I think rationality should not be considered as a seperate cause area, but perhaps deserves to be a sub-cause area of EA movement building and AI safety.
It seems very unlikely that promoting rationality (and hoping some of those folks would be attracted to EA) is more effective than promoting EA in the first place.
I am unsure whether it is more effective to grow the the number of people interested in AI safety by promoting rationality or by directly reaching out to AI researchers (or other things one might do to grow the AI safety community).
Also, the post title is misleading since an interpretation of it could be that making people more rational is intrinsically valuable (or that due to increased rationality they would live happier lives). While this is likely true, this would probably be an ineffective intervention.
Part of my model is that there is decreasing marginal utility as you invest more effort in one form of outreach, so there can be significant benefit in investing some resources in investing small amounts of resources in alternate forms of outreach.
I think rationality should not be considered as a seperate cause area, but perhaps deserves to be a sub-cause area of EA movement building and AI safety.
It seems very unlikely that promoting rationality (and hoping some of those folks would be attracted to EA) is more effective than promoting EA in the first place.
I am unsure whether it is more effective to grow the the number of people interested in AI safety by promoting rationality or by directly reaching out to AI researchers (or other things one might do to grow the AI safety community).
Also, the post title is misleading since an interpretation of it could be that making people more rational is intrinsically valuable (or that due to increased rationality they would live happier lives). While this is likely true, this would probably be an ineffective intervention.
Part of my model is that there is decreasing marginal utility as you invest more effort in one form of outreach, so there can be significant benefit in investing some resources in investing small amounts of resources in alternate forms of outreach.
Thanks for explaining your views further! This seems about right to me, and I think this is an interesting direction that should be explored further.