I think it will be really important for EAs to engage in more empirical work to understand how people think about EA. Of course you don’t want people to feel like they’re being fed the results of a script tested by a focus group (that’s the whole point of this post), but you do want to actually know in reliable ways how bad some of these problems are, how things are resonating, and how to do better in a genuine and authentic way. Empirical results should be a big part of this (though not all of it), but right now they aren’t, and this seems bad. Instead, we frequently confuse “what my immediate friends in my immediate network think about EA” with “what everyone thinks about EA” and I think this is a mistake.
This is something Rethink Priorities is working on this year, though we invite others to do similar work. I think there’s a lot we can learn!
Strongly agree with this take. There’s nothing stopping us from getting empirical data here and I think we have no strong reason to expect our personal experiences to generalise or that models we create that aren’t therotietrically or empirically grounded to be correct.
I agree with you, and I think this somewhat supports the OPs concern.
Are most uni groups capable of producing or critiquing empirical work about their group, or about EA or about their cause areas of choice? Are they incentivized to do so at all?
I think it will be really important for EAs to engage in more empirical work to understand how people think about EA. Of course you don’t want people to feel like they’re being fed the results of a script tested by a focus group (that’s the whole point of this post), but you do want to actually know in reliable ways how bad some of these problems are, how things are resonating, and how to do better in a genuine and authentic way. Empirical results should be a big part of this (though not all of it), but right now they aren’t, and this seems bad. Instead, we frequently confuse “what my immediate friends in my immediate network think about EA” with “what everyone thinks about EA” and I think this is a mistake.
This is something Rethink Priorities is working on this year, though we invite others to do similar work. I think there’s a lot we can learn!
Strongly agree with this take. There’s nothing stopping us from getting empirical data here and I think we have no strong reason to expect our personal experiences to generalise or that models we create that aren’t therotietrically or empirically grounded to be correct.
I agree with you, and I think this somewhat supports the OPs concern.
Are most uni groups capable of producing or critiquing empirical work about their group, or about EA or about their cause areas of choice? Are they incentivized to do so at all?
Sometimes yes, but mostly no.