Thanks for writing this up and sharing your experiences and thoughts. It is clear (to me) that you went into this very observant and that you engaged with the ideas.
Brief disclaimer: While reading your post I had a few ideas. Below is written more loosely in a conversational style as I am afraid if I don’t comment something of lower quality now while in the flow I will not comment at all.
I understand you suggest that JSW need to be included. That you value grassroot movements, correct? That this would increase the diversity of thoughts within the community and would help it scale (and I guess have more impact).
I see a few concerns related to this. I think there are some important memes within the Effective Altruism movement that help it have a positive impact. Some of those memes are around scientific basics and rigour. Comparing estimates (Shut up and multiply) and trying to have the better arguments win, not the most emotional compelling ones. Will briefly explore this below with an example*. I am concerned that having the community grow too fast will dilute these ideas and eventually replace this carefully shaped culture.
Especially among SJW I see a lot of rage (which is understandable). My current understanding is that the revolutions SJWs are aiming for would most likely be extremely terrible. It is not clear to me that something better will necessarily emerge when something is being destroyed (talking about systems and institutions here). Having less abrupt change, an evolution, seems to be a strategy with less risky downsides. This is surely a onesided view that you could add nuance to. It is just that I have seen a lot of hate coming from these meme-spheres that was not tied to a positive future vision.
And yeah aiming to doing the most good one can accomplish is challenging. And I would be very surprised that the actions that are intuitively correct are also the most impactful ones (relevant: Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately). So to repeat myself—I am careful around introducing strong heroic emotions into careful complex work. But yeah sometimes I do too feel a need for some of the heroic sagas. Will share some at the end of this comment**.
But you are not alone in wanting the community to expand. Both WillMacAskill and Scott Alexander (2 prominent figures) have advocated adjacent ideas. Will has spoken out in favour of community building (even more than the current baseline—can’t find the source right now—it was probably in the latest 80k podcast episode with him) and Scott advocated to open up the EAG conference and have the next one host 10k people without admissions.
*Example of unintuitive charities having a large impact:
Okay, say you (a western person on a median income) care about Education because it is Empowering and lifts people out of Poverty. As a result you want to support a school project. You have already bought into the fact that your support goes a longer way in a developing world so you are looking at projects to support overseas. How do you help? Donate or buying books and writing materials—crowdfund to build an additional class room—or pay to hire an additional teacher ---- or go there in person and teach for a few months. These might be $10 - $100 - $1,000 -- and $10,000 contributions. And all of these feel right (at least to me).
But what if I told you that you could buy years of schooling for a kid for just a few dollars by deworming them. This was the finding of one of the deworming charities years ago. Idea is as follows: it costs between $0.5 and $1.5 to deworm one kid for one year. If you do this consistently by the time they have grown up they have had an additional year of school attendance because they simply got sick less (worms coming through unsafe drinking waters). This is unintuitive. This is unsexy. But pretty effective.
(Numbers are not exactly correct. Is has been awhile since I read about this cause area of effective global health / development projects to fund. Here a post by GiveWell which I quickly found and skimmed.)
And yes you can totally make the argument that someone needs to crowdfund a school first before (dewormed) kids can attend it, to which I argue that the former is more likely to get attention and funding from the average person (with spare income) than the ‘sit down and multiply’ type of results that bring us deworming projects. So we need a world in which both happen. And I expect the neglected parts to be the unintuitive ones.
Also talking about donations and contributions. I slightly got the impression that you think there needs to be more Walk and less Talk. Might have misread you here. I just want to emphasize that I think there is a very decent amount of Walk. Lots of people donate 10% of their income and people start non-profits and change their careers. Just this EAGxBerlin I also had the opportunity again to speak to many bright and motivated young-ish people who were asking about career advice. And changing your career seems like a pretty big commitment to me.
**Lastly on Art and Narratives
I agree there could be more. I am exploring this myself a bit. I think aesthetics and art are currently undervalued on average in the community. But the trend is going in the right direction. With the community’s capacities growing (more funding, more people) we also see more prices being offered for creative writing contests.
Some pieces that are adjacent to the EA community that I love: [Existential Hope (for positive futures], [The Dragon Fable (for epic and heroism], [Rational Animations for cute alien doggos], [Wisdom Age by Roote (this one visualises beautifully the difference attitudes and approaches from different communities such as SJW, EA, capitalism, post-capitalism etc. ]
Thanks for writing this up and sharing your experiences and thoughts. It is clear (to me) that you went into this very observant and that you engaged with the ideas.
Brief disclaimer: While reading your post I had a few ideas. Below is written more loosely in a conversational style as I am afraid if I don’t comment something of lower quality now while in the flow I will not comment at all.
I understand you suggest that JSW need to be included. That you value grassroot movements, correct? That this would increase the diversity of thoughts within the community and would help it scale (and I guess have more impact).
I see a few concerns related to this. I think there are some important memes within the Effective Altruism movement that help it have a positive impact. Some of those memes are around scientific basics and rigour. Comparing estimates (Shut up and multiply) and trying to have the better arguments win, not the most emotional compelling ones. Will briefly explore this below with an example*. I am concerned that having the community grow too fast will dilute these ideas and eventually replace this carefully shaped culture.
Especially among SJW I see a lot of rage (which is understandable). My current understanding is that the revolutions SJWs are aiming for would most likely be extremely terrible. It is not clear to me that something better will necessarily emerge when something is being destroyed (talking about systems and institutions here). Having less abrupt change, an evolution, seems to be a strategy with less risky downsides. This is surely a onesided view that you could add nuance to. It is just that I have seen a lot of hate coming from these meme-spheres that was not tied to a positive future vision.
And yeah aiming to doing the most good one can accomplish is challenging. And I would be very surprised that the actions that are intuitively correct are also the most impactful ones (relevant: Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately). So to repeat myself—I am careful around introducing strong heroic emotions into careful complex work. But yeah sometimes I do too feel a need for some of the heroic sagas. Will share some at the end of this comment**.
But you are not alone in wanting the community to expand. Both WillMacAskill and Scott Alexander (2 prominent figures) have advocated adjacent ideas. Will has spoken out in favour of community building (even more than the current baseline—can’t find the source right now—it was probably in the latest 80k podcast episode with him) and Scott advocated to open up the EAG conference and have the next one host 10k people without admissions.
*Example of unintuitive charities having a large impact:
Okay, say you (a western person on a median income) care about Education because it is Empowering and lifts people out of Poverty. As a result you want to support a school project. You have already bought into the fact that your support goes a longer way in a developing world so you are looking at projects to support overseas. How do you help? Donate or buying books and writing materials—crowdfund to build an additional class room—or pay to hire an additional teacher ---- or go there in person and teach for a few months. These might be $10 - $100 - $1,000 -- and $10,000 contributions. And all of these feel right (at least to me).
But what if I told you that you could buy years of schooling for a kid for just a few dollars by deworming them. This was the finding of one of the deworming charities years ago. Idea is as follows: it costs between $0.5 and $1.5 to deworm one kid for one year. If you do this consistently by the time they have grown up they have had an additional year of school attendance because they simply got sick less (worms coming through unsafe drinking waters). This is unintuitive. This is unsexy. But pretty effective.
(Numbers are not exactly correct. Is has been awhile since I read about this cause area of effective global health / development projects to fund. Here a post by GiveWell which I quickly found and skimmed.)
And yes you can totally make the argument that someone needs to crowdfund a school first before (dewormed) kids can attend it, to which I argue that the former is more likely to get attention and funding from the average person (with spare income) than the ‘sit down and multiply’ type of results that bring us deworming projects. So we need a world in which both happen. And I expect the neglected parts to be the unintuitive ones.
Also talking about donations and contributions. I slightly got the impression that you think there needs to be more Walk and less Talk. Might have misread you here. I just want to emphasize that I think there is a very decent amount of Walk. Lots of people donate 10% of their income and people start non-profits and change their careers. Just this EAGxBerlin I also had the opportunity again to speak to many bright and motivated young-ish people who were asking about career advice. And changing your career seems like a pretty big commitment to me.
**Lastly on Art and Narratives
I agree there could be more. I am exploring this myself a bit. I think aesthetics and art are currently undervalued on average in the community. But the trend is going in the right direction. With the community’s capacities growing (more funding, more people) we also see more prices being offered for creative writing contests.
Some pieces that are adjacent to the EA community that I love: [Existential Hope (for positive futures], [The Dragon Fable (for epic and heroism], [Rational Animations for cute alien doggos], [Wisdom Age by Roote (this one visualises beautifully the difference attitudes and approaches from different communities such as SJW, EA, capitalism, post-capitalism etc. ]