This is good and I want to see explicit discussion of it. One framing that I think might be helpful:
It seems like the cause of a lot of the recent “identity crisis” in EA is that we’re violating good heuristics. It seems like if you’re trying to do the most good, really a lot of the time that means you should be very frugal, and inclusive, and beware the in-group, and stuff like that.
However, it seems like we might live in a really unusual world. If we are in fact massively talent constrained, and the majority of impact comes from really high-powered talent and “EA celebrities”, then maybe we are just in one of the worlds where these heuristics lead us astray, despite being good overall.
Ultimately, I think it comes down to: “if we live in a world where inclusiveness leads to the highest impact, I want EA to be inclusive. If we live in a world where elitism leads to the highest impact, I want EA to be elitist”. That feels really uncomfortable to say, which I think is good, but we should be able to overcome discomfort IF we need to.
I think there are degrees, like everywhere: we can use our community-building efforts in more elite universities, without rejecting or being dismissive of people from the community on the basis of potential impact.
Yes, 100% agree. I’m just personally somewhat nervous about community building strategy and the future of EA, so I want to be very careful. I tried to be neutral in my comment because I really don’t know how inclusive/exclusive we should be, but I think I might have accidentally framed it in a way that reads implicitly leaning exclusive, probably because I read the original post as implicitly leaning inclusive.
This is good and I want to see explicit discussion of it. One framing that I think might be helpful:
It seems like the cause of a lot of the recent “identity crisis” in EA is that we’re violating good heuristics. It seems like if you’re trying to do the most good, really a lot of the time that means you should be very frugal, and inclusive, and beware the in-group, and stuff like that.
However, it seems like we might live in a really unusual world. If we are in fact massively talent constrained, and the majority of impact comes from really high-powered talent and “EA celebrities”, then maybe we are just in one of the worlds where these heuristics lead us astray, despite being good overall.
Ultimately, I think it comes down to: “if we live in a world where inclusiveness leads to the highest impact, I want EA to be inclusive. If we live in a world where elitism leads to the highest impact, I want EA to be elitist”. That feels really uncomfortable to say, which I think is good, but we should be able to overcome discomfort IF we need to.
Hey James!
I think there are degrees, like everywhere: we can use our community-building efforts in more elite universities, without rejecting or being dismissive of people from the community on the basis of potential impact.
Yes, 100% agree. I’m just personally somewhat nervous about community building strategy and the future of EA, so I want to be very careful. I tried to be neutral in my comment because I really don’t know how inclusive/exclusive we should be, but I think I might have accidentally framed it in a way that reads implicitly leaning exclusive, probably because I read the original post as implicitly leaning inclusive.