Thanks for writing this, I think it’s great you’re thinking about alternatives!
The way I learned about EA was just by spending too much time on the forum and with the 80k podcast.
Then, I once attended one session of a fellowship and was a little underwhelmed. I remember the question “so can anybody name the definition of an existential risk according to Toby Ord” after we had been asked to read about exactly that — this just seemed like a waste of time. But to be fair, I was also much more familiar with EA at that point than an average fellow. It’s very possible that other people had a better experience in the same session.
But I definitely agree there’s room for experimentation and probably improvement!
I actually think the question about the definition of existential risk is useful, in order to make sure that everyone understands it correctly and doesn’t think it means “risk that humanity goes extinct”. If you’ve spent a lot of time learning about EA already, I don’t think you would find much novel information from the Intro EA Fellowship, and I think that’s fine.
I agree it’s fine if fellowships aren’t interesting to already-engaged EAs and I also see why the question is asked—I don’t even have a strong view on whether it’s a bad idea to ask it.
I do think though that the fellowship would have been boring to me at times, even if I had known much less about EA. But maybe I’m just not the type of person who likes to learn stuff in groups and I was never part of the target audience.
Thanks for writing this, I think it’s great you’re thinking about alternatives!
The way I learned about EA was just by spending too much time on the forum and with the 80k podcast.
Then, I once attended one session of a fellowship and was a little underwhelmed. I remember the question “so can anybody name the definition of an existential risk according to Toby Ord” after we had been asked to read about exactly that — this just seemed like a waste of time. But to be fair, I was also much more familiar with EA at that point than an average fellow. It’s very possible that other people had a better experience in the same session.
But I definitely agree there’s room for experimentation and probably improvement!
I actually think the question about the definition of existential risk is useful, in order to make sure that everyone understands it correctly and doesn’t think it means “risk that humanity goes extinct”. If you’ve spent a lot of time learning about EA already, I don’t think you would find much novel information from the Intro EA Fellowship, and I think that’s fine.
I agree it’s fine if fellowships aren’t interesting to already-engaged EAs and I also see why the question is asked—I don’t even have a strong view on whether it’s a bad idea to ask it.
I do think though that the fellowship would have been boring to me at times, even if I had known much less about EA. But maybe I’m just not the type of person who likes to learn stuff in groups and I was never part of the target audience.