Interesting stuff, thanks guys. I wanted to discuss one point:
From conversations with James, I believe Cambridge has a pretty different model of how they run it- in particular, a much more hands on approach, which calls for formal commitment from more people e.g. giving everyone specific roles, which is the “excessive formalist” approach. Are there reasons you guys have access to which favour your model of outreach over theirs? Or alternate frame; what’s the best argument in favour of the Cambridge model of giving everyone an explicit role, and why does that not succeed (if it doesn’t)?
For example, is it possible that Cambridge get a significantly higher number of people involved, which then cancels out the effects of immediately high-fidelity models in due course (e.g. suppose lots of people are low fidelity while at Cam, but then a section become more high-fidelity later, and it ends up not making that much difference in the long run)? Or does the Cambridge model use roles as an effective commitment device? Or does one model ensure less movement drift, or less lost value from movement drift? (see here http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1ne/empirical_data_on_value_drift/?refresh=true) There’s a comment from David Moss here suggesting there’s an “open question” about the value of focussing on more engaged individuals, given the risks of attrition in large movements (assuming the value of the piece, which is subject to lots of methodological caveats).
The qs above might be contradictory- I’m not advocating any of the above, but instead clarifying whether there’s anything missed by your suggestions.
I’ve spoken a lot with the Cambridge lot about this. I guess the cruxes of my disagreement with their approach are:
1) I think their committee model selects more for willingness to do menial tasks for the prestige of being in the committee, rather than actual enthusiasm for effective altruism. So something like what you described happens where “a section become more high-fidelity later, and it ends up not making that much difference”, as people who aren’t actually interested drop out. But it comes at the cost of more engaged people spending time on management.
2) From my understanding, Cambridge viewed the 1 year roles as a way of being able to ‘lock in’ people to engage with EA for 1 year and create a norm of committee attending events. But my model of someone who ends up being very engaged in EA is that excitement about the content drives most of the motivation, rather than external commitment devices. So I suppose roles only play a limited role in committing people to engage, but comes at the cost of people spending X hours on admin, when they could have spent X hours on learning more about EA.
It’s worth noting that I think Cambridge have recently been thinking hard about this, and also I expect their models for how their committee provides value to be much more nuanced than I present. Nevertheless, I think (1) and (2) capture useful points of disagreement I’ve had with them in the past.
as people who aren’t actually interested drop out.
This depends on what you mean by ‘drop out’. Only around 10% (~5) of our committee dropped out during last year, although maybe 1/3rd chose not to rejoin the committee this year (and about another 1/3rd are graduating)
2) From my understanding, Cambridge viewed the 1 year roles as a way of being able to ‘lock in’ people to engage with EA for 1 year and create a norm of committee attending events.
This does not ring especially true to me, see my reply to Josh.
To jump in as the ex-co-president of EA: Cambridge from last year:
I think the differences mostly come in things which were omitted from this post, as opposed to the explicit points made, which I mostly agree with.
There is a fairly wide distinction between the EA community in Cambridge and the EA: Cam committee, and we don’t try to force people from the former into the latter (although we hope for the reverse!).
I largely view a big formal committee (ours was over 40 people last year) as an addition to the attempts to build a community as outlined in this post. A formal committee in my mind significantly improves the ability to get stuff done vs the ‘conspirators’ approach.
The getting stuff done can then translate to things such as an increased campus presence, and generally a lot more chances to get people into the first stage of the ‘funnel’. Last year we ran around 8 events a week, with several of them aimed at engaging and on-boarding new interested people (Those being hosting 1 or 2 speakers a week, running outreach focused socials, introductionary discussion groups and careers workshops.) This large organisational capacity also let us run ~4 community focused events a week.
I think it is mostly these mechanisms that make the large committee helpful, as opposed to most of the committee members becoming ‘core EAs’ (I think conversion ratio is perhaps 1⁄5 or 1⁄10). There is also some sense in which the above allow us to form a campus presence that helps people hear about us, and I think perhaps makes us more attractive to high-achieving people, although I am pretty uncertain about this.
I think EA: Cam is a significant outlier in terms of EA student groups, and if a group is starting out it probably makes more sense to stick to the kind of advice given in this article. However I think in the long term Community + Big formal committee is probably better than just a community with an informal committee.
Interesting stuff, thanks guys. I wanted to discuss one point:
From conversations with James, I believe Cambridge has a pretty different model of how they run it- in particular, a much more hands on approach, which calls for formal commitment from more people e.g. giving everyone specific roles, which is the “excessive formalist” approach. Are there reasons you guys have access to which favour your model of outreach over theirs? Or alternate frame; what’s the best argument in favour of the Cambridge model of giving everyone an explicit role, and why does that not succeed (if it doesn’t)?
For example, is it possible that Cambridge get a significantly higher number of people involved, which then cancels out the effects of immediately high-fidelity models in due course (e.g. suppose lots of people are low fidelity while at Cam, but then a section become more high-fidelity later, and it ends up not making that much difference in the long run)? Or does the Cambridge model use roles as an effective commitment device? Or does one model ensure less movement drift, or less lost value from movement drift? (see here http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1ne/empirical_data_on_value_drift/?refresh=true) There’s a comment from David Moss here suggesting there’s an “open question” about the value of focussing on more engaged individuals, given the risks of attrition in large movements (assuming the value of the piece, which is subject to lots of methodological caveats).
The qs above might be contradictory- I’m not advocating any of the above, but instead clarifying whether there’s anything missed by your suggestions.
Thanks for the comment JoshP!
I’ve spoken a lot with the Cambridge lot about this. I guess the cruxes of my disagreement with their approach are:
1) I think their committee model selects more for willingness to do menial tasks for the prestige of being in the committee, rather than actual enthusiasm for effective altruism. So something like what you described happens where “a section become more high-fidelity later, and it ends up not making that much difference”, as people who aren’t actually interested drop out. But it comes at the cost of more engaged people spending time on management.
2) From my understanding, Cambridge viewed the 1 year roles as a way of being able to ‘lock in’ people to engage with EA for 1 year and create a norm of committee attending events. But my model of someone who ends up being very engaged in EA is that excitement about the content drives most of the motivation, rather than external commitment devices. So I suppose roles only play a limited role in committing people to engage, but comes at the cost of people spending X hours on admin, when they could have spent X hours on learning more about EA.
It’s worth noting that I think Cambridge have recently been thinking hard about this, and also I expect their models for how their committee provides value to be much more nuanced than I present. Nevertheless, I think (1) and (2) capture useful points of disagreement I’ve had with them in the past.
This depends on what you mean by ‘drop out’. Only around 10% (~5) of our committee dropped out during last year, although maybe 1/3rd chose not to rejoin the committee this year (and about another 1/3rd are graduating)
This does not ring especially true to me, see my reply to Josh.
To jump in as the ex-co-president of EA: Cambridge from last year:
I think the differences mostly come in things which were omitted from this post, as opposed to the explicit points made, which I mostly agree with.
There is a fairly wide distinction between the EA community in Cambridge and the EA: Cam committee, and we don’t try to force people from the former into the latter (although we hope for the reverse!).
I largely view a big formal committee (ours was over 40 people last year) as an addition to the attempts to build a community as outlined in this post. A formal committee in my mind significantly improves the ability to get stuff done vs the ‘conspirators’ approach.
The getting stuff done can then translate to things such as an increased campus presence, and generally a lot more chances to get people into the first stage of the ‘funnel’. Last year we ran around 8 events a week, with several of them aimed at engaging and on-boarding new interested people (Those being hosting 1 or 2 speakers a week, running outreach focused socials, introductionary discussion groups and careers workshops.) This large organisational capacity also let us run ~4 community focused events a week.
I think it is mostly these mechanisms that make the large committee helpful, as opposed to most of the committee members becoming ‘core EAs’ (I think conversion ratio is perhaps 1⁄5 or 1⁄10). There is also some sense in which the above allow us to form a campus presence that helps people hear about us, and I think perhaps makes us more attractive to high-achieving people, although I am pretty uncertain about this.
I think EA: Cam is a significant outlier in terms of EA student groups, and if a group is starting out it probably makes more sense to stick to the kind of advice given in this article. However I think in the long term Community + Big formal committee is probably better than just a community with an informal committee.