This sounds like a really cool idea and I’d love to see someone experiment with it. I’m curious, what feedback on these ideas have you received from talking with Effective Altruists?
I also noticed that your post title was “EA’s Culture and Thinking are Severely Limiting Its Impact” and while there’s nothing wrong with criticism, I would have personally chosen a title that would have promoted the idea of developing an ecosystem of leaders.
With the Effective Altruists that I’ve spoken to the feedback has been very very supportive, but I’m not sure if I’ve spoken to enough to get a truly representative sample. The most negative ‘feedback’ I’ve gotten has been on receiving generic rejection notices on my grant proposals, which is something I completely understand, but that also makes someone like me unsure if there’s a place for me and my ideas in the movement. The main point of this post for me was to try to figure that out and to see if I could find some like-minded individuals.
And I totally agree that the way to try this is multiple small-scale experiments. There are a lot of factors that go into success and failure, and every context is unique. But when it’s done right, it really can have a major impact.
I’m curious. Do you only think it’s worth being connected to the community if your ideas get funded by the community? You’ve got a cool idea, but a lot of other people have cool ideas too and not everything can be funded.
I guess I see the community offering a host of other potential benefits as well, such as feedback, frameworks, access to talent, ect. I know it must be frustrating, but sometimes the negatives cloud out the positives. And there’s nothing wrong if you disagree with me here, just thought I’d offer another way of seeing things.
Again, from my (an admitted outsider) perspective there seems to be a tension between “this is who we’re for and this is how we do things” and the actual goal of maximizing impact. I’m all about trying to maximize impact, I’m not sure that I would have been a part of the various organizations that EA seems to be an amalgamation of.
I think a bigger tent version of EA is definitely a community I could join, but as it stands right now the biggest benefit for me is connecting with individuals within the movement that are like-minded. This post and some other conversations have really helped me do that.
This sounds like a really cool idea and I’d love to see someone experiment with it. I’m curious, what feedback on these ideas have you received from talking with Effective Altruists?
I also noticed that your post title was “EA’s Culture and Thinking are Severely Limiting Its Impact” and while there’s nothing wrong with criticism, I would have personally chosen a title that would have promoted the idea of developing an ecosystem of leaders.
With the Effective Altruists that I’ve spoken to the feedback has been very very supportive, but I’m not sure if I’ve spoken to enough to get a truly representative sample. The most negative ‘feedback’ I’ve gotten has been on receiving generic rejection notices on my grant proposals, which is something I completely understand, but that also makes someone like me unsure if there’s a place for me and my ideas in the movement. The main point of this post for me was to try to figure that out and to see if I could find some like-minded individuals.
And I totally agree that the way to try this is multiple small-scale experiments. There are a lot of factors that go into success and failure, and every context is unique. But when it’s done right, it really can have a major impact.
I’m curious. Do you only think it’s worth being connected to the community if your ideas get funded by the community? You’ve got a cool idea, but a lot of other people have cool ideas too and not everything can be funded.
I guess I see the community offering a host of other potential benefits as well, such as feedback, frameworks, access to talent, ect. I know it must be frustrating, but sometimes the negatives cloud out the positives. And there’s nothing wrong if you disagree with me here, just thought I’d offer another way of seeing things.
Again, from my (an admitted outsider) perspective there seems to be a tension between “this is who we’re for and this is how we do things” and the actual goal of maximizing impact. I’m all about trying to maximize impact, I’m not sure that I would have been a part of the various organizations that EA seems to be an amalgamation of.
I think a bigger tent version of EA is definitely a community I could join, but as it stands right now the biggest benefit for me is connecting with individuals within the movement that are like-minded. This post and some other conversations have really helped me do that.
I’m happy to hear you have been able to make some worthwhile connections.