Having a standard word-of-mouth goal
In addition to having the standard goal of donating 10% of your income, it seems to me that it could be useful to create an equivalent along the lines of “introducing 5 proto-EAs to EA each year” (proto-EAs being people who are likely to be interested in EA if they heard about it). This could be in the form of having a long conversation about what EA is, getting them to check out the 80,000 Hours website, lending them a copy of The Precipice, persuading them to apply to an intro fellowship, or similar.
Like donating, this is an accessible way for people in “non-altruistic” jobs to have an impact without demanding too much time or resources, and explicitly prompting people to do this in casual conversation (as opposed to feeling like pursuing this theory of change implies being an official community builder) seems valuable. Personally, I used to not talk about EA much in casual conversation with non-EAs because I thought people would think it was weird or boring, but after having my arm twisted into doing it a few times, I’ve gotten some very positive responses and I wish I had been more strongly encouraged to do this sooner. Having some sort of explicit goal of this kind (carrying the implication that other EAs talk to others outside the community about EA frequently and often get positive responses) would have probably prompted me to do it.
Does making this a “thing” seem like a worthwhile idea to others? If so, is there an organization that could propagate it and turn something like this into a similarly popular and standard goal for people to aim for?
Possibly worth noting: 5 is a completely arbitrary number and anywhere from 1-20 seems reasonable to me depending on people’s level of extroversion.
Personally I’m a bit wary of things like this. A few reactions:
You mention that the appropriate number might vary depending on extroversion. I think it should also vary by situation. A student in an average year might meet 20 new people who might be interested in hearing about EA stuff. Someone who works in a steady job in a small company and has young kids might not meet any. A nice thing about donate 10% is that it applies across the board and scales to people’s incomes. This sort of thing doesn’t.
I don’t think you’re doing a strong version of this, but I’m still worried about frames which can slip into ‘I should persuade people to think like me’. I think this is particularly likely when the frame is ‘introduce people to EA’, rather than ‘if I meet someone who I think might be interested in AI safety, then chatting about that is a natural, normal, and fun thing to do. Maybe they find it interesting and helpful; if so, good’. The latter thing just seems unproblematic and good to me; if people in the EA community aren’t doing enough of this at the margin for some reason then pushing for more of it seems correct. The former I’m a bit wary of, though clearly some versions of it are good.