This post has plenty on “how to make EA cool”, but the title promised “Why make EA cool” as well. I think the post is a bit light on the why.
Maybe you don’t think being cool matters. That’s a fine opinion if you’re ok with EA being a group of 10,000 people, ~70% male and ~75% white, circularly spending Dustin Moskovitz’s money.
But imagine a movement of a million people. A million people donating a percentage of their income to create a community fund as large as Open Phil’s. A million people working at high-impact organizations.
There’s been plenty of debate within the community about this. And I think some people really are OK with EA being a group of 10,000 people.
Those people would say that you’re arguing for a low fidelity model of spreading EA ideas, but you haven’t made the case very strongly.
A movement of a million people sounds great.
But if the reality is that those people are ~all donating ineffectively, and working at organisations which actually aren’t particularly high impact orgs, then I suspect that movement is worse than the one we have now (for all its flaws).
For what it’s worth, I think I probably do prefer broader outreach.
And I’d want that outreach to aim to be high-fidelity, but to recognise that we inevitably have to compromise on that to reach more people.
This post has plenty on “how to make EA cool”, but the title promised “Why make EA cool” as well. I think the post is a bit light on the why.
There’s been plenty of debate within the community about this. And I think some people really are OK with EA being a group of 10,000 people.
Those people would say that you’re arguing for a low fidelity model of spreading EA ideas, but you haven’t made the case very strongly.
A movement of a million people sounds great.
But if the reality is that those people are ~all donating ineffectively, and working at organisations which actually aren’t particularly high impact orgs, then I suspect that movement is worse than the one we have now (for all its flaws).
For what it’s worth, I think I probably do prefer broader outreach.
And I’d want that outreach to aim to be high-fidelity, but to recognise that we inevitably have to compromise on that to reach more people.
But I don’t think it’s obvious either way.