If you make the definition of EA “anyone who donates to an EA charity” then the movement is much bigger, there’s more than 20K people in the world donating to effective charities. The Humane League alone has 1.1M followers on facebook, assuming only 200K of those donate, that’s still the same as the double every year number. I’d say anyone that donates would be considered an EA in my book, even if they don’t self-identify as one.
Yeah, this is an issue with defining EA. “Self-identification” is the only clear criterion for “being part of EA”. There is nothing useful as a metric about it. EA is not the kind of movement where it makes sense to ask “how many effective altruists are there?” It’s just how I framed my thinking about growth rates and bottlenecks, since that is the question I see lots of people asking people all the time. It is a familiar framing.
If someone has a specific question about change in the amount of resources moved through EA in a particular way, it is a lot easier to pinpoint a bundle of things to measure, and that usually provides an answer, like with what you’re doing.
If you make the definition of EA “anyone who donates to an EA charity” then the movement is much bigger, there’s more than 20K people in the world donating to effective charities. The Humane League alone has 1.1M followers on facebook, assuming only 200K of those donate, that’s still the same as the double every year number. I’d say anyone that donates would be considered an EA in my book, even if they don’t self-identify as one.
Yeah, this is an issue with defining EA. “Self-identification” is the only clear criterion for “being part of EA”. There is nothing useful as a metric about it. EA is not the kind of movement where it makes sense to ask “how many effective altruists are there?” It’s just how I framed my thinking about growth rates and bottlenecks, since that is the question I see lots of people asking people all the time. It is a familiar framing.
If someone has a specific question about change in the amount of resources moved through EA in a particular way, it is a lot easier to pinpoint a bundle of things to measure, and that usually provides an answer, like with what you’re doing.