Thanks for writing up your thinking on this, and also more in general for doing the hard work of community building. 🙌
I think Tess makes good points in their comment about the huge amounts of uncertainty contained in that impact potential factor, and I would go a step further and say:
The factor i is a red herring, and it is harmful for community building to try and predict it.
“intuitively” predicting this is extremely succeptible to bias and rationalizations
overconfident community builders using this to justify their decisions will come off as arrogant and elitist
it will increase impostor syndrome (“my local group doesn’t have a high enough impact potential”)
it’s dependent on which ethical frameworks are correct
core EA orgs weren’t able to predict the hugely negative impact of SBF
Using it to decide who is “most worthy of outreach” is in direct conflict with core strenghts of the EA community: cause-neutrality and openness to neglected approaches to making the world a better place.
What should be done instead?
Aim to build a broad, diverse community that is welcoming and non-judgemental and accurately communicates EA ideas to a large audience. Build a community that you would want to be part of. Does this mean abandoning quantitative measures? No, we can still measure if we achieve our goals:
measure participant’s understanding of core EA ideas
measure diversity
measure people reached
measure giving pledges
measure money donated
The high impact potential people (those mythical creatures) will find their way once they have come in contact with an accurate representation of EA ideas. It’s not the job of community builders to identify and guide them (because they can’t), their job is to build an awesome community that communicates EA ideas with high fidelity so that many people come in contact with good first hand accounts of these ideas instead of simplified straw-man versions of EA in take-down articles about scandals in the EA community.
Thanks for writing up your thinking on this, and also more in general for doing the hard work of community building. 🙌
I think Tess makes good points in their comment about the huge amounts of uncertainty contained in that impact potential factor, and I would go a step further and say:
The factor i is a red herring, and it is harmful for community building to try and predict it.
“intuitively” predicting this is extremely succeptible to bias and rationalizations
overconfident community builders using this to justify their decisions will come off as arrogant and elitist
it will increase impostor syndrome (“my local group doesn’t have a high enough impact potential”)
it’s dependent on which ethical frameworks are correct
core EA orgs weren’t able to predict the hugely negative impact of SBF
Using it to decide who is “most worthy of outreach” is in direct conflict with core strenghts of the EA community: cause-neutrality and openness to neglected approaches to making the world a better place.
What should be done instead?
Aim to build a broad, diverse community that is welcoming and non-judgemental and accurately communicates EA ideas to a large audience. Build a community that you would want to be part of. Does this mean abandoning quantitative measures? No, we can still measure if we achieve our goals:
measure participant’s understanding of core EA ideas
measure diversity
measure people reached
measure giving pledges
measure money donated
The high impact potential people (those mythical creatures) will find their way once they have come in contact with an accurate representation of EA ideas. It’s not the job of community builders to identify and guide them (because they can’t), their job is to build an awesome community that communicates EA ideas with high fidelity so that many people come in contact with good first hand accounts of these ideas instead of simplified straw-man versions of EA in take-down articles about scandals in the EA community.