Compared to Ben’s conclusions I would use it as a data-point showing
it can be done
it may not be worth delaying
there are intermediate forms of communication in between “mass outreach” and “person-to-person outreach”
you should consider more complex model of communication than just (personal vs. mass media): specifically, a viable model in new country could be something like “very short message in mass media, few articles translated in national language to lower the bareer and point in the right direction, much larger amount transmitted via conferences & similar
Putting too much weight into “person to person” interaction runs into the problem you are less likely to find the right persons (consider how such connections may be created)
Btw it seems to me the way e.g. 80k hours and CEA works are inadeqate in creating the required personal connections in new countries, so it’s questionable if it makes sense to focus on it
(I completely agree China is extremely difficult, but I don’t think China should be considered a typical example—considering mentality it’s possibly one of the most remote countries from from Eurpoean POV)
It’s a useful case study, however, two quick responses:
1) To some extent you were following the suggested approach, because you only pushed ahead having already built a core of native speakers who had been involved in the past with English language materials (e.g. Ales Flidr was head of EA Harvard; core of LW people helped to start it).
You also mention how doing things like meeting CFAR and attending EAGxOxford were very useful in building the group. This suggests to me that doing even more to build expertise and connections with the core English-speaking EA community before pushing ahead with Czech outreach might have led to even better results.
I also guess that most of the group can read English language materials? If so, that makes the situation much easier. As I say, the less the distance, the weaker the arguments for waiting.
2) You don’t directly address my main concern. I’m suggesting that if we try to spread EA in new languages and cultures without laying out groundwork could lead to a suboptimal version of EA being locked into the new audience. However, in your report, you don’t directly respond to this concern.
You do give some evidence of short-term impact, which is evidence that benefits outweighed the opportunity costs. But I’d also want to look at questions like: (i) how accurately was EA portrayed in your press coverage? (ii) how well do people getting involved in the group understand EA? (iii) might you have put off important groups in ways that could have been avoided?
On the other hand I’m not sure if you take into account the difficuties
e.g. going to EAG could require something like “heroic effort”. If my academic job was my only source of income, going to EAGxOxford would have meant spending more than my monthly disposable income on it (even if EAGxOxford organizers were great in offering me big reduction in fees)
I’m not sure if you are modelling correctly barriers in building connections to the core of the community(*). Here is my guess at some problems people from different countries ol cultures may run into when trying to make connections, e.g. by applying for internships, help, conferences, etc.
1) People unconsciously take language sophistication as a proxy for inteligence. By not being proficient in English you loose points.
2) People are evaluated on proxies like “attending prestigeous university”. Universities outside of US or UK are generally discounted as regional
3) People are often in fact evaluated based on social network distance; this leads to “rich gets richer” dynamics
4) People are evaluated based on previous “EA achievements” which are easier to achieve in places where EA is allready present.
(*) you may object e.g. Ales Flidr is a good counterexample, but Harvard alumni are typically relatively “delocalized”, in demand everywhere, and may percieve greater value in working in the core than spreading ideas from core to emerging local groups. (Prestige and other incentives also point that way)
one risk I see in your article is it may influence the people who would be best at mitigating risks of “wrong local EA movements” being founded to not work on it at all.
I dont think “the barriers” should be zero, as such barriers in a way help the selection of motivated people. Just in my impression they may be higher than they appear from inside. Asking people to first build conections, while building such connections is not systematically supported, may make the barriers higher than optimal.
Btw yes the core of the group can read English materials. Also it could do research in machine learning, found a startup, work in quantitive finance, in part get elected to the parliament, move out of the country, and more. What I want to point at, if you imagine members of a group of people working on “translation” of EA into new culture you would like, they are likely paying huge opportunity costs in doing so. It may be hard to keep them at some state of waiting and building connections.
In our case, counterfactually it seems plausible “waiting even more” could have also led to the group not working, or worse organization beeing created, as the core people would loose motivation / pursue other opportunities.
2) In counting long-term impact and the lock-in effect you should consider the chance movements in new languages and cultures develop in some respects better versions of effective altruism, and beneficial mutations can than spread, even back to the core. More countries may mean more experiments running and faster evolution of better versions of EA. It’s unclear to me how these terms (lock in, more optimization power) add up but both should be counted. One possible resolution may be to prioritize founding movements in smaller countries where you create experience, but the damage is limited.
To your questions
i] with one exception, reasonably well taken from the viewpoint of strategic communication (communicating easily communicable concepts, eg impact and effectivity). I don’t think the damage is great, and part of misconceptions is unavoidable givent the name “effective altruism”.
ii] it has a distribution… IMO the understanding at the moment is highly correlated with the enagagement in the group. Which may be more important than criteria like “average understanding” or “public understanding”
iii] yes, it’s complicated, depends on some misalignments, and I dont want to disscuss it publicly.
Quick addition that I realise the lack of support for local groups is not ideal, but this capacity constraint is another reason to go slow. I’d favour a more “all or nothing” approach, where we select a small number of countries / languages / locations and then make a major attempt to get them going (e.g. ideally supplying enough money so that 1-2 people can go full-time, pay for trips to visit other groups etc., plus provide in-depth mentoring from CEA), while in other locations we minimise outward facing activities. The middle ground of lots of small groups with few resources doesn’t seem ideal. I’m optimistic we’re moving in this direction with things like the EA Grants and http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1l3/announcing_effective_altruism_community_building/
I just published a short history of creating effective altruism movement in the Czech Republic http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1ls/introducing_czech_association_for_effective/ and I think it is highly relevant to this discussion
Compared to Ben’s conclusions I would use it as a data-point showing
it can be done
it may not be worth delaying
there are intermediate forms of communication in between “mass outreach” and “person-to-person outreach”
you should consider more complex model of communication than just (personal vs. mass media): specifically, a viable model in new country could be something like “very short message in mass media, few articles translated in national language to lower the bareer and point in the right direction, much larger amount transmitted via conferences & similar
Putting too much weight into “person to person” interaction runs into the problem you are less likely to find the right persons (consider how such connections may be created)
Btw it seems to me the way e.g. 80k hours and CEA works are inadeqate in creating the required personal connections in new countries, so it’s questionable if it makes sense to focus on it
(I completely agree China is extremely difficult, but I don’t think China should be considered a typical example—considering mentality it’s possibly one of the most remote countries from from Eurpoean POV)
Hi Jan,
It’s a useful case study, however, two quick responses:
1) To some extent you were following the suggested approach, because you only pushed ahead having already built a core of native speakers who had been involved in the past with English language materials (e.g. Ales Flidr was head of EA Harvard; core of LW people helped to start it).
You also mention how doing things like meeting CFAR and attending EAGxOxford were very useful in building the group. This suggests to me that doing even more to build expertise and connections with the core English-speaking EA community before pushing ahead with Czech outreach might have led to even better results.
I also guess that most of the group can read English language materials? If so, that makes the situation much easier. As I say, the less the distance, the weaker the arguments for waiting.
2) You don’t directly address my main concern. I’m suggesting that if we try to spread EA in new languages and cultures without laying out groundwork could lead to a suboptimal version of EA being locked into the new audience. However, in your report, you don’t directly respond to this concern.
You do give some evidence of short-term impact, which is evidence that benefits outweighed the opportunity costs. But I’d also want to look at questions like: (i) how accurately was EA portrayed in your press coverage? (ii) how well do people getting involved in the group understand EA? (iii) might you have put off important groups in ways that could have been avoided?
Hi Ben,
1) I understand your concerns.
On the other hand I’m not sure if you take into account the difficuties
e.g. going to EAG could require something like “heroic effort”. If my academic job was my only source of income, going to EAGxOxford would have meant spending more than my monthly disposable income on it (even if EAGxOxford organizers were great in offering me big reduction in fees)
I’m not sure if you are modelling correctly barriers in building connections to the core of the community(*). Here is my guess at some problems people from different countries ol cultures may run into when trying to make connections, e.g. by applying for internships, help, conferences, etc.
1) People unconsciously take language sophistication as a proxy for inteligence. By not being proficient in English you loose points.
2) People are evaluated on proxies like “attending prestigeous university”. Universities outside of US or UK are generally discounted as regional
3) People are often in fact evaluated based on social network distance; this leads to “rich gets richer” dynamics
4) People are evaluated based on previous “EA achievements” which are easier to achieve in places where EA is allready present.
(*) you may object e.g. Ales Flidr is a good counterexample, but Harvard alumni are typically relatively “delocalized”, in demand everywhere, and may percieve greater value in working in the core than spreading ideas from core to emerging local groups. (Prestige and other incentives also point that way)
one risk I see in your article is it may influence the people who would be best at mitigating risks of “wrong local EA movements” being founded to not work on it at all.
I dont think “the barriers” should be zero, as such barriers in a way help the selection of motivated people. Just in my impression they may be higher than they appear from inside. Asking people to first build conections, while building such connections is not systematically supported, may make the barriers higher than optimal.
Btw yes the core of the group can read English materials. Also it could do research in machine learning, found a startup, work in quantitive finance, in part get elected to the parliament, move out of the country, and more. What I want to point at, if you imagine members of a group of people working on “translation” of EA into new culture you would like, they are likely paying huge opportunity costs in doing so. It may be hard to keep them at some state of waiting and building connections.
In our case, counterfactually it seems plausible “waiting even more” could have also led to the group not working, or worse organization beeing created, as the core people would loose motivation / pursue other opportunities.
2) In counting long-term impact and the lock-in effect you should consider the chance movements in new languages and cultures develop in some respects better versions of effective altruism, and beneficial mutations can than spread, even back to the core. More countries may mean more experiments running and faster evolution of better versions of EA. It’s unclear to me how these terms (lock in, more optimization power) add up but both should be counted. One possible resolution may be to prioritize founding movements in smaller countries where you create experience, but the damage is limited.
To your questions
i] with one exception, reasonably well taken from the viewpoint of strategic communication (communicating easily communicable concepts, eg impact and effectivity). I don’t think the damage is great, and part of misconceptions is unavoidable givent the name “effective altruism”.
ii] it has a distribution… IMO the understanding at the moment is highly correlated with the enagagement in the group. Which may be more important than criteria like “average understanding” or “public understanding”
iii] yes, it’s complicated, depends on some misalignments, and I dont want to disscuss it publicly.
Quick addition that I realise the lack of support for local groups is not ideal, but this capacity constraint is another reason to go slow. I’d favour a more “all or nothing” approach, where we select a small number of countries / languages / locations and then make a major attempt to get them going (e.g. ideally supplying enough money so that 1-2 people can go full-time, pay for trips to visit other groups etc., plus provide in-depth mentoring from CEA), while in other locations we minimise outward facing activities. The middle ground of lots of small groups with few resources doesn’t seem ideal. I’m optimistic we’re moving in this direction with things like the EA Grants and http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1l3/announcing_effective_altruism_community_building/