At multiple EA events that I’ve been to, new people who were interested and expressed curiosity about what to do next were given no advice beyond ‘donate money and help spread the message’—even by prominent EA organizers. My advice to the EA community would be to stop focusing so much on movement-building until (a) EA’s epistemics have improved, and (b) EAs have much more developed and solid views (if not an outright consensus) about the movement’s goals and strategy.
To that end, I recommend clearly dividing ‘cause-neutral EA’ from ‘cause-specific effectiveness’. The lack of a clear divide contributes to the dilution of what EA means. (Some recent proposals I’ve seen framed by people as ‘EA’ have included a non-profit art magazine and a subcommunity organized around fighting Peter Thiel.) If we had a notion of ‘in this space/forum/organization, we consider the most effective thing to do given that one cares primarily about art’ or ‘given that one is focused on ending Alzheimer’s, what is the most effective thing to do?‘, then people could spend more time seriously discussing those questions and less bickering over what counts as ‘EA.’
The above is if we want a big-tent approach. I’m also fine with just cause-neutral evaluation and the current-seemingly-most-important-from-a-cause-neutral-standpoint causes being deemed ‘EA’ and all else clearly being not, no matter who that makes cranky.
I think I’m the one being called out with the reference to “a non-profit art magazine” being framed as EA-relevant, so I’ll respond here. I endorse the commenter’s thought that
If we had a notion of ‘in this space/forum/organization, we consider the most effective thing to do given that one cares primarily about art’ or ‘given that one is focused on ending Alzheimer’s, what is the most effective thing to do?‘, then people could spend more time seriously discussing those questions and less bickering over what counts as ‘EA.’
If I’m understanding the proposal correctly, it’s envisioning something like a reddit-style set of topic-specific subforums in which EA principles could be discussed as they relate to that topic. What I like about that solution is that it allows for the clarity of discussion boundaries that the commenter desires, but still includes discussions of cause-specific effectiveness within the broader umbrella of EA, which helps to facilitate cross-pollination of thinking across causes and from individual causes to the more global cause-neutral space.
Anonymous #5:
I think I’m the one being called out with the reference to “a non-profit art magazine” being framed as EA-relevant, so I’ll respond here. I endorse the commenter’s thought that
If I’m understanding the proposal correctly, it’s envisioning something like a reddit-style set of topic-specific subforums in which EA principles could be discussed as they relate to that topic. What I like about that solution is that it allows for the clarity of discussion boundaries that the commenter desires, but still includes discussions of cause-specific effectiveness within the broader umbrella of EA, which helps to facilitate cross-pollination of thinking across causes and from individual causes to the more global cause-neutral space.