Number of Giving What We Can members (though the “number of active members” is a different thing and hard to figure out, so not sure how useful this one is)
Number of active EA groups + their total membership
Number of people employed by all “EA-aligned” organizations combined
Annual donations to GiveWell, EA Funds, and maybe ACE/Founders Pledge
Annual grantmaking done by Open Phil
(Not listing numbers out of laziness + the hope that someone will create a non-Forum version of this, and get up-to-date numbers at that point.)
These can all be rough estimates, but if someone was off about one of these things by an order of magnitude, I’d think they had some poor models about some aspect of the EA community.
Other random numbers I’ll suggest (again, rough estimate):
Number of people working in different fields (e.g. AI safety or wild animal suffering), and/or the annual funding available to people in those fields
Cost to avert a death by supporting a top GiveWell charity
Cost to get a chicken out of a cage for one year
I want to return to this post at some point, since I feel like my list should be longer. I hope others have better suggestions than mine!
Numbers about the EA community seem useful for people to know if they have any interest in community building. Examples might include:
Monthly visitors to effectivealtruism.org
Monthly visitors to the EA Forum
Number of Giving What We Can members (though the “number of active members” is a different thing and hard to figure out, so not sure how useful this one is)
Number of active EA groups + their total membership
Number of people employed by all “EA-aligned” organizations combined
Annual donations to GiveWell, EA Funds, and maybe ACE/Founders Pledge
Annual grantmaking done by Open Phil
(Not listing numbers out of laziness + the hope that someone will create a non-Forum version of this, and get up-to-date numbers at that point.)
These can all be rough estimates, but if someone was off about one of these things by an order of magnitude, I’d think they had some poor models about some aspect of the EA community.
Other random numbers I’ll suggest (again, rough estimate):
Number of people working in different fields (e.g. AI safety or wild animal suffering), and/or the annual funding available to people in those fields
Cost to avert a death by supporting a top GiveWell charity
Cost to get a chicken out of a cage for one year
I want to return to this post at some point, since I feel like my list should be longer. I hope others have better suggestions than mine!
Maybe aggregate EA wealth (wealth held by EAs, or wealth intended for EA?), dominated by Open Phil and maybe a few other billionaires.
Average yearly donation by EAs (EA survey respondents)