Thanks for this. I’ve edited your question into the post. The third bullet point you wrote I actually think captures a lot of why I’m excited about a potential Task Y (or list, like the one aaron posted). If people have the option to do something which both genuinely is good, and seems good to them, and hear that this is actively encouraged by the EA community and enough to be considered a valuable part of it, I think this goes quite a long way towards stopping it seeming so elitist. Having multiple levels of commitment available to people, with good advice about the most effective thing to do given a particular level of commitment, seems to plausibly have lots of potential.
I have price discrimination in my head as a model here, though I realise the analogy is not a perfect one.
The podcast with Rob Wiblin and Nick Beckstead is about whether EA should “aim to be a very broad movement that appeals to potentially hundreds of millions of people”. I initially read your post as addressing that question. Maybe a good answer to that question is “not before we’ve found useful things for the people already interested in EA to do”. My point about branding is most relevant in the case where we’ve found a useful thing and we want to scale it up beyond the existing EA community.
By the way, this new post is interesting, from a guy with a ridiculous resume who get rejected for 20 different EA positions.
Thanks for this. I’ve edited your question into the post. The third bullet point you wrote I actually think captures a lot of why I’m excited about a potential Task Y (or list, like the one aaron posted). If people have the option to do something which both genuinely is good, and seems good to them, and hear that this is actively encouraged by the EA community and enough to be considered a valuable part of it, I think this goes quite a long way towards stopping it seeming so elitist. Having multiple levels of commitment available to people, with good advice about the most effective thing to do given a particular level of commitment, seems to plausibly have lots of potential.
I have price discrimination in my head as a model here, though I realise the analogy is not a perfect one.
That makes sense.
The podcast with Rob Wiblin and Nick Beckstead is about whether EA should “aim to be a very broad movement that appeals to potentially hundreds of millions of people”. I initially read your post as addressing that question. Maybe a good answer to that question is “not before we’ve found useful things for the people already interested in EA to do”. My point about branding is most relevant in the case where we’ve found a useful thing and we want to scale it up beyond the existing EA community.
By the way, this new post is interesting, from a guy with a ridiculous resume who get rejected for 20 different EA positions.