Help writing a History of Effective Altruism?
Hey folks, looking for some help writing a history of effective altruism. EA Raleigh has an intern working on this project, but a lot of our history is not extremely legible for people who haven’t been here since the beginning.
I was wondering if folks could point out some sources to read through that we may not have found, outside of the history listed on the CEA website?
Also, we would love to have our intern interview and/or message some older community members to see if we can find pieces of the early EA movement that may have fallen through the cracks. If anyone else is working on this, we’re also happy to share/collaborate.
If you’re interested, feel free to private message me or my co-author.
Thanks!
I suspect that Pablo is probably one of the best people to talk to about this, and he was working on this prior to FTX events.
Yes, happy to talk about this. On sources, see the ‘Further reading’ section of the History of effective altruism wiki entry and the posts sharing that tag, if you haven’t done so already. I have additional unpublished material that I’d be happy to share with you.
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You might be interested in the recent Someone should write a detailed history of effective altruism post?
One of the nice things about EA is that so much of its early history was on the public internet that getting primary sources is quite practical, but I agree it’s hard to piece together. I’d be happy to talk!
Some EA history bits I’ve written up: When Did EA Start, GWWC Pledge History, My EA Timeline.
The book Strangers Drowning has two chapters on early EA (“At Once Rational and Ardent” and “From the Point of View of the Universe”).
Just quickly wanted to add Ryan’s shortform post.
One other relevant resource I’d recommend is Will and Toby’s joint keynote speech at the 2016 EA Global conference in San Francisco. It discusses some of the history of EA (focusing on the Oxford community in particular) and some historical precursors: https://youtu.be/VH2LhSod1M4
This is an exciting project!