Sorry, I’m a bit confused about how this relates to my response. It sounds like this is an argument for changing the distribution of content within the current fellowship structure, while my response was meant to be about which changes to the fellowship structure we should make. (Maybe this is meant to address my question about “what [content] can be cut?” to implement an activities-based fellowship? But that doesn’t seem like what you have in mind either, since unlike in the activities-based fellowship you seem to be suggesting that we keep the total amount of readings roughly constant.) So I’ll interpret your comment as an independent case for changing the fellowship content, holding structure constant (rather than as a case for some of the alternative structures proposed in the original post)--let me know if I’ve misunderstood!
I’d mostly be on board with shifting to more materials that convey core principles/mindsets, if we had promising guesses about how to implement this.
My main hesitation: (1) I don’t yet know of additional content that would do this well, and—in the absence of that opportunity cost--(2) the object-level content seems pretty good.
Do you have specific ideas for epistemics/mindset content in mind? I share your interest in adding more such content, but specifically in epistemics I’ve had trouble finding satisfactory content. These are the challenges I’ve come across:
Academic sources that cover epistemics tend to be super long and dry for our target audience
LessWrong Sequences content is spread out among a bunch of small posts that very much build on one another, so one-off readings will often transmit little knowledge
Clearer Thinking doesn’t seem to have that much epistemics-focused content, and its most relevant content is often relatively niche and long
ACX/SSC is very long/tangential, is more controversial, and doesn’t have that much epistemics-focused content
HPMOR / other online fiction is hard to heavily emphasize if we’re trying to signal professionalism/legitimacy
There’s good one-off content on a few things, e.g. Bayes’ Theorem and cognitive biases, but I’m skeptical that these are valuable enough readings to be worth the opportunity cost (skeptical about reading about Bayes’ Theorem because people already roughly apply it intuitively/roughly, while applying it explicitly/precisely is usually intractable; skeptical about cognitive biases readings because the literature suggests we can’t do that much about them).
With mindset/motivational content, we’ve added all the best stuff I’m aware of—curious what else we can add!
I also think the object-level content about cause areas is fairly valuable:
Main EA cause areas are (by design) very unconventional/neglected. So I worry that people might never come across strong arguments for each—or bother to engage with them—if these aren’t put in front of them. Or they might want to engage with the strong versions of these arguments but not know where to find them (sure, they’re somewhere in the EA-sphere, but how will new people know where?)
I’m a bit skeptical of the very sharp distinction between mindsets and cause areas—cause areas provide (a) examples of mindsets/principles (e.g. looking for large-scale problems) being applied, and (b) opportunities to apply mindsets/principles (e.g. “Here are two compelling causes—which should we prioritize? What does this mean for your career?”)
(I also agree the exercises aren’t great, although my sense was that most fellows and facilitators mostly ignore them, so for us they don’t currently seem to be a big part of the fellowship.)
Whoops—definitely meant my comment as a response to “what content can be cut?” And the section about activities was meant to show how some of the activities in the current fellowship are insufficient (in my view) & offer some suggestions for other kinds of activities.
Regardless of whether we shift to a radically new model, or we try to revamp the existing structure, I think it’ll be useful to dissect the current fellowship to see what content we most want to keep/remove.
Will try to respond to the rest at some point soon, but just wanted to clarify!
Thanks!
Sorry, I’m a bit confused about how this relates to my response. It sounds like this is an argument for changing the distribution of content within the current fellowship structure, while my response was meant to be about which changes to the fellowship structure we should make. (Maybe this is meant to address my question about “what [content] can be cut?” to implement an activities-based fellowship? But that doesn’t seem like what you have in mind either, since unlike in the activities-based fellowship you seem to be suggesting that we keep the total amount of readings roughly constant.) So I’ll interpret your comment as an independent case for changing the fellowship content, holding structure constant (rather than as a case for some of the alternative structures proposed in the original post)--let me know if I’ve misunderstood!
I’d mostly be on board with shifting to more materials that convey core principles/mindsets, if we had promising guesses about how to implement this. My main hesitation: (1) I don’t yet know of additional content that would do this well, and—in the absence of that opportunity cost--(2) the object-level content seems pretty good.
Do you have specific ideas for epistemics/mindset content in mind? I share your interest in adding more such content, but specifically in epistemics I’ve had trouble finding satisfactory content. These are the challenges I’ve come across:
Academic sources that cover epistemics tend to be super long and dry for our target audience
LessWrong Sequences content is spread out among a bunch of small posts that very much build on one another, so one-off readings will often transmit little knowledge
Clearer Thinking doesn’t seem to have that much epistemics-focused content, and its most relevant content is often relatively niche and long
ACX/SSC is very long/tangential, is more controversial, and doesn’t have that much epistemics-focused content
HPMOR / other online fiction is hard to heavily emphasize if we’re trying to signal professionalism/legitimacy
There’s good one-off content on a few things, e.g. Bayes’ Theorem and cognitive biases, but I’m skeptical that these are valuable enough readings to be worth the opportunity cost (skeptical about reading about Bayes’ Theorem because people already roughly apply it intuitively/roughly, while applying it explicitly/precisely is usually intractable; skeptical about cognitive biases readings because the literature suggests we can’t do that much about them).
With mindset/motivational content, we’ve added all the best stuff I’m aware of—curious what else we can add!
I also think the object-level content about cause areas is fairly valuable:
Main EA cause areas are (by design) very unconventional/neglected. So I worry that people might never come across strong arguments for each—or bother to engage with them—if these aren’t put in front of them. Or they might want to engage with the strong versions of these arguments but not know where to find them (sure, they’re somewhere in the EA-sphere, but how will new people know where?)
I’m a bit skeptical of the very sharp distinction between mindsets and cause areas—cause areas provide (a) examples of mindsets/principles (e.g. looking for large-scale problems) being applied, and (b) opportunities to apply mindsets/principles (e.g. “Here are two compelling causes—which should we prioritize? What does this mean for your career?”)
(I also agree the exercises aren’t great, although my sense was that most fellows and facilitators mostly ignore them, so for us they don’t currently seem to be a big part of the fellowship.)
Whoops—definitely meant my comment as a response to “what content can be cut?” And the section about activities was meant to show how some of the activities in the current fellowship are insufficient (in my view) & offer some suggestions for other kinds of activities.
Regardless of whether we shift to a radically new model, or we try to revamp the existing structure, I think it’ll be useful to dissect the current fellowship to see what content we most want to keep/remove.
Will try to respond to the rest at some point soon, but just wanted to clarify!