I’m not sure what my general take is on this, I think it’s quite plausible that keeping it exclusive is net good, maybe more likely good than not. But I want to add one anecdote of my own which pushes the other way.
Over the last two years, while I was a student, I made two career choices in part (though not only) to gain EA credibility:
I was a group organizer at EA Munich (~2 hours a week)
I did a part-time internship at an EA org (~10 hours a week)
Both of these were fun, but I think it’s unlikely that they were good for my career or impact in ways other than gaining EA credibility. I think one non-trivial reason EA credibility was important to me was that I wanted to keep being admitted to things like EAG (maybe more than I admitted to myself in my explicit reasoning at the time).
Having said that, I think EA credibility has also been important to my career in other ways, notably to receive grants, so it’s not clear that this was bad on net.
It might also be that these were unnecessary or ineffective ways of gaining EA credibility—I don’t know what the admissions team cares about. Regardless, I think it’s an update that this is part of what led me to make choices that I otherwise might not have made (though quite plausibly I would have made them anyway).
I’m not sure what my general take is on this, I think it’s quite plausible that keeping it exclusive is net good, maybe more likely good than not. But I want to add one anecdote of my own which pushes the other way.
Over the last two years, while I was a student, I made two career choices in part (though not only) to gain EA credibility:
I was a group organizer at EA Munich (~2 hours a week)
I did a part-time internship at an EA org (~10 hours a week)
Both of these were fun, but I think it’s unlikely that they were good for my career or impact in ways other than gaining EA credibility. I think one non-trivial reason EA credibility was important to me was that I wanted to keep being admitted to things like EAG (maybe more than I admitted to myself in my explicit reasoning at the time).
Having said that, I think EA credibility has also been important to my career in other ways, notably to receive grants, so it’s not clear that this was bad on net.
It might also be that these were unnecessary or ineffective ways of gaining EA credibility—I don’t know what the admissions team cares about. Regardless, I think it’s an update that this is part of what led me to make choices that I otherwise might not have made (though quite plausibly I would have made them anyway).