Great post! I think this is a failure of EA. Lots of corporations and open source projects are able to leverage the efforts of many average intelligence contributors to do impressive things on a large scale through collaboration. It seems to me like there must be something wrong when there are many motivated people willing to contribute their time and efforts to EA but don’t have lots of avenues to do so other than earning to give and maybe community building (which leaves a lot of people who feel motivated by EA with no concrete ways to easily engage). It seems to me that for direct contributions, EA prefers more of a superstar model where one has to stand out in order to be able to contribute effectively instead of a more incremental collaborative model where the superstars would still have an outsized impact but also lowers the bar for anyone to make an incremental contribution. Maybe there are good reasons why EA prefers one model over the other but I’d be surprised if the model that mobilizes less people is considered more impactful.
Another issue is that EA may target people who are smarter than average(at least smarter in very specific ways) but given that most people are average by definition or are smarter in different dimensions, these ‘very smart people’ may not be able to model other people correctly or how things happen in the world where reality doesn’t usually line up well with mathematical abstractions and theoretical thinking. I have found myself questioning whether the balance of intellectualism and pragmatism is tilted too far on the side of the former. Hopefully this doesn’t lead to a situation where the EA community cares more about seeming smart and having higher moral ground at the expense of actually doing good in the world.
Thanks! I agree with everything in your comment—and I really hope to see EA change in the future so that more ‘average’ people are able to contribute (I think we could have a lot to give!!)
Great post! I think this is a failure of EA. Lots of corporations and open source projects are able to leverage the efforts of many average intelligence contributors to do impressive things on a large scale through collaboration. It seems to me like there must be something wrong when there are many motivated people willing to contribute their time and efforts to EA but don’t have lots of avenues to do so other than earning to give and maybe community building (which leaves a lot of people who feel motivated by EA with no concrete ways to easily engage). It seems to me that for direct contributions, EA prefers more of a superstar model where one has to stand out in order to be able to contribute effectively instead of a more incremental collaborative model where the superstars would still have an outsized impact but also lowers the bar for anyone to make an incremental contribution. Maybe there are good reasons why EA prefers one model over the other but I’d be surprised if the model that mobilizes less people is considered more impactful.
Another issue is that EA may target people who are smarter than average(at least smarter in very specific ways) but given that most people are average by definition or are smarter in different dimensions, these ‘very smart people’ may not be able to model other people correctly or how things happen in the world where reality doesn’t usually line up well with mathematical abstractions and theoretical thinking. I have found myself questioning whether the balance of intellectualism and pragmatism is tilted too far on the side of the former. Hopefully this doesn’t lead to a situation where the EA community cares more about seeming smart and having higher moral ground at the expense of actually doing good in the world.
Thanks! I agree with everything in your comment—and I really hope to see EA change in the future so that more ‘average’ people are able to contribute (I think we could have a lot to give!!)