The article proposes that the two main ways to be engaged in EA are either a job or donating—but doesn’t mention community building. I think this could be a fundamental flaw in thinking across the EA community and 80,000 Hours (sorry if calling it a flaw hurts anyone’s feelings, but I get the impression people reading this will be okay thinking objectively about whether it’s a flaw). Community building can’t happen because of single individuals, it takes a lot of individuals working together, so I find it striking it’s not mentioned in the article since it’s very much in line with the topic.
It’s possible that EA is still in its infancy and the amount of people working in or donating to EA is minute compared to what we’ll see in 100 years, and that the most important thing for EA could be the growth of the community.
Think of the wild success (in terms of getting people to join and contribute) of something like Catholicism. What if Christ had never come back from Mount Tabor or the desert? What if he had never preached? I just bring up religion to point out how much, as a social movement, it benefited from attracting followers. If you look at Mormons, they have their members do a mandatory program where they go try and convert other people to the religion. What does EA do for community building?
After all, what is EA without the community?
PS I don’t really have evidence for whether community building is more impactful than working or donating. I could only speculate. But I don’t see it mentioned and I think there’s a bias in this EA community to not consider it (although yes it is mentioned here and there it just doesn’t seem to be a focus area from what I’ve read so far).
edit: Some very anecdotal evidence for the importance of community building is I spent a lot of time researching how to find a more impactful career a couple years back. Mostly I was focused on computer science careers but easily could have been swayed by reading 80,000 Hours, if I had known it existed! Maybe it is my fault for not researching the right way, but I know there are tons of students out there who want to have impactful careers and only a sliver of them have heard of 80,000 Hours.
I think 80,000 Hours and related organizations like the Centre for Effective Altruism and Open Philanthropy, at least starting in recent years, actually find community-building very valuable, for some of the same reasons that you’ve mentioned. It’s possible that in the context of this post, community-building was just subsumed in the word “career” but not called out explicitly.
A counterargument is that 80,000 Hours alienates a broader portion of the population that would be essential for movement building. That 80,000 Hours is geared towards only a certain well-educated portion of the population is a [known problem](https://80000hours.org/2020/04/which-programmes-within-ea/) that hopefully will be resolved soon.
Thanks for sharing those links. I’d like to check them out. Right now I have a lot of other work to do. My reply is therefore limited. I wanted to share my current line of thinking when I wrote, “I think this could be a fundamental flaw in thinking across the EA community and 80,000 Hours...”. Since you’ve read more on the topic, I’d agree that the intention to promote community building is indeed there.
The article proposes that the two main ways to be engaged in EA are either a job or donating—but doesn’t mention community building. I think this could be a fundamental flaw in thinking across the EA community and 80,000 Hours (sorry if calling it a flaw hurts anyone’s feelings, but I get the impression people reading this will be okay thinking objectively about whether it’s a flaw). Community building can’t happen because of single individuals, it takes a lot of individuals working together, so I find it striking it’s not mentioned in the article since it’s very much in line with the topic.
It’s possible that EA is still in its infancy and the amount of people working in or donating to EA is minute compared to what we’ll see in 100 years, and that the most important thing for EA could be the growth of the community.
Think of the wild success (in terms of getting people to join and contribute) of something like Catholicism. What if Christ had never come back from Mount Tabor or the desert? What if he had never preached? I just bring up religion to point out how much, as a social movement, it benefited from attracting followers. If you look at Mormons, they have their members do a mandatory program where they go try and convert other people to the religion. What does EA do for community building?
After all, what is EA without the community?
PS I don’t really have evidence for whether community building is more impactful than working or donating. I could only speculate. But I don’t see it mentioned and I think there’s a bias in this EA community to not consider it (although yes it is mentioned here and there it just doesn’t seem to be a focus area from what I’ve read so far).
edit: Some very anecdotal evidence for the importance of community building is I spent a lot of time researching how to find a more impactful career a couple years back. Mostly I was focused on computer science careers but easily could have been swayed by reading 80,000 Hours, if I had known it existed! Maybe it is my fault for not researching the right way, but I know there are tons of students out there who want to have impactful careers and only a sliver of them have heard of 80,000 Hours.
I think 80,000 Hours and related organizations like the Centre for Effective Altruism and Open Philanthropy, at least starting in recent years, actually find community-building very valuable, for some of the same reasons that you’ve mentioned. It’s possible that in the context of this post, community-building was just subsumed in the word “career” but not called out explicitly.
Some relevant links:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/building-effective-altruism-1
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FjDpyJNnzK8teSu4J/a-huge-opportunity-for-impact-movement-building-at-top-2
https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/promoting-effective-altruism/
A counterargument is that 80,000 Hours alienates a broader portion of the population that would be essential for movement building. That 80,000 Hours is geared towards only a certain well-educated portion of the population is a [known problem](https://80000hours.org/2020/04/which-programmes-within-ea/) that hopefully will be resolved soon.
Thanks for sharing those links. I’d like to check them out. Right now I have a lot of other work to do. My reply is therefore limited. I wanted to share my current line of thinking when I wrote, “I think this could be a fundamental flaw in thinking across the EA community and 80,000 Hours...”. Since you’ve read more on the topic, I’d agree that the intention to promote community building is indeed there.