Rather than Holden creating a video (which takes quite a bit of non-writing work + additional team members), it would probably make more sense for Rational Animations or A Happier World to produce something. Those are both YouTube channels with new EA Funds grants, and Rational Animations produced the video you linked. They currently ask many people in the community to review their EA-based scripts before they film.
(That said, this may overlap a bit with the Rational Animations video, and I think it would be a worthy post for a bigger creator like Kurzgesagt to take on. That channel has been in touch with some EA orgs before [can’t share more details for now], and we might see longtermist content from them in the future.)
Thanks for responding Aaron. Yeah, that sounds like a better idea. I’d like to see that happen.
Thanks for mentioning the ongoing funding/networking. I was unaware. I am really glad to hear and keen to watch and share more EA videos! I’ll also try to help the new channels if I have time.
In addition to seeing more video content on longtermism on YouTube I would also really like if there were a few good videos on the EA.org website. Perhaps in time, there could be a whole series covering the key concepts discussed on the website.
I wonder if the EA community have a little bit of typical mind fallacy. We are usually the people who quite like reading long in-depth articles/post and also have time to do it. This may leads us to set up all of our content to be geared towards similar types of people in similar situations and miss some people who might be more receptive a different approach.
I really liked the development of good podcast/audio content (which I give credit to 80k for). The next thing I’d love to see is videos on key concepts. Particularly short and catchy videos that pull people in and make them interested enough to start engaging with our deeper content.
We feature a set of selected videos on the EA.org website (accessible from the top navbar), along with an ”intro playlist” on our YouTube that the site links to. We’re well aware that people like videos!
(We did just hire some new developers, so it’s likely that the way EA.org displays videos will be much better than “just a list of videos on the site” in the medium-term future. )
I wouldn’t fault the community for “typical mind fallacy”—people regularly tell us they want to make videos because they recognize the lack of good video content, and we typically offer to review what they’ve written + point them to EA Funds and existing channels. The trouble is that good videos are much harder to produce than good writing; multiple things have to go well, and video editing skills aren’t nearly as common as writing skills.
CEA’s content division (that is, me) is focused on curation right now, rather than creation. If someone produces catchy new videos on key concepts, it will probably have to be an independent person with grant support, or another org (e.g. Giving What We Can, which has done a lot of more intro-level video content lately).
That said, feedback of this kind is still helpful! The more I hear from people who are interested in seeing videos, the more I’ll be thinking about this as I consider where I should put my time + encourage others to put theirs. I’m booked for a while as I redo a bunch of our written + online resources to be more friendly to newcomers, but I do expect videos will become a focus at some point after that’s done.
Sorry if that sounded like it was stating the obvious :P
Glad to hear about the pending changes to EA.org, that sounds great.
I didn’t really mean to implicate CEA when I talked about the EA community. I was more so thinking of EAs like myself who tend to default to always producing a long report/post to relay their findings and never consider adding a video or infographic.
I agree you that video takes a lot more work and that that’s a major barrier.
It makes sense to me that curation should be your focus. I’d mainly like to see more work from other orgs and intellectual leaders on video creation and also more funding for that work to make the curation easier.
I really like what Luke is doing at Giving What We Can with video (and in general) and that’s the sort of thing that I would like to see that as more of a norm.
Thanks for taking the feedback onboard. With that said, I’d be more than happy for other people to take on the responsibility of creating/curating more videos and let you keep focusing on improving the forum!
I can’t really overstate how much I like the current forum. It is so enjoyable to engage with that I have to limit my time using it. Thanks for all your work on it.
Rational Animations’ writer here. I am just chiming in to say (albeit 20 days later) that we’re interested in animating some of the EA introductory articles. We are also interested in adapting blog posts by Holden or anyone else writing about important/interesting stuff.
Before doing more core EA content, though, I want to improve some more. And potentially have someone (paid) always to edit, fact check, and PR-sanity-check my scripts. For now, I will fly pretty close to EA with some videos, but I will avoid EA branding till I’m exceedingly sure that Rational Animations’ contribution will be a net positive. Which is probably at least a period of a few months.
Great, really glad to hear. Let me know if you want my help! Are you aware of this group—you could also probably get or even hire some good help there.
Rather than Holden creating a video (which takes quite a bit of non-writing work + additional team members), it would probably make more sense for Rational Animations or A Happier World to produce something. Those are both YouTube channels with new EA Funds grants, and Rational Animations produced the video you linked. They currently ask many people in the community to review their EA-based scripts before they film.
(That said, this may overlap a bit with the Rational Animations video, and I think it would be a worthy post for a bigger creator like Kurzgesagt to take on. That channel has been in touch with some EA orgs before [can’t share more details for now], and we might see longtermist content from them in the future.)
Thanks for responding Aaron. Yeah, that sounds like a better idea. I’d like to see that happen.
Thanks for mentioning the ongoing funding/networking. I was unaware. I am really glad to hear and keen to watch and share more EA videos! I’ll also try to help the new channels if I have time.
In addition to seeing more video content on longtermism on YouTube I would also really like if there were a few good videos on the EA.org website. Perhaps in time, there could be a whole series covering the key concepts discussed on the website.
I wonder if the EA community have a little bit of typical mind fallacy. We are usually the people who quite like reading long in-depth articles/post and also have time to do it. This may leads us to set up all of our content to be geared towards similar types of people in similar situations and miss some people who might be more receptive a different approach.
I really liked the development of good podcast/audio content (which I give credit to 80k for). The next thing I’d love to see is videos on key concepts. Particularly short and catchy videos that pull people in and make them interested enough to start engaging with our deeper content.
We feature a set of selected videos on the EA.org website (accessible from the top navbar), along with an ”intro playlist” on our YouTube that the site links to. We’re well aware that people like videos!
(We did just hire some new developers, so it’s likely that the way EA.org displays videos will be much better than “just a list of videos on the site” in the medium-term future. )
I wouldn’t fault the community for “typical mind fallacy”—people regularly tell us they want to make videos because they recognize the lack of good video content, and we typically offer to review what they’ve written + point them to EA Funds and existing channels. The trouble is that good videos are much harder to produce than good writing; multiple things have to go well, and video editing skills aren’t nearly as common as writing skills.
CEA’s content division (that is, me) is focused on curation right now, rather than creation. If someone produces catchy new videos on key concepts, it will probably have to be an independent person with grant support, or another org (e.g. Giving What We Can, which has done a lot of more intro-level video content lately).
That said, feedback of this kind is still helpful! The more I hear from people who are interested in seeing videos, the more I’ll be thinking about this as I consider where I should put my time + encourage others to put theirs. I’m booked for a while as I redo a bunch of our written + online resources to be more friendly to newcomers, but I do expect videos will become a focus at some point after that’s done.
Thanks Aaron!
Sorry if that sounded like it was stating the obvious :P
Glad to hear about the pending changes to EA.org, that sounds great.
I didn’t really mean to implicate CEA when I talked about the EA community. I was more so thinking of EAs like myself who tend to default to always producing a long report/post to relay their findings and never consider adding a video or infographic.
I agree you that video takes a lot more work and that that’s a major barrier.
It makes sense to me that curation should be your focus. I’d mainly like to see more work from other orgs and intellectual leaders on video creation and also more funding for that work to make the curation easier.
I really like what Luke is doing at Giving What We Can with video (and in general) and that’s the sort of thing that I would like to see that as more of a norm.
Thanks for taking the feedback onboard. With that said, I’d be more than happy for other people to take on the responsibility of creating/curating more videos and let you keep focusing on improving the forum!
I can’t really overstate how much I like the current forum. It is so enjoyable to engage with that I have to limit my time using it. Thanks for all your work on it.
Rational Animations’ writer here. I am just chiming in to say (albeit 20 days later) that we’re interested in animating some of the EA introductory articles. We are also interested in adapting blog posts by Holden or anyone else writing about important/interesting stuff.
Before doing more core EA content, though, I want to improve some more. And potentially have someone (paid) always to edit, fact check, and PR-sanity-check my scripts. For now, I will fly pretty close to EA with some videos, but I will avoid EA branding till I’m exceedingly sure that Rational Animations’ contribution will be a net positive. Which is probably at least a period of a few months.
Great, really glad to hear. Let me know if you want my help! Are you aware of this group—you could also probably get or even hire some good help there.
Thank you :) yes I’ve also asked for feedback in that group on the scripts of our next two videos