Thank you for writing this! I just wanted to flag that this format could fixate us on the structure of our past strategy.
For instance (and this is just one example out of many), I believe that the past strategy of the movement was inherently incoherent; From the way you describe the second wave, it’s clear that the movement was focused on “career changes” of “talent” into “longtermism”. However, the movement didn’t describe itself as a longtermism hiring agency, it described itself as a community of people who seek the most impactful courses of action. This post and comment describe this criticism in length.
If this criticism makes sense, then we might consider a third wave that looks something like:
We’ve split the brand of EA from a few cause-specific brands that focus on the most effective interventions in their area (e.g., effective AI safety, effective climate change, and so on).
The new EA brand focuses on the education of EA tools and principles (and maybe also refers people to the resources of the other cause-specific community).
Each other cause-specific brand has its own call-to-actions, focus audiences, and so on. For instance, AI safety’s call-to-action could be research, animal advocacy’s call-to-action could be donations, and so on.
I think that this format of waves is great for brainstorming, and I’m very happy that auch brainstorming is happening. However, this is just one example of why our former strategy might have been suboptimal, and how this format could fixate us on similar directions.
Thank you for writing this!
I just wanted to flag that this format could fixate us on the structure of our past strategy.
For instance (and this is just one example out of many), I believe that the past strategy of the movement was inherently incoherent;
From the way you describe the second wave, it’s clear that the movement was focused on “career changes” of “talent” into “longtermism”. However, the movement didn’t describe itself as a longtermism hiring agency, it described itself as a community of people who seek the most impactful courses of action. This post and comment describe this criticism in length.
If this criticism makes sense, then we might consider a third wave that looks something like:
We’ve split the brand of EA from a few cause-specific brands that focus on the most effective interventions in their area (e.g., effective AI safety, effective climate change, and so on).
The new EA brand focuses on the education of EA tools and principles (and maybe also refers people to the resources of the other cause-specific community).
Each other cause-specific brand has its own call-to-actions, focus audiences, and so on.
For instance, AI safety’s call-to-action could be research, animal advocacy’s call-to-action could be donations, and so on.
I think that this format of waves is great for brainstorming, and I’m very happy that auch brainstorming is happening. However, this is just one example of why our former strategy might have been suboptimal, and how this format could fixate us on similar directions.