Strongly agreed. I really like Raemon’s analysis why it’s so hard to get EA careers: we’re network constrained. [This isn’t exactly how he frames it, more my take on his idea.]
Right now, EA operates very informally, relying heavily on the fact that the several hundred people working at explicitly EA orgs are all socially networked together to some degree. This social group was significantly inherited from LessWrong and Bay Area rationalism, and EA has had great success in co-opting it for EA goals.
But as EA grows beyond its roots, more people want in, and you can’t have a social network of ten thousand, let alone a million. So we have two options: (a) increase the bandwidth of the social network, or (b) stop relying so much on the social network.
(a) increasing bandwidth looks like exactly what you’re talking about: create ways for newcomers to EA to make EA friends, develop professional relationships with EAs, etc., by creating better online platforms and in person groups.
(b) not relying on personal relationships looks like becoming more corporate, relying on traditional credentials, scaling up until people actually stand a strong chance of landing jobs via open application, etc.
(a) seems to have clear benefits with no obvious harms, as long as it can be done, so it seems very much worth it for us to try.
Strongly agreed. I really like Raemon’s analysis why it’s so hard to get EA careers: we’re network constrained. [This isn’t exactly how he frames it, more my take on his idea.]
Right now, EA operates very informally, relying heavily on the fact that the several hundred people working at explicitly EA orgs are all socially networked together to some degree. This social group was significantly inherited from LessWrong and Bay Area rationalism, and EA has had great success in co-opting it for EA goals.
But as EA grows beyond its roots, more people want in, and you can’t have a social network of ten thousand, let alone a million. So we have two options: (a) increase the bandwidth of the social network, or (b) stop relying so much on the social network.
(a) increasing bandwidth looks like exactly what you’re talking about: create ways for newcomers to EA to make EA friends, develop professional relationships with EAs, etc., by creating better online platforms and in person groups.
(b) not relying on personal relationships looks like becoming more corporate, relying on traditional credentials, scaling up until people actually stand a strong chance of landing jobs via open application, etc.
(a) seems to have clear benefits with no obvious harms, as long as it can be done, so it seems very much worth it for us to try.