Saying it isn’t an EA project seems too strong—another co-founder of SMA is Jan-Willem van Putten, who also co-founded Training for Good which does the EU tech policy and Tarbell journalism fellowships, and at one point piloted grantmaker training and ‘coaching for EA leaders’ programs. TfG was incubated by Charity Entrepreneurship.
You missed the most impressive part of Jan-Willem’s EA CV—he used to co-direct EA Netherlands, and I hear that’s a real signal of talent ;)
But yes, I guess it depends on how you define ‘EA project’. They’re intentionally trying to do something different, so that’s why I don’t describe them as one, but the line is very blurred when you take into account the personal and philosophical ties.
If EA was a broad and decentralised movement, similar to e.g., environmentalism, I’d classify SMA as an EA project. But right now EA isn’t quite that. Personally, I hope we one day get there.
I think of EA as a broad movement, similar to environmentalism — much smaller, of course, which leads to some natural centralization in terms of e.g. the number of big conferences, but still relatively spread-out and heterogenous in terms of what people think about and work on.
Anything that spans GiveWell, MIRI, and Mercy for Animals already seems broad to me, and that’s not accounting for hundreds of university/city meetups around the world (some of which have funding, some of which don’t, and which I’m sure host people with a very wide range of views — if my time in such groups is any indication).
That’s my way of saying that SMA seems at least EA-flavored, given the people behind it and many of the causes name-checked on the website. At a glance, it seems pretty low on the “measuring impact” scale, but you could say the same of many orgs that are EA-flavored. I’d be totally unsurprised to see people go through an SMA program and end up at EA Global, or to see an SMA alumnus create a charity that Open Phil eventually funds.
(There may be some other factor you’re thinking of when you think of breadth — I could see arguments for both sides of the question!)
I’m thinking about power. I don’t (yet) liken EA to environmentalism because power is far, far more centralised in EA. As you mentioned, this is probably because we’re small and young. I expect this will change in the future.
Saying it isn’t an EA project seems too strong—another co-founder of SMA is Jan-Willem van Putten, who also co-founded Training for Good which does the EU tech policy and Tarbell journalism fellowships, and at one point piloted grantmaker training and ‘coaching for EA leaders’ programs. TfG was incubated by Charity Entrepreneurship.
You missed the most impressive part of Jan-Willem’s EA CV—he used to co-direct EA Netherlands, and I hear that’s a real signal of talent ;)
But yes, I guess it depends on how you define ‘EA project’. They’re intentionally trying to do something different, so that’s why I don’t describe them as one, but the line is very blurred when you take into account the personal and philosophical ties.
If EA was a broad and decentralised movement, similar to e.g., environmentalism, I’d classify SMA as an EA project. But right now EA isn’t quite that. Personally, I hope we one day get there.
I think of EA as a broad movement, similar to environmentalism — much smaller, of course, which leads to some natural centralization in terms of e.g. the number of big conferences, but still relatively spread-out and heterogenous in terms of what people think about and work on.
Anything that spans GiveWell, MIRI, and Mercy for Animals already seems broad to me, and that’s not accounting for hundreds of university/city meetups around the world (some of which have funding, some of which don’t, and which I’m sure host people with a very wide range of views — if my time in such groups is any indication).
That’s my way of saying that SMA seems at least EA-flavored, given the people behind it and many of the causes name-checked on the website. At a glance, it seems pretty low on the “measuring impact” scale, but you could say the same of many orgs that are EA-flavored. I’d be totally unsurprised to see people go through an SMA program and end up at EA Global, or to see an SMA alumnus create a charity that Open Phil eventually funds.
(There may be some other factor you’re thinking of when you think of breadth — I could see arguments for both sides of the question!)
I’m thinking about power. I don’t (yet) liken EA to environmentalism because power is far, far more centralised in EA. As you mentioned, this is probably because we’re small and young. I expect this will change in the future.