Hi, Vilhelm, thanks for these thoughts! Some quick responses to just a few points:
Fwiw, in Sweden, my 50% confidence interval of the share of highly-engaged longtermists under 25 doing movement-building is 20-35%. However, I don’t think I am as concerned as you seem to be with that number.
20-35% isn’t all that concerning to me. I’d be more concerned if it were in the ballpark of 40% or more. That said, even 20-35% does feel a bit high to me if we’re talking about college graduates working full-time on community-building (a higher percentage might make sense if we’re counting college students who are just spending a fraction of their time on community-building).
my experience as a community builder in Sweden trying to help young longtermsist is that there aren’t that many better opportunities out there right now. (Note that this might be very different in other contexts.)
Agreed that the counterfactual may be significantly worse for those based in Sweden (or most other countries besides the US and UK) who are unwilling to move to EA hubs. I should have flagged that I’m writing this as someone based in the US where I see lots of alternatives to community building. With that said, it’s not totally clear to me which direction this points in: maybe a lack of opportunities to do object-level work in Sweden suggests the need for more people to go out and create such opportunities, rather than doing further community-building.
Data suggest people leave their community building roles rather quickly, indicating that people do pivot when finding a better fit
Yeah this matches my experience—I see a lot of young EAs doing community building for a year or two post-grad and then moving on to object-level work. This seems great when it’s a case of someone thinking community-building is their highest-upside option, testing their fit, and then moving on (presumably because it hasn’t gone super well). I worry, though, that in some cases folks do not even view community-building as a career path they’re committed to, and instead fall into community-building because it’s the “path of least resistance.”
To be clear, I’m incredibly grateful to community builders like you, and don’t intend to devalue the work you do—I genuinely think community-building is one of the most impactful career paths, and a significant fraction of EAs should pursue it (particularly those who—like you, it sounds like—have great personal fit for the work and see it their highest-upside long-term career path).
Hi, Vilhelm, thanks for these thoughts! Some quick responses to just a few points:
20-35% isn’t all that concerning to me. I’d be more concerned if it were in the ballpark of 40% or more. That said, even 20-35% does feel a bit high to me if we’re talking about college graduates working full-time on community-building (a higher percentage might make sense if we’re counting college students who are just spending a fraction of their time on community-building).
Agreed that the counterfactual may be significantly worse for those based in Sweden (or most other countries besides the US and UK) who are unwilling to move to EA hubs. I should have flagged that I’m writing this as someone based in the US where I see lots of alternatives to community building. With that said, it’s not totally clear to me which direction this points in: maybe a lack of opportunities to do object-level work in Sweden suggests the need for more people to go out and create such opportunities, rather than doing further community-building.
Yeah this matches my experience—I see a lot of young EAs doing community building for a year or two post-grad and then moving on to object-level work. This seems great when it’s a case of someone thinking community-building is their highest-upside option, testing their fit, and then moving on (presumably because it hasn’t gone super well). I worry, though, that in some cases folks do not even view community-building as a career path they’re committed to, and instead fall into community-building because it’s the “path of least resistance.”
To be clear, I’m incredibly grateful to community builders like you, and don’t intend to devalue the work you do—I genuinely think community-building is one of the most impactful career paths, and a significant fraction of EAs should pursue it (particularly those who—like you, it sounds like—have great personal fit for the work and see it their highest-upside long-term career path).