The Emergent Ventures Prize is an example of a prize scheme that seems good to me: giving $100k prizes to great blogs, wherever on the internet they’re located.
I read every Tweet that uses the phrase “effective altruism” or “#effectivealtruism”. I don’t think there are many EA-themed Tweets that make novel points, rather than linking to existing material. I could easily be missing Tweets that don’t have these keywords, though. Are there any EA-themed Tweets you’re thinking of that really stood out as being good?
Tom Inglesby on nCoV response is one recent example from just the last few days. I’ve generally known Stefan Schubert, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Julia Galef, and others to make very insightful comments there. I’m sure there are very many other examples.
Generally speaking, though, the philosophy would be to go to the platforms that top contributors are actually using, and offer our services there, rather than trying to push them onto ours, or at least to complement the latter with the former.
I agree with this philosophy, but remain unsure about the extent to which strong material appears on various platforms (I sometimes do reach out to people who have written good blog posts or Facebook posts to send my regards and invite them to cross-post; this is a big part of Ben Kuhn’s recent posts have appeared on the Forum, and one of those did win a prize).
Aside from 1000-person-plus groups like “Effective Altruism” and “EA Hangout”, are there any Facebook groups that you think regularly feature strong contributions? (I’ve seen plenty of good posts come out of smaller groups, but given the sheer number of groups, I doubt that the list of those I check includes everything it should.)
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I follow all the Twitter accounts you mentioned. While I can’t think of recent top-level Tweets from those accounts that feel like good Prize candidates, I think the Tom Inglesby thread is great!
One benefit of the Forum Prize is that it (ideally) incentivizes people to come and post things on the Forum, and to put more effort into producing really strong posts. It also reaches people who deliberately worked to contribute to the community. If someone like Tom Inglesby was suddenly offered, say, $200 for writing a great Twitter thread, it’s very unclear to me whether this would lead to any change in his behavior (and it might come across as very odd). Maybe not including any money, but simply cross-posting the thread and granting some kind of honorary award, could be better.
Another benefit: The Forum is centralized, and it’s easy for judges to see every post. If someone wants to Tweet about EA and they aren’t already a central figure, we might have a hard time finding their material (and we’re much more likely to spot, by happenstance, posts made by people who have lots of followers).
That said, there’s merit to thinking about ways we can reach out to send strong complimentary signals to people who produce EA-relevant things even if they’re unaware of the movement’s existence. Thanks for these suggestions!
EA Tweet prizes.
Possible EA intervention: just like the EA Forum Prizes, but for the best Tweets (from an EA point-of-view) in a given time window.
Reasons this might be better than the EA Forum Prize:
1) Popular tweets have greater reach than popular forum posts, so this could promote EA more effectively
2) The prizes could go to EAs who are not regular forum users, which could also help to promote EA more effectively.
One would have to check the rules and regulations.
The Emergent Ventures Prize is an example of a prize scheme that seems good to me: giving $100k prizes to great blogs, wherever on the internet they’re located.
The related “Effective ideas” prize for EA blogs is thriving.
I read every Tweet that uses the phrase “effective altruism” or “#effectivealtruism”. I don’t think there are many EA-themed Tweets that make novel points, rather than linking to existing material. I could easily be missing Tweets that don’t have these keywords, though. Are there any EA-themed Tweets you’re thinking of that really stood out as being good?
Tom Inglesby on nCoV response is one recent example from just the last few days. I’ve generally known Stefan Schubert, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Julia Galef, and others to make very insightful comments there. I’m sure there are very many other examples.
Generally speaking, though, the philosophy would be to go to the platforms that top contributors are actually using, and offer our services there, rather than trying to push them onto ours, or at least to complement the latter with the former.
I agree with this philosophy, but remain unsure about the extent to which strong material appears on various platforms (I sometimes do reach out to people who have written good blog posts or Facebook posts to send my regards and invite them to cross-post; this is a big part of Ben Kuhn’s recent posts have appeared on the Forum, and one of those did win a prize).
Aside from 1000-person-plus groups like “Effective Altruism” and “EA Hangout”, are there any Facebook groups that you think regularly feature strong contributions? (I’ve seen plenty of good posts come out of smaller groups, but given the sheer number of groups, I doubt that the list of those I check includes everything it should.)
*****
I follow all the Twitter accounts you mentioned. While I can’t think of recent top-level Tweets from those accounts that feel like good Prize candidates, I think the Tom Inglesby thread is great!
One benefit of the Forum Prize is that it (ideally) incentivizes people to come and post things on the Forum, and to put more effort into producing really strong posts. It also reaches people who deliberately worked to contribute to the community. If someone like Tom Inglesby was suddenly offered, say, $200 for writing a great Twitter thread, it’s very unclear to me whether this would lead to any change in his behavior (and it might come across as very odd). Maybe not including any money, but simply cross-posting the thread and granting some kind of honorary award, could be better.
Another benefit: The Forum is centralized, and it’s easy for judges to see every post. If someone wants to Tweet about EA and they aren’t already a central figure, we might have a hard time finding their material (and we’re much more likely to spot, by happenstance, posts made by people who have lots of followers).
That said, there’s merit to thinking about ways we can reach out to send strong complimentary signals to people who produce EA-relevant things even if they’re unaware of the movement’s existence. Thanks for these suggestions!