Head of Courses at Leaf ⢠Programme Associate at ERA ⢠BlueDot Impact Facilitator ⢠EA Bristol President ⢠Non-Trivial Experienced Facilitator/â Winner ⢠3rd Year Maths and Philosophy @ Bristol ⢠GWWC 10% Pledgerđ¸
Sam Smith đ¸
Karma: 203
ScrapÂpiness is a means, not an end
ReflectÂing on âSamâs Hot Takesâ and EA Bristol
You might be interested in looking into Impact First (London) as an alternative to âEA Groupsâ, which shares more of my CB philosophy
I like the call to actionâI think there are lots of CBers frustrated about the system they find themselves in who donât feel empowered to do anything about it. When I wrote the post you referenced, I had a bunch of organisers tell me how much it changed their groupâs trajectory just by echoing ideas they had that they wouldnât act on by default. More legibility of the agency CBers have seems really needed; showing people they donât have to blindly follow a default path seems to happen scarily little, so I appreciate the postâwould love to see more like it!
Leafâs WinÂter 2026 CoÂhort: Help us Scale a Proven ImÂpactÂful Model
Hey Ande, I donât understand what you mean sorry!
Right now the template link is such that you automatically create a private copy and you can change the share settings and share your copy as widely as youâd like!
Why YOU should write a CaÂreer Memo
Ah thanks!
Thanks for the mention Charlie, I also really like the tone of this post, lots of organisers seem very intimidated by the work ahead of them, so itâs lovely seeing encouragement like this! :)
For me itâs also giving me the opportunity to create a social space I havenât quite found at uni yet so I hope lots of group organisers have a lot of fun social time through organising rather than it just feeling like work!
Yeah, I totally get that and feel similarâI think being in a community is very different to trying to artificially engineer one (e.g. you have to be in a community to build it)
Oh cool, Iâve used the Gather Town a little and have been building a smaller discord coworking community for some EA Uni Societies which seems like it might be serving a similar goal :)
Same here! Thanks for the boostâposted yesterday and ended up with a lot of engagement and a good confidence boost from the process! :)
Awesome, glad you appreciated the post and Iâm pleased it echoed some of your own reflections and got you to think about approaching this year differently!
Awesome, thanks for that additional insight. I agree with the potential for these dynamics and will try to be cognisant of them as Bristol kicks off soon!
Ah, awesome. Let me know if youâre ever around! And yeah, I know Chris. Heâs great. Heâs helping organise this year, so Iâm excited for him to be involved.
Ah thatâs awesome Aaron! I do feel like these social approaches can lead to really cool unexpected outcomes, which I think is harder to achieve with things like fellowships and a more âteachyâ approach.
I also think this adds to my feeling that the best community builders are⌠the best at community building, not just the most knowledgeableâgood generalist abilities and intuition, prior experience, and strong social skills (approachability, likability, openness, etc.) all feel more important in my mind than a mental index of the forum/â being really brought into the ideas (these things can be helpful, but donât feel nearly as important)
Thanks for this Brad, I totally agree!
The thing that made utilitarian ethics click for me was the idea that often the problems stem from the proxies for impact rather than the impact itself and that nth order indirect effects of your direct actions should still be factored into the moral calculus of your decisions.
I also think a portfolio of proxies is useful in the space because of the moral uncertainty about what the most important things to track are. Even if fellowship completions were a strong metric (which I am very sceptical of), I think at least trying my social-first approach could give lots of valuable insights!
I think I agree with thisâIâm very pro agency multiplying (this is what I think, e.g. Non-Trivial and Leafâs fellows programmes do particularly well). With EA Bristol, which I run, for example, the plan is to have the social group dynamics be the basis for these discussions, but I absolutely want to target stuff around soft skill development through project sprints, discussions based on fun stuff (e.g. use media to kickstart conversations around ethics and stuff), etc. Rather than explicitly having a session where we âexplore ITNâ, it would be more conversational in nature, with the emphasis being on people exploring these ideas and discussing them, as well as learning through doing (e.g. projects where the ideation is supported by frameworks like ITN) rather than more teachy sessions which create some of the power imbalances I discuss in the post.
I also agree we shouldnât discount the âEffective-firstâ EAs, however, I think by their nature they are more likely to carve out a path for themself and access upskilling resources, independent projects and fellowships with less reliance on a central community. I think we of course could still benefit them with community, but it is harder to cater to both camps at the same time and counterfactually I suspect the altruists benefit more.
Of course, feel free to push back on any of this or correct me if I misunderstood your point. Thanks for the comment! :)
Samâs Hot(?) Takes on EA ComÂmuÂnity Building
I hadnât come across this fable before, but found it really interesting. I thought it nicely introduced several of EAâs common topics about choosing how to do the most good and convincing others about issues worthy of prioritizing. Thanks for sharing!
This is awesome! Really love work like this that helps make AI Safety more legible