I think this is something that the EA community is doing already and maybe could/should do even more. Many of my smartest (non EA) friends from college work in rent-seeking sectors / sectors that have neutral production value (not E2G). This seems to be an incredible waste of resources, since they could also work on the most pressing problems.
One interesting question could be: Are there tractable ways to do status engineering with the large group of talented non EAs? I think this could be worthwhile doing, because obviously not all incredibly smart people are part / want to be part of the EA community.
I believe Sam Harris is working on an NFT project for people having taken the GWWC pledge, so that would be one example.
Academia seems like the highest leverage place one could focus on. Universities are to a large extent social status factories, and so aligning the status conferred by academic learning and research with EA objectives (for example, by creating an ‘EA University’) could be very high impact. Also relates to the point about ‘institutions.’
Interesting thoughts, apart from the sections finm mentioned this one stood out to me as well:
status engineering—redirecting social status towards productive ends (for instance on Elon Musk making engineers high status)
I think this is something that the EA community is doing already and maybe could/should do even more. Many of my smartest (non EA) friends from college work in rent-seeking sectors / sectors that have neutral production value (not E2G). This seems to be an incredible waste of resources, since they could also work on the most pressing problems.
One interesting question could be: Are there tractable ways to do status engineering with the large group of talented non EAs? I think this could be worthwhile doing, because obviously not all incredibly smart people are part / want to be part of the EA community.
I believe Sam Harris is working on an NFT project for people having taken the GWWC pledge, so that would be one example.
Academia seems like the highest leverage place one could focus on. Universities are to a large extent social status factories, and so aligning the status conferred by academic learning and research with EA objectives (for example, by creating an ‘EA University’) could be very high impact. Also relates to the point about ‘institutions.’