Aaron Gertler 🔸 comments on AMA: Working at the Centre for Effective Altruism

[Aaron Gertler 🔸]

(Sharing impressions, there’s no well-developed theory here)

Intuitively, I’d say somewhere between “too low” and “adequate”.

I’m not very involved in groups work, so my knowledge on that side is limited, but I don’t have the impression that lots of potentially awesome group leaders aren’t fulfilling their potential — nothing like that. But I do think that many people who don’t see themselves as “community building” types should consider how they can contribute in small ways:

• Being one more friendly/​experienced face at a local event

• Giving helpful advice to someone outside of EA who’s trying to make some relevant life decision (even via something as simple as “try GiveWell, they have great stuff” or “the 80,000 Hours career tool might be helpful”)

• Sharing a quick Facebook post about their next donation, to make more of their social network aware of the general idea of “effective giving” (and to catch any of those people who might be in the very real category of “hears about EA, instantly sold”)

These are all very generic ideas, but depending on other things about someone (language fluency, membership in other communities, personal network), there may be other smallish things they can do. It would be interesting to see everyone past a certain level of EA familiarity (e.g. has done a fellowship or read multiple books) spend 15 minutes asking themselves “how can I do one small thing to grow the community?”