This part of the discussion really rang true to me, and I want to hear more serious discussion on this topic. To many people outside the community it’s not at all clear what AI research, animal welfare, and global poverty have in common. Whatever corner of the movement they encounter first will guide their perception of EA; this obviously affects their likelihood of participation and the chances of their giving to an effective cause.
We all mostly recognize that EA is a question and not an answer, but the question that ties these topics together itself requires substantial context and explanation for the uninitiated (people who are relatively unused to thinking in a certain way). In addition, entertaining counterintuitive notions is a central part of lots of EA discourse, but many people simply do not accept counterintuitive conclusions as a matter of habit and worldview.
The way the movement is structured now, I fear that large swaths of the population are basically excluded by these obstacles. I think we have a tendency to write these people off. But in the “network” sense, many of these people probably have a lot to contribute in the way of skills, money, and ideas. There’s a lot of value—real value of the kind we like to quantify when we think about big cause areas—lost in failing to include them.
I recognize that EA movement building is an accepted cause area. But I’d like to see our conception of that cause area broaden by a lot— even the EA label is enough to turn people off, and strategies for communication of the EA message to the wider world have severely lagged the professionalization of discourse within the “community.”
This part of the discussion really rang true to me, and I want to hear more serious discussion on this topic. To many people outside the community it’s not at all clear what AI research, animal welfare, and global poverty have in common. Whatever corner of the movement they encounter first will guide their perception of EA; this obviously affects their likelihood of participation and the chances of their giving to an effective cause.
We all mostly recognize that EA is a question and not an answer, but the question that ties these topics together itself requires substantial context and explanation for the uninitiated (people who are relatively unused to thinking in a certain way). In addition, entertaining counterintuitive notions is a central part of lots of EA discourse, but many people simply do not accept counterintuitive conclusions as a matter of habit and worldview.
The way the movement is structured now, I fear that large swaths of the population are basically excluded by these obstacles. I think we have a tendency to write these people off. But in the “network” sense, many of these people probably have a lot to contribute in the way of skills, money, and ideas. There’s a lot of value—real value of the kind we like to quantify when we think about big cause areas—lost in failing to include them.
I recognize that EA movement building is an accepted cause area. But I’d like to see our conception of that cause area broaden by a lot— even the EA label is enough to turn people off, and strategies for communication of the EA message to the wider world have severely lagged the professionalization of discourse within the “community.”