Yup, to be clear I didn’t mean to suggest “more of the same,” although you’re right that my examples near the end may have been overly anchored to the events fellowships currently have.
a more effective way of learning might be for someone to summarize things / identify key ideas for you
Hm, maybe. One hypothesis is that people tend to understand and remember ideas much better if they engage with them for longer amounts of time. If true, I think this would mean more (good) content is better. This seems likely to me because:
It seems much more common for people to have big life/worldview changes from books than from talks or articles.
Collections of somewhat detailed readings let people check links, see responses to a wide range of counterarguments, look things up if they’re missing context, and more generally get a more thorough version of an argument.
A bunch of core motivations for EA and its cause areas are potentially paradigm-shifting, so they seem especially hard for people to quickly slot into their existing worldviews.
More time spent on an idea --> more attention spent on it, more chances to make downstream updates
Much of the K-college educational system seems built on this assumption (which is definitely not rock-solid evidence, but it’s some evidence)
The spacing effect is a thing (unless that too has failed to replicate?)
So I’m skeptical that people can “really get” ideas like “we’re always in triage,” or “maybe animals matter,” or “maybe we should think a lot about the future” from just brief summaries. (Brief summaries accompanied by things that motivate people to look into things more deeply on their own seem great, if we can pull that off.)
So I’m still hesitant about replacing content with projects. Still excited about:
Content + additional ways to dive in
Or replacing some content with other activities that encourage deep engagement (e.g. certain retreats) if we can figure out good follow-up
(I’m also not sure about the self-directed fellowship format—we could mitigate the relevant downsides by adding accountability measures, but doesn’t that largely bring it back to being a not-so-self-directed fellowship? We could also do more individualized accountability like 1-on-1′s, but that’s significantly more costly.)
Thanks!
Yup, to be clear I didn’t mean to suggest “more of the same,” although you’re right that my examples near the end may have been overly anchored to the events fellowships currently have.
Hm, maybe. One hypothesis is that people tend to understand and remember ideas much better if they engage with them for longer amounts of time. If true, I think this would mean more (good) content is better. This seems likely to me because:
It seems much more common for people to have big life/worldview changes from books than from talks or articles.
Collections of somewhat detailed readings let people check links, see responses to a wide range of counterarguments, look things up if they’re missing context, and more generally get a more thorough version of an argument.
A bunch of core motivations for EA and its cause areas are potentially paradigm-shifting, so they seem especially hard for people to quickly slot into their existing worldviews.
More time spent on an idea --> more attention spent on it, more chances to make downstream updates
Much of the K-college educational system seems built on this assumption (which is definitely not rock-solid evidence, but it’s some evidence)
The spacing effect is a thing (unless that too has failed to replicate?)
So I’m skeptical that people can “really get” ideas like “we’re always in triage,” or “maybe animals matter,” or “maybe we should think a lot about the future” from just brief summaries. (Brief summaries accompanied by things that motivate people to look into things more deeply on their own seem great, if we can pull that off.)
So I’m still hesitant about replacing content with projects. Still excited about:
Content + additional ways to dive in
Or replacing some content with other activities that encourage deep engagement (e.g. certain retreats) if we can figure out good follow-up
(I’m also not sure about the self-directed fellowship format—we could mitigate the relevant downsides by adding accountability measures, but doesn’t that largely bring it back to being a not-so-self-directed fellowship? We could also do more individualized accountability like 1-on-1′s, but that’s significantly more costly.)