Hi Benjamin! I think it’s great that you want to support more people to work on the most pressing problems, and that you shared your plan about your project here for feedback. Thanks!
I have a lot of reservations after skimming this article, here three major and two somewhat less major ones:
I think leading a large effort of introducing and teaching EA principles requires deep familiarity with the EA philosophy. It worries me that you don’t mention your background with EA much in the reasons you’d be qualified, except your involvement with the Transhumane Partei Deutschlands, which (from my experience as a German community builder) doesn’t seem particularly involved with the German EA community.
Relatedly, as Yi-Yang mentions, it worries me that you didn’t immidiately consider reputational risks to the EA movement in your “What could go wrong” section. Advertising this project as “The first EA-University” (as you’ve done in the German EA Slack) will likely catch attention and be taken as representative of the EA movement. This is a consideration that I think would be very salient to people who have spend sufficient time engaging with the EA movement to be well-equiped to lead such an effort.
The four initial courses seem relatively odd choices to what I would expect from an effort to make people in their ~30s familiar with effective altruism: “Foundations of AI, How to manage the digital transformation, How to work in the world of “work 4.0 / new work” and How to manage innovation in times of emerging technologies”
This sounds more like a selection of courses for tech entrepreneurs. I suppose these are topics you are more familiar with / interested in, but I think it would be misleading to call something based on this “EA university”.
It’s weird to me that you call this a university, as you mention in the comments that it’s only supposed to last up to 16 weeks.
You write “As I own my own consulting company for ~ 2 years now, I know how to build a company.” I looked you up on LinkedIn and it seems like the company is only you and one relative, who started working at your company 4 months ago and immidiately went on a sabbatical. This made your statement feel misleading and overconfident to me, as I expect people to expect more than that level of experience and success when reading “I know how to build a company”.
thanks for the reply! These are very good questions and mainly exactly what I meant with what I would probably forget about to mention it. So here we go:
My EA-Background: I am “involved” in EA since ~ 2014. Involved in the sense that I’ve read some books and articles, discussed EA-Ideas in my circles and spread the EA-Ideas embedded in other things like articles as EA became quickly a fix part of my thinking. Right now I’m technically part of EA here in Leipzig but I am not as active as I should I think. So I would give my a ~ 7⁄10 about EA-understanding I think. (That’s why I would love to talk / work with other EAs on that project especially)
“will likely catch attention and be taken as representative of the EA movement. This is a consideration that I think would be very salient to people who have spend sufficient time engaging with the EA movement to be well-equiped to lead such an effort.” That is a good argument, I’ve never seen it from this perspective tbh., thank you! I don’t think that this will be the case as nobody thinks about any IT-company as representive of the whole IT on earth but I will think about it and update my article as soon as I’m done.
The four courses are choosen because a) they work, b) they can get relatively sure be certified, c) they bring practical advantages for the students in their life besides just knowing funny stuff and d) they seem [from my perspective] as the perfect intersection of EA-ideas and things that can be used in the real world. That’s why I choose them. And that’s why they explicitly don’t be called “existentialism for people who want a job” or smt. like it.
“It’s weird to me that you call this a university, as you mention in the comments that it’s only supposed to last up to 16 weeks.” You have to start somewhere. Why exactly here I mentioned in Answer 3.
“I looked you up on LinkedIn and it seems like the company is only you and one relative, who started working at your company 4 months ago and immidiately went on a sabbatical.” I don’t know where / how you got these numbers but that’s an interesting piece of research. The whole story won’t fit in this comment here but just look on the history of my very own website to get a idea of my past.
Engaging more with EA Leipzig sounds reasonable, and it seems also like a very reasonable move to go to EAGx Berlin if you want to get more actively involved in EA projects generally.
I think the comparison between IT and EA is a little off as EA is much smaller and younger than IT, so any new project will be a much bigger share of overall EA-inspired activity and have a much higher chance to be the first EA exponent the people encounter.
Yeah, I think / hope that EAGxBerlin will give this project / me one big / final push to give it a / the final direction / polish to go all in. Let’s see.
Hm. First of IT is not a “ancient” concept either, but I get your point. But then again: This will be a University, not an official representative Institution. I think it will just play its small role in the growing EA-Ecosystem, but you never know, true. But I’m not fully thought through it, so more about this in an update of the article. Thanks a lot!
Hi Benjamin! I think it’s great that you want to support more people to work on the most pressing problems, and that you shared your plan about your project here for feedback. Thanks!
I have a lot of reservations after skimming this article, here three major and two somewhat less major ones:
I think leading a large effort of introducing and teaching EA principles requires deep familiarity with the EA philosophy. It worries me that you don’t mention your background with EA much in the reasons you’d be qualified, except your involvement with the Transhumane Partei Deutschlands, which (from my experience as a German community builder) doesn’t seem particularly involved with the German EA community.
Relatedly, as Yi-Yang mentions, it worries me that you didn’t immidiately consider reputational risks to the EA movement in your “What could go wrong” section. Advertising this project as “The first EA-University” (as you’ve done in the German EA Slack) will likely catch attention and be taken as representative of the EA movement. This is a consideration that I think would be very salient to people who have spend sufficient time engaging with the EA movement to be well-equiped to lead such an effort.
The four initial courses seem relatively odd choices to what I would expect from an effort to make people in their ~30s familiar with effective altruism: “Foundations of AI, How to manage the digital transformation, How to work in the world of “work 4.0 / new work” and How to manage innovation in times of emerging technologies”
This sounds more like a selection of courses for tech entrepreneurs. I suppose these are topics you are more familiar with / interested in, but I think it would be misleading to call something based on this “EA university”.
It’s weird to me that you call this a university, as you mention in the comments that it’s only supposed to last up to 16 weeks.
You write “As I own my own consulting company for ~ 2 years now, I know how to build a company.” I looked you up on LinkedIn and it seems like the company is only you and one relative, who started working at your company 4 months ago and immidiately went on a sabbatical. This made your statement feel misleading and overconfident to me, as I expect people to expect more than that level of experience and success when reading “I know how to build a company”.
Hi Max,
thanks for the reply! These are very good questions and mainly exactly what I meant with what I would probably forget about to mention it. So here we go:
My EA-Background: I am “involved” in EA since ~ 2014. Involved in the sense that I’ve read some books and articles, discussed EA-Ideas in my circles and spread the EA-Ideas embedded in other things like articles as EA became quickly a fix part of my thinking. Right now I’m technically part of EA here in Leipzig but I am not as active as I should I think. So I would give my a ~ 7⁄10 about EA-understanding I think. (That’s why I would love to talk / work with other EAs on that project especially)
“will likely catch attention and be taken as representative of the EA movement. This is a consideration that I think would be very salient to people who have spend sufficient time engaging with the EA movement to be well-equiped to lead such an effort.” That is a good argument, I’ve never seen it from this perspective tbh., thank you! I don’t think that this will be the case as nobody thinks about any IT-company as representive of the whole IT on earth but I will think about it and update my article as soon as I’m done.
The four courses are choosen because a) they work, b) they can get relatively sure be certified, c) they bring practical advantages for the students in their life besides just knowing funny stuff and d) they seem [from my perspective] as the perfect intersection of EA-ideas and things that can be used in the real world. That’s why I choose them. And that’s why they explicitly don’t be called “existentialism for people who want a job” or smt. like it.
“It’s weird to me that you call this a university, as you mention in the comments that it’s only supposed to last up to 16 weeks.” You have to start somewhere. Why exactly here I mentioned in Answer 3.
“I looked you up on LinkedIn and it seems like the company is only you and one relative, who started working at your company 4 months ago and immidiately went on a sabbatical.” I don’t know where / how you got these numbers but that’s an interesting piece of research. The whole story won’t fit in this comment here but just look on the history of my very own website to get a idea of my past.
Thank you!
Cheers
Ben
Thanks for engaging!
Engaging more with EA Leipzig sounds reasonable, and it seems also like a very reasonable move to go to EAGx Berlin if you want to get more actively involved in EA projects generally.
I think the comparison between IT and EA is a little off as EA is much smaller and younger than IT, so any new project will be a much bigger share of overall EA-inspired activity and have a much higher chance to be the first EA exponent the people encounter.
Thank you for engaging Max! :)
Yeah, I think / hope that EAGxBerlin will give this project / me one big / final push to give it a / the final direction / polish to go all in. Let’s see.
Hm. First of IT is not a “ancient” concept either, but I get your point. But then again: This will be a University, not an official representative Institution. I think it will just play its small role in the growing EA-Ecosystem, but you never know, true. But I’m not fully thought through it, so more about this in an update of the article. Thanks a lot!
Cheers
Ben