Again, thank you for some amazing thoughts. I’ll only respond to one piece:
\begin{quotation}But, anecdotally, it seems like a big chunk (most?) of the value EA groups can provide comes from:
Taking people who are already into weird EA stuff and connecting them with one another
And taking people who are unusually open/receptive to weird EA stuff and connecting them with the more experienced EAs
\end{quotation}
I obviously can’t disagree with your anecdotal experience, but I think what you’re talking about here is closely related to what I see as one of EA’s biggest flaws: lack of diversity. I’m not convinced that weird people know how to do good better than anybody else, but by not creating a way for other people to be involved in this awesome movement, we lose the value they would create for us and the value we would create for them. There also seems to be a suspicious correlation between these kind of “receptive to EA ideas” people and white men, which appears worrisome. That is, even if our goal is to target marketing to weird EAs or receptive to EA-s, it seems like the way we’re doing that might have some bias that has led our community to disproportionately white and male relative to most general populations.
On that note, I think learning about EA has made my life significantly better, and I think this will be the case for many other people. I think everybody who does an Intro Fellowship (and isn’t familiar with EA) learns something that could be useful to their life – even if they don’t join the community for become more involved. I don’t want to miss out on these people, even if it’s a more efficient allocation of time/resources to only focus on people we expect will become highly engaged.
Shortform post coming soon about this ‘projects idea’ where I’ll lay out the pros and cons.
Good points! Agree that reaching out beyond overrepresented EA demographics is important—I’m also optimistic that this can be done without turning off people who really jive with EA mindsets. (I wish I could offer more than anecdotes, but I think over half of the members of my local group who are just getting involved and seem most enthusiastic about EA stuff are women or POC.)
I’m not convinced that weird people know how to do good better than anybody else
I also wouldn’t make that claim about “weird people” in general. Still, I think it’s pretty straightforward that people who are unusual along certain traits know how to do good better than others, e.g. people who are unusually concerned with doing good well will probably do good better than people who don’t care that much.
I don’t want to miss out on these people, even if it’s a more efficient allocation of time/resources to only focus on people we expect will become highly engaged.
Man, I don’t know, I really buy that we’re always in triage, and that unfortunately choosing a less altruistically efficient allocation of resources just amounts to letting more bad things happen. I agree it’s a shame if some well-off people don’t get the nice personal enrichment of an EA fellowship—but it seems so much worse if, like, more kids die because we couldn’t face hard decisions and focus our resources on what would help the most.
Edit: on rereading I realize I may have interpreted your comment too literally—sorry if I misunderstood. Maybe your point about efficient allocation was that some forms of meta-EA might naively look like efficient allocation of resources without being all that efficient (because of e.g. missing out on benefits of diversity), so less naive efficiency-seeking may be warranted? I’m sympathetic to that.
Again, thank you for some amazing thoughts. I’ll only respond to one piece:
\begin{quotation}But, anecdotally, it seems like a big chunk (most?) of the value EA groups can provide comes from:
Taking people who are already into weird EA stuff and connecting them with one another
And taking people who are unusually open/receptive to weird EA stuff and connecting them with the more experienced EAs \end{quotation}
I obviously can’t disagree with your anecdotal experience, but I think what you’re talking about here is closely related to what I see as one of EA’s biggest flaws: lack of diversity. I’m not convinced that weird people know how to do good better than anybody else, but by not creating a way for other people to be involved in this awesome movement, we lose the value they would create for us and the value we would create for them. There also seems to be a suspicious correlation between these kind of “receptive to EA ideas” people and white men, which appears worrisome. That is, even if our goal is to target marketing to weird EAs or receptive to EA-s, it seems like the way we’re doing that might have some bias that has led our community to disproportionately white and male relative to most general populations.
On that note, I think learning about EA has made my life significantly better, and I think this will be the case for many other people. I think everybody who does an Intro Fellowship (and isn’t familiar with EA) learns something that could be useful to their life – even if they don’t join the community for become more involved. I don’t want to miss out on these people, even if it’s a more efficient allocation of time/resources to only focus on people we expect will become highly engaged.
Shortform post coming soon about this ‘projects idea’ where I’ll lay out the pros and cons.
Good points! Agree that reaching out beyond overrepresented EA demographics is important—I’m also optimistic that this can be done without turning off people who really jive with EA mindsets. (I wish I could offer more than anecdotes, but I think over half of the members of my local group who are just getting involved and seem most enthusiastic about EA stuff are women or POC.)
I also wouldn’t make that claim about “weird people” in general. Still, I think it’s pretty straightforward that people who are unusual along certain traits know how to do good better than others, e.g. people who are unusually concerned with doing good well will probably do good better than people who don’t care that much.
Man, I don’t know, I really buy that we’re always in triage, and that unfortunately choosing a less altruistically efficient allocation of resources just amounts to letting more bad things happen. I agree it’s a shame if some well-off people don’t get the nice personal enrichment of an EA fellowship—but it seems so much worse if, like, more kids die because we couldn’t face hard decisions and focus our resources on what would help the most.
Edit: on rereading I realize I may have interpreted your comment too literally—sorry if I misunderstood. Maybe your point about efficient allocation was that some forms of meta-EA might naively look like efficient allocation of resources without being all that efficient (because of e.g. missing out on benefits of diversity), so less naive efficiency-seeking may be warranted? I’m sympathetic to that.