I really disagree with this and think it’s an incorrect representation of the actual history of the EA community.
Whether someone was intending to grow a large movement seems much less important than whether someone actually did. (I.e., whether they made seminal contributions to the ideas and culture of the community that actually helped create the community.)
GWWC seems pretty unimportant in the grander scheme of things compared to other organizations, books, ideas, etc. E.g., I think Will’s contributions to 80K, DGB, etc. seem more important than GWWC.
Right now I don’t feel compelled to write a more elaborate response, but if this false founding myth keeps coming up I might write a longer post at some point.
I mostly agree with you, Jonas, but I think you’re using the phrase “founder” in a confusing way. I think a founder is someone who is directly involved in establishing an organisation. Contributions that are indirect like Bostrom and Eliezer’s, or that come after the organisation is started (like DGB) may be very important, but don’t make them founders. I would probably totally agree with you if you just said you’re answering a different question: “Who caused EA to be what it is today?”
80k certainly helped get the word out, as did DGB, but there was already a growing collection of people working on GWWC by the time 80k started (and 80k itself was basically an outgrowth of the GWWC project), and by the time of DGB, the movement was already well enough established to have had multiple EAG-like events. Growing it is not founding it (and as you say, Will was highly involved with early efforts to do the former).
I don’t think we’re going to agree on this emphasis, which is obviously fine, but I don’t think you should be calling it a ‘false founding myth’ until you’ve made a much stronger case.
I really disagree with this and think it’s an incorrect representation of the actual history of the EA community.
Whether someone was intending to grow a large movement seems much less important than whether someone actually did. (I.e., whether they made seminal contributions to the ideas and culture of the community that actually helped create the community.)
GWWC seems pretty unimportant in the grander scheme of things compared to other organizations, books, ideas, etc. E.g., I think Will’s contributions to 80K, DGB, etc. seem more important than GWWC.
Right now I don’t feel compelled to write a more elaborate response, but if this false founding myth keeps coming up I might write a longer post at some point.
I mostly agree with you, Jonas, but I think you’re using the phrase “founder” in a confusing way. I think a founder is someone who is directly involved in establishing an organisation. Contributions that are indirect like Bostrom and Eliezer’s, or that come after the organisation is started (like DGB) may be very important, but don’t make them founders. I would probably totally agree with you if you just said you’re answering a different question: “Who caused EA to be what it is today?”
Hmm, but EA isn’t an organization, it’s a movement. I don’t really know what it even means to say that a movement has co-founders …
80k certainly helped get the word out, as did DGB, but there was already a growing collection of people working on GWWC by the time 80k started (and 80k itself was basically an outgrowth of the GWWC project), and by the time of DGB, the movement was already well enough established to have had multiple EAG-like events. Growing it is not founding it (and as you say, Will was highly involved with early efforts to do the former).
I don’t think we’re going to agree on this emphasis, which is obviously fine, but I don’t think you should be calling it a ‘false founding myth’ until you’ve made a much stronger case.