I think the magnitude × direction framing is really useful, and I agree the risk is real.
At EA Netherlands, I’ve been thinking about this through the lens of Ben Todd’s notion of “community capital” — roughly, the stock of shared values, trust, human capital, coordination capacity, norm-following, and reputation that a community accumulates over time. The worry you’re describing is essentially that outreach erodes community capital. And it can — if you do it carelessly.
But my ambition is to try to monitor this over time. If we surveyed relevant aspects of the community periodically — tracking its values, the degree to which people are following community norms, the actions people are taking, the degree of interconnectedness between members, and the quality of human capital coming in — we might be able to detect whether outreach efforts are degrading the direction term, and course-correct if they are.[1]
If that’s feasible, it turns a binary question (“should we grow or not?”) into an empirical one (“is this particular form of growth maintaining alignment?”). Some forms of outreach might pass the test, and others might not. But you’d want to check rather than assume.
I think the implicit model in your comment is one where we have to choose — stay small and aligned, or grow and dilute. But perhaps there’s a third option: invest seriously in both outreach and monitoring community capital, and course-correct over time.
It has been considered for the EA Survey! I’m not sure why this was never prioritised for inclusion, after being raised. But if the meta orgs we work with say they want us to include these questions in the survey going forward, we will.
I think the magnitude × direction framing is really useful, and I agree the risk is real.
At EA Netherlands, I’ve been thinking about this through the lens of Ben Todd’s notion of “community capital” — roughly, the stock of shared values, trust, human capital, coordination capacity, norm-following, and reputation that a community accumulates over time. The worry you’re describing is essentially that outreach erodes community capital. And it can — if you do it carelessly.
But my ambition is to try to monitor this over time. If we surveyed relevant aspects of the community periodically — tracking its values, the degree to which people are following community norms, the actions people are taking, the degree of interconnectedness between members, and the quality of human capital coming in — we might be able to detect whether outreach efforts are degrading the direction term, and course-correct if they are.[1]
If that’s feasible, it turns a binary question (“should we grow or not?”) into an empirical one (“is this particular form of growth maintaining alignment?”). Some forms of outreach might pass the test, and others might not. But you’d want to check rather than assume.
I think the implicit model in your comment is one where we have to choose — stay small and aligned, or grow and dilute. But perhaps there’s a third option: invest seriously in both outreach and monitoring community capital, and course-correct over time.
Out of interest, has this been considered, @David_Moss?
It has been considered for the EA Survey! I’m not sure why this was never prioritised for inclusion, after being raised. But if the meta orgs we work with say they want us to include these questions in the survey going forward, we will.
Good to know! If it doesn’t get included in the EA Survey, we might consider doing it ourselves at the national level (M&E budget allowing...).
But obviously, international data that would allow us to compare across regions would be more useful.