Whenever I come on the EA forum I literally feel like my brain is going to explode with some of the stuff that is posted on here, I just don’t understand it.
Dude, I have a degree from Harvard but it’s in biology and I feel this way about a lot of the AI stuff! I admire your humility but you might not be that dumb.
I think your critique is totally spot-on, and I think a better EA community would have room for all kinds of engagement. When longtermism became dominant (along with the influx of a lot of cash so that we were more talent-constrained than money constrained) we lost a lot of the activities that had brought the entire community together, like thinking a lot about how to save and donate money or even a lot of emphasis on having local communities. We also stopped evangelizing as much as our message got more complicated and we became focused on issues like AI alignment that require specific people more than a large group of people.
But even though I frequently say we should shore up the community by bringing back some focus on the original EA bread and butter causes like global health, I don’t know if the current community is really making a mistake by focusing our limited efforts here. I think having more kinds of people in the community would be great, but not if it detracted from the kind of discourse that you’re saying is over your head. I’m not sure how to pull this off.
Have you thought about organizing a group yourself to focus on the ideas you are interested in? I think it would be really good for the ivory tower part of the community to have more EA classic groups out there, and it wouldn’t be taking anyone’s efforts away from this part of the community.
Hey no I haven’t thought about setting up a group like that but I definitely think it could be a good idea! The original ideas I learnt about right when I got involved are the most exciting to me...I’m sure others feel the same
Maybe the giving what we can brand is good for this? (I’m not at all sure, this is really a question in my mind)
It is obviously focused on donations but if it was a university group, this can largely maybe be seen as something that seems worth discussing now and doing later post-graduation?
Dude, I have a degree from Harvard but it’s in biology and I feel this way about a lot of the AI stuff! I admire your humility but you might not be that dumb.
I think your critique is totally spot-on, and I think a better EA community would have room for all kinds of engagement. When longtermism became dominant (along with the influx of a lot of cash so that we were more talent-constrained than money constrained) we lost a lot of the activities that had brought the entire community together, like thinking a lot about how to save and donate money or even a lot of emphasis on having local communities. We also stopped evangelizing as much as our message got more complicated and we became focused on issues like AI alignment that require specific people more than a large group of people.
But even though I frequently say we should shore up the community by bringing back some focus on the original EA bread and butter causes like global health, I don’t know if the current community is really making a mistake by focusing our limited efforts here. I think having more kinds of people in the community would be great, but not if it detracted from the kind of discourse that you’re saying is over your head. I’m not sure how to pull this off.
Have you thought about organizing a group yourself to focus on the ideas you are interested in? I think it would be really good for the ivory tower part of the community to have more EA classic groups out there, and it wouldn’t be taking anyone’s efforts away from this part of the community.
Hey no I haven’t thought about setting up a group like that but I definitely think it could be a good idea! The original ideas I learnt about right when I got involved are the most exciting to me...I’m sure others feel the same
Maybe the giving what we can brand is good for this? (I’m not at all sure, this is really a question in my mind)
It is obviously focused on donations but if it was a university group, this can largely maybe be seen as something that seems worth discussing now and doing later post-graduation?
It obviously depends a lot on which ideas seem most compelling to you and the extent that they are captured by GWWC