Pablo Stafforini has been considering doing online EA outreach in non-English languages and is seeking thoughts on this.
Here’s what he said on Facebook:
“For the last couple of months, I have been considering seriously the possibility of switching my energies to doing outreach in the Spanish-speaking world. Currently there is no organized Spanish-speaking EA community, and until I created them a couple of weeks ago, there were no Facebook EA groups or pages, no Wikipedia article about EA, and no EA websites of any kind. Yet Spanish is the second most widely spoken language measured by number of native speakers, and the third most widely spoken language measured by number of fluent speakers. Spanish-speaking EA meme-spreading thus seems to be both a very uncrowded and a very important cause.
“However, this analysis may be too simplistic. In particular, I worry that English may have acquired such a dominant position in elite circles globally as to offset any advantages that non-English languages may appear to have when assessed strictly in terms of quantity of speakers. One may argue, for instance, that the group of people whose native language isn’t English will likely speak English as a second language if they are at all receptive to the EA meme. There are also considerations related to the link between the geographical region in which a language is spoken and the level of development of countries in that region: people in developing countries will (sadly) on average have lower incomes, lower levels of educational attainment, and in general a lower score on most metrics that correlate with power to change the world for the better.
“What do others here think? Any feedback is greatly appreciated.”
Pablo Stafforini has been considering doing online EA outreach in non-English languages and is seeking thoughts on this.
Here’s what he said on Facebook:
“For the last couple of months, I have been considering seriously the possibility of switching my energies to doing outreach in the Spanish-speaking world. Currently there is no organized Spanish-speaking EA community, and until I created them a couple of weeks ago, there were no Facebook EA groups or pages, no Wikipedia article about EA, and no EA websites of any kind. Yet Spanish is the second most widely spoken language measured by number of native speakers, and the third most widely spoken language measured by number of fluent speakers. Spanish-speaking EA meme-spreading thus seems to be both a very uncrowded and a very important cause.
“However, this analysis may be too simplistic. In particular, I worry that English may have acquired such a dominant position in elite circles globally as to offset any advantages that non-English languages may appear to have when assessed strictly in terms of quantity of speakers. One may argue, for instance, that the group of people whose native language isn’t English will likely speak English as a second language if they are at all receptive to the EA meme. There are also considerations related to the link between the geographical region in which a language is spoken and the level of development of countries in that region: people in developing countries will (sadly) on average have lower incomes, lower levels of educational attainment, and in general a lower score on most metrics that correlate with power to change the world for the better.
“What do others here think? Any feedback is greatly appreciated.”
Here’s the FB thread: https://www.facebook.com/groups/effective.altruists/permalink/823288501060842/