Replacing Guilt, the EA Handbook (which as you mentioned here, is mostly focused on longtermism) and the most important century by Holden. Again, essentially 1.5 longtermist texts to <0.5 from other worldviews.
As the main landing page for EA discussion, this also feels like a reasonably significant nudge in a specific direction.
On a somewhat related point, I do generally think there are many less ‘thought-leaders’ for global health or animal-inclusive worldviews relative to the longtermist one. For example, we have people such as Holden, Ben Todd, Will McAskill etc. who all produce reasonably frequent and great content on why longtermism is compelling, yet very few (if anyone?) is doing content creation or thought leadership on that level for neartermist worldviews. This might be another reason why longtermist content is much more frequently sign-posted too, but I’m not 100% sure on this.
[FWIW I do find longtermism quite compelling, but it also seems amiss to not mention the cultural influence longtermism has in certain EA spaces]
I don’t know, it just feels weird to focus on this point vs. other points that seem much more solid.
He’s a founder of the movement, so if he wrote a book on anything, I’m pretty sure they’d be promoting it hard as well.