Honestly, it does seem like it might be challenging, and I welcome ideas on things to do. (In particular, it might be hard without sacrificing lots of value in other ways. E.g. going on big-name podcasts can be very, very valuable, and I wouldn’t want to indefinitely avoid doing that—that would be too big a cost. More generally, public advocacy is still very valuable, and I still plan to be “a” public proponent of EA.)
The lowest-hanging fruit is just really hammering the message to journalists / writers I speak to; but there’s not a super tight correlation between what I say to journalists / writers and what they write about. Having others give opening / closing talks at EAG also seems like an easy win.
The ideal is that we build up a roster of EA-aligned public figures. I’ve been spending some time on that this year, providing even more advice / encouragement to potential public figures than before, and connecting them to my network. The last year has made it more challenging though, as there are larger costs to being an EA-promoting public figure than there were before, so it’s a less attractive prospect; at the same time, a lot of people are now focusing on AI in particular. But there are a number of people who I think could be excellent in this position.
“First, building up a solid roster of EA public figures will take a while—many years, at least. For example, suppose that someone decides to become a public figure and goes down a book-writing path. Writing a book typically takes a couple of years or more, then there’s a year between finishing the manuscript and publication. And people’s first books are rarely huge hits—someone’s public profile tends to build slowly over time. There are also just a few things that are hard and take time to replicate, like conventional status indicators (being a professor at a prestigious university).
Second, I don’t think we’re ever going to be able to get away from a dynamic where a handful of public figures are far more well-known than all others. Amount of public attention (as measured by, e.g. twitter followers) follows a power law. So if we try to produce a lot of potential public figures, just via the underlying dynamics we’ll probably get a situation where the most-well-known person is a lot more well-known than the next most-well-known person, and so on.
(The same dynamic is why it’s more or less inevitable that much or most funding in EA will come from a small handful of donors. Wealth follows a fat-tailed distribution; the people who are most able to donate will be able to donate far more than most people. Even for GiveWell, which is clearly aimed at “retail” donors, 51% of their funds raised came from a single donor — Open Philanthropy.)
It’s also pretty chance-y who gets the most attention at any one time. WWOTF ended up getting a lot more media attention than The Precipice; this could easily have been the other way around. It certainly didn’t have anything to do with the intrinsic quality of the two books; whereas out-of-control factors like The Precipice being published right after COVID made a significant difference. Toby also got a truly enormous amount of media attention in both 2009 and 2010 (I think he was the most-read news story on the BBC both times); if that had happened now, he’d have a much larger public profile than he currently does.
All this is to say: progress here will take some time. A major success story for this plan would be that, in five years’ time, there are a couple more well-known EA figureheads, in addition to what we have now. That said, there are still things we can to make progress on this in the near term: have other people speaking with the media when they can; having other people do the opening talks at EAGs; and showcasing EAs who already have public platforms, like Toby Ord, or Natalie Cargill, who has an excellent TED talk that’s coming out this year.”
CEA distributes books at scale, right? Seems like offering more different books could boost name recognition of other authors and remove a signal of emphasis on you. This would be far from a total fix, but is very easy to implement.
I haven’t kept up with recent books, but back in 2015 I preferred Nick Cooney’s intro to EA book to both yours and Peter Singer’s, and thought it was a shame it got a fraction of the attention.
Presumably it’s easier to sell your own book than someone else’s? I assume CEA is able to get a much better rate on The Precipice and What We Owe The Future than How To Be Great At Doing Good or The Most Good You Can Do. The Life You Can Save (the org) even bought the rights to The Life You Can Save (the book) to make it easier to distribute.
[Edit: This may have been a factor too/instead:
“In my personal case, all of the proceeds from the book — all of the advances and royalties — are going to organizations focused on making sure we have a long-term future.”—Toby
“All proceeds from What We Owe The Future are donated to the Longtermism Fund”—Will
I can’t find anything similar for Peter’s or Nick’s books.]
It will always be easier to promote nearby highly popular people than farther away, lesser known people. One person being the “face” is the natural outcome of that dynamic. If you want a diverse field you need to promote other people even when it’s more effort in the short run.
If you want a diverse field you need to promote other people even when it’s more effort in the short run.
Agreed, sorry, I should have been clearer: I was aiming to offer reasons for why Nick Cooney’s book may have gotten a fraction of the attention to date (and, to a lesser extent, pushing back a bit on the idea that it would be “very easy to implement”).
Honestly, it does seem like it might be challenging, and I welcome ideas on things to do. (In particular, it might be hard without sacrificing lots of value in other ways. E.g. going on big-name podcasts can be very, very valuable, and I wouldn’t want to indefinitely avoid doing that—that would be too big a cost. More generally, public advocacy is still very valuable, and I still plan to be “a” public proponent of EA.)
The lowest-hanging fruit is just really hammering the message to journalists / writers I speak to; but there’s not a super tight correlation between what I say to journalists / writers and what they write about. Having others give opening / closing talks at EAG also seems like an easy win.
The ideal is that we build up a roster of EA-aligned public figures. I’ve been spending some time on that this year, providing even more advice / encouragement to potential public figures than before, and connecting them to my network. The last year has made it more challenging though, as there are larger costs to being an EA-promoting public figure than there were before, so it’s a less attractive prospect; at the same time, a lot of people are now focusing on AI in particular. But there are a number of people who I think could be excellent in this position.
I talk a bit more about some of the challenges in “Will MacAskill should not be the face of EA”:
“First, building up a solid roster of EA public figures will take a while—many years, at least. For example, suppose that someone decides to become a public figure and goes down a book-writing path. Writing a book typically takes a couple of years or more, then there’s a year between finishing the manuscript and publication. And people’s first books are rarely huge hits—someone’s public profile tends to build slowly over time. There are also just a few things that are hard and take time to replicate, like conventional status indicators (being a professor at a prestigious university).
Second, I don’t think we’re ever going to be able to get away from a dynamic where a handful of public figures are far more well-known than all others. Amount of public attention (as measured by, e.g. twitter followers) follows a power law. So if we try to produce a lot of potential public figures, just via the underlying dynamics we’ll probably get a situation where the most-well-known person is a lot more well-known than the next most-well-known person, and so on.
(The same dynamic is why it’s more or less inevitable that much or most funding in EA will come from a small handful of donors. Wealth follows a fat-tailed distribution; the people who are most able to donate will be able to donate far more than most people. Even for GiveWell, which is clearly aimed at “retail” donors, 51% of their funds raised came from a single donor — Open Philanthropy.)
It’s also pretty chance-y who gets the most attention at any one time. WWOTF ended up getting a lot more media attention than The Precipice; this could easily have been the other way around. It certainly didn’t have anything to do with the intrinsic quality of the two books; whereas out-of-control factors like The Precipice being published right after COVID made a significant difference. Toby also got a truly enormous amount of media attention in both 2009 and 2010 (I think he was the most-read news story on the BBC both times); if that had happened now, he’d have a much larger public profile than he currently does.
All this is to say: progress here will take some time. A major success story for this plan would be that, in five years’ time, there are a couple more well-known EA figureheads, in addition to what we have now. That said, there are still things we can to make progress on this in the near term: have other people speaking with the media when they can; having other people do the opening talks at EAGs; and showcasing EAs who already have public platforms, like Toby Ord, or Natalie Cargill, who has an excellent TED talk that’s coming out this year.”
CEA distributes books at scale, right? Seems like offering more different books could boost name recognition of other authors and remove a signal of emphasis on you. This would be far from a total fix, but is very easy to implement.
I haven’t kept up with recent books, but back in 2015 I preferred Nick Cooney’s intro to EA book to both yours and Peter Singer’s, and thought it was a shame it got a fraction of the attention.
Presumably it’s easier to sell your own book than someone else’s? I assume CEA is able to get a much better rate on The Precipice and What We Owe The Future than How To Be Great At Doing Good or The Most Good You Can Do. The Life You Can Save (the org) even bought the rights to The Life You Can Save (the book) to make it easier to distribute.
[Edit: This may have been a factor too/instead:
“In my personal case, all of the proceeds from the book — all of the advances and royalties — are going to organizations focused on making sure we have a long-term future.”—Toby
“All proceeds from What We Owe The Future are donated to the Longtermism Fund”—Will
I can’t find anything similar for Peter’s or Nick’s books.]
It will always be easier to promote nearby highly popular people than farther away, lesser known people. One person being the “face” is the natural outcome of that dynamic. If you want a diverse field you need to promote other people even when it’s more effort in the short run.
Agreed, sorry, I should have been clearer: I was aiming to offer reasons for why Nick Cooney’s book may have gotten a fraction of the attention to date (and, to a lesser extent, pushing back a bit on the idea that it would be “very easy to implement”).
Have you thought about not doing interviews?