To flesh this out more, my thinking is something like, WWOTF PR team probably has a theory of impact, which might dwarf the impact of the other ones, and it seems suboptimal if groups are focusing on the wrong one. Maybe their primary theory of impact is shifting the longtermism/AI overton window (attracting as many hits/eyeballs as possible, mass outreach), or maybe it’s attracting allies in positions of power, or maybe it’s inspiring more readers to pursue longtermist careers. Or maybe it’s something else. Getting more of our members to read the book seems aligned with all of those goals, but I wonder if there would be more impactful specific things, tailored towards their theory of impact.
I’m trying to articulate examples of activities that we might pursue, given different end goals. The clearest case for differing approaches would be if WWOTF’s goal is primarily mass outreach—in which case groups might be able to make connections to local media groups that aren’t big enough to warrant WWOTF attention. Or maybe focus more on partnership events that aren’t trying to funnel attendees into our EA group, but rather expose them to some longtermist framework. If the goals are more targeted outreach / career stuff (as I suspect they are, at least with regards to what groups should optimally be helping with), then this dovetails more with our current initiatives/funnel strategy.
Another concern is that this new audience could be categorically different from the standard proto-EA – possibly less altruistic (in the conventional sense of the word), less into impartial welfare, possibly working in different careers, etc. In that sense, there’s the question of how much we should focus on educating them on EA vs referring them to groups/opportunities within longtermism. There’s also the question of anticipating changing group dynamics, if, say, we suddenly start getting like 5x the number of leads/members. These concerns might be mostly unactionable—we’ll see what our new audience is like once they start showing up. It’s likely our main group initiatives won’t change, but I think there’s a chance they could quite substantially. Moving forward, it would be great to see more coordination among groups, sharing if/how things are changing and how we’re responding.
To flesh this out more, my thinking is something like, WWOTF PR team probably has a theory of impact, which might dwarf the impact of the other ones, and it seems suboptimal if groups are focusing on the wrong one. Maybe their primary theory of impact is shifting the longtermism/AI overton window (attracting as many hits/eyeballs as possible, mass outreach), or maybe it’s attracting allies in positions of power, or maybe it’s inspiring more readers to pursue longtermist careers. Or maybe it’s something else. Getting more of our members to read the book seems aligned with all of those goals, but I wonder if there would be more impactful specific things, tailored towards their theory of impact.
I’m trying to articulate examples of activities that we might pursue, given different end goals. The clearest case for differing approaches would be if WWOTF’s goal is primarily mass outreach—in which case groups might be able to make connections to local media groups that aren’t big enough to warrant WWOTF attention. Or maybe focus more on partnership events that aren’t trying to funnel attendees into our EA group, but rather expose them to some longtermist framework. If the goals are more targeted outreach / career stuff (as I suspect they are, at least with regards to what groups should optimally be helping with), then this dovetails more with our current initiatives/funnel strategy.
Another concern is that this new audience could be categorically different from the standard proto-EA – possibly less altruistic (in the conventional sense of the word), less into impartial welfare, possibly working in different careers, etc. In that sense, there’s the question of how much we should focus on educating them on EA vs referring them to groups/opportunities within longtermism. There’s also the question of anticipating changing group dynamics, if, say, we suddenly start getting like 5x the number of leads/members. These concerns might be mostly unactionable—we’ll see what our new audience is like once they start showing up. It’s likely our main group initiatives won’t change, but I think there’s a chance they could quite substantially. Moving forward, it would be great to see more coordination among groups, sharing if/how things are changing and how we’re responding.