I think that in theory, if things were being done quite well and we had a lot of resources, we should be in a situation where most EAs really don’t need much outside of maybe 20-200 hours of EA-specific information; after which focusing more on productivity and career-specific skills would result in greater gains.
Right now things are more messy. There’s no great one textbook, and the theory is very much still in development. As such, it probably does require spending more time, but I’m not sure how much more time.
I don’t know if you consider these “EA” concepts, but I do have a soft spot for many things that have somewhat come out of this community but aren’t specific to EA. These are more things I really wish everyone knew, and they could take some time to learn. Some ideas here include:
“Good” epistemics (This is vague, but the area is complicated)
Bayesian reasoning
Emotional maturity
Applied Stoicism (very similar to managing one’s own emotions well)
Cost-benefit analyses and related thinking
Pragmatic online etiquette
If we were in a culture that was firmly attached to beliefs around the human-sacrificing god Zordotron, I would think that education to carefully remove both the belief and many of the practices that are caused by that belief, would be quite useful, but also quite difficult. Doing so may be decently orthogonal to learning about EA, but would seem like generally a good thing.
I believe that common culture taught in schools and media is probably not quite as bizarre, but definitely substantially incorrect in ways that are incredibly difficult to rectify.
Quick take:
I think that in theory, if things were being done quite well and we had a lot of resources, we should be in a situation where most EAs really don’t need much outside of maybe 20-200 hours of EA-specific information; after which focusing more on productivity and career-specific skills would result in greater gains.
Right now things are more messy. There’s no great one textbook, and the theory is very much still in development. As such, it probably does require spending more time, but I’m not sure how much more time.
I don’t know if you consider these “EA” concepts, but I do have a soft spot for many things that have somewhat come out of this community but aren’t specific to EA. These are more things I really wish everyone knew, and they could take some time to learn. Some ideas here include:
“Good” epistemics (This is vague, but the area is complicated)
Bayesian reasoning
Emotional maturity
Applied Stoicism (very similar to managing one’s own emotions well)
Cost-benefit analyses and related thinking
Pragmatic online etiquette
If we were in a culture that was firmly attached to beliefs around the human-sacrificing god Zordotron, I would think that education to carefully remove both the belief and many of the practices that are caused by that belief, would be quite useful, but also quite difficult. Doing so may be decently orthogonal to learning about EA, but would seem like generally a good thing.
I believe that common culture taught in schools and media is probably not quite as bizarre, but definitely substantially incorrect in ways that are incredibly difficult to rectify.