I see this take a lot.

My immediate response is fourfold:

a) a lot of EA's core worldview philosophy is about doing boring stuff (that works), and so we attract people with an aesthetic repulsion to overmarketing that stick here and contribute highly. It's not clear that standard marketing strategies work for something like EA without making such people more likely to leave, so I would be hesitant to propose changes to the current setup.

b) the School of Moral Ambition is already doing essentially a more marketed version of EA. I highly recommend anyone interested in this hop over to their platforms to check it out.

c) Cause area marketing is going fairly well I think? You may wish to consider voting for One for the World in our donation election.

d) We're about to have a 3000-person conference this weekend, our largest ever. "Increasing irrelevance" EA is decidedly not. Clearly our current approach is doing something right.

Whether this is true or not depends on what specifically you mean by it. If by attention-grabbing content you mean:

• Short-form vertical video (TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts)
• Short-form text a.k.a. microblogging (Twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads)

Then I think it’s not true. I think investing in those mediums would just be good money chasing after bad.

On the other hand, if you have in mind content like the highest-quality video essays on YouTube, such as:

• "Envy" by ContraPoints
• "Bright: The Apotheosis of Lazy Worldbuilding" by Lindsay Ellis
• "Frozen 2 Script Doctor" by Jenny Nicholson

The bad news is that saying just go and make high-quality video essays is like saying just go and make high-quality movies. Literally, some of these videos require a similar amount of work as making a microbudget indie movie. The main creator might work on them full-time for over a year. They often involve an editor and, in some cases, people to help with other aspects of production like music, visual effects, or voiceover. (ContraPoints lamented the fact that she spent longer writing the script for her video about Twilight than Stephanie Meyer spent writing Twilight.) The people who make these videos have honed their craft over years of experience.

Jenny Nicholson’s older videos, which are shorter and have less razzle dazzle, are much lighter on production, but still took a lot of time and effort. Hank Green does 2-3 vlogs per week on his channel and the vlogbrothers channel that I like a lot, which are relatively quick to make (they have to be, to come out so frequently). But Hank Green has this amazing radio host, podcaster, YouTube vlogger, TV personality-type charisma that is rare and also not a thing where you can say just go do that. If you think you can go do that, then definitely do it! But it’s not something just anyone can do, and no one can do it easily.

Another positive example from YouTube: Kirk Honda, a clinical psychology professor whose channel is called Psychology in Seattle. He does unbelievably good educational videos on mental health, psychology, personality disorders, therapy, abusive relationships, and so on, and the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down is he’s often reacting to reality TV. But this is not a gimmick. He says that for ethical reasons, clinical psychology professors don’t have recordings of real people interacting that they can show to their students. Without real (or realistic) examples, it’s hard to convey what you’re talking about. Reality TV is a great teaching tool because these Hollywood studios have decided to do the arguably unethical thing and exploit people’s anguish for money, so he can just comment on it and use it to explain psychology concepts. These videos seem relatively quick to produce, but again you have the Hank Green problem: Kirk Honda has charisma, wisdom, eloquence, and charm, and not just anyone can do it, and no one can do it easily.

Podcasts are another medium that is incredibly popular, but also hard to do. Effective altruism already has the 80,000 Hours Podcast which is by and large a great success. The winning formula for shows like that is just to book fascinating people with fascinating things to say and let them talk for a long time. And having good audio and video production, and having an interviewer who can lightly steer the fascinating person into saying more fascinating things. This is the easiest formula to replicate, but 80,000 Hours is already doing it. Not that I discourage people from starting new podcasts, or that I think the 80,000 Hours Podcast can’t be improved — my suggestion to them was to shake things up with guests who say things other than what people in EA are used to hearing, e.g., Richard Sutton, Yann LeCun, Jeff Hawkins, Edan Meyer. Toby Ord’s episode of the 80,000 Hours podcast was an amazing example of this. Toby Ord is as central to EA as it gets, but the cold water he’s dumped on AI scaling very much goes against most people in EA are saying about AI.

I’ve worked on 3 podcasts as hobby projects, and let me tell you, unless you’re already an expert, audio production is surprisingly hard to work out. If you’ve got a budget of ~$200 per episode (take this with a grain of salt and double-check my recollection/estimate), you can take the vast majority of this complexity away by renting a podcast recording studio for 1-2 hours. I think there are probably multiple spaces you can rent in any large city in developed countries. (This requires the people on the podcast are all physically in the studio. I don’t have a solution for making it easier to record podcasts remotely.) Editing the audio isn’t nearly as complicated and just takes time and work, but if you’ve got more money to spend, you can also hire an editor to take that complexity off your hands as well.

The right way to think about this is you’re trying to make good art. Easier said than done. However, I think it’s worth thinking about, and it’s worth trying for people who are willing to put in what it takes to give it a good shot. I just want to discourage people from thinking about making “content” or “social media content” as opposed to art.

I'm quite excited about EAs making videos about EA principles and their applications, and I think this is an impactful thing for people to explore. It seems quite possible to do in a way that doesn't compromise on idea fidelity; I think sincerity counts for quite a lot. In many cases I think videos and other content can be lighthearted / fun / unserious and still transmit the ideas well.

An additional reason EAs may not be playing the attention arms race is that they may be persuaded by the fidelity model of spreading ideas.

I do not understand why so many disagree with your take. I think it can both be true that EA conferences, the forum, long-form YouTube and books etc are great and keep the community active and interesting but that we also miss out on reaching new young people over the long term.

I think that there are actually two reasons to be active in more channels:

1. Reach new people and keep the community alive over the long term.
I mean people need to find out about the ideas and cause areas somewhere right? If they are not easily discoverable where people get their information and interests then that will be harder. Before people decide to read a whole book about something or attend a conference they need to be interested or curious about it in the first place.

2. Get EA ideas and cause areas out there in the general conversation to hopefully have some effect on policy and societal norms etc.

I think there are lots of EA ideas or cause areas that are “memable” and interesting. It is just a matter of how one frames it. Sure it will most likely not be the most popular stuff but it could influence relevant discussions on economics or politics or whatever. 
I think graphs like this one can be pretty mind-blowing^[1] and making more people aware of these effects could have a good effect on the margin. I think the idea portrayed by the graph is very powerful: that one’s effort or giving could help 100 times more people if applied to the right target. I'm sure this concept could be shown in many other ways too.

To take another random example of nerdy “non-EA” meme I have seen a few times is this graph. It sometimes appears in discussions regarding fusion power. I have no idea how accurate^[2] it is but the main point is that is a pretty complex “meme” but in the right contexts it is relevant and could influence discussions. 
Some other examples I can think about are the web comics xkcd or SMBC where particular strips get widely shared many years after they were published. There are tonnes of info graphics, comic strips and graphs like this that travel around the internet and influence peoples’ opinions. I don’t see why EA ideas, cause areas and insights could not be spread in the same way.

———

Another point: I think it is also possible to combine long-form and short-form content. With YouTube I’ve seen that some channels like Kurzgesagt make both regular videos and post shorts on YouTube and TikTok. I have no idea how well this makes people more aware of their long-form content and books though. I would guess that it is worth it since they can pretty easily create it based on highlights from their existing content. I am not content creator or influencer though so I wouldn't put too much weight on my opinion here.

1. ^{^}

   from the giving what we can front page https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/

2. ^{^}

   I have not dug into the claims of the graph, so I cannot comment on the accuracy. I just thought it was good illustration of how more complex memes or graphs can spread to convey a message or "meme". The message here is very clear: humanity has under-invested in fusion and in another better world we might have solved our energy and climate issues if we just invested more in fusion research. If that is an accurate story then this graph illustrates that pretty well.

It looks much nicer than the original imo. If I didn't have context, I'd probably be confused though.

Why 80,000 hours? And what is the pie chart / watch face analogy about? On first glance I’m not sure whether it’s about career choice, time management, life balance, or some '5pm' metaphor.

I looked at it in this order: (1) “80,000 hours”, (2) pie chart / watch face, trying to figure it out, (3) subtitle, (4) endorsement. But the subtitle and endorsement are doing most of the work of telling me what the book is actually about and whether it’s for me.

Maybe some of this is intended, to make people pick up the book and try to find answers. :) 

Since you explicitly asked for criticism:

- Pie chart labels are too small.
- I don't like the thick partial border around the work segment - makes it look like a clock, which is perhaps deliberate as it's gesturing at time - but I look at it and think 'this is a book about 5 o' clock'. 
- I don't like The Cornerstone Press label going vertically, and I'm unsure of how it relates to the Penguin logo. 
- I think 'that does good' is a bit of a flat subtitle. Too vague. I much prefer the wording on the site: ridiculously in-depth is ballsy, and I like it! That should be on the cover.
- I would've tried for an endorsement from a more mainstream figure in society, like a celebrity or something... I don't know, Stephen Fry? Lex Friedman? Rutger Bregman is very known in EA, I'm not sure how known outside of EA, and since he's written a book on a similar topic, one might see that and think 'why should I read both?' 

Also the link to the alternative design doesn't work. 

Learning of this book launch also has me wondering: how is this book different to Moral Ambition or the HIP playbook? 

Anyway, there's my tuppence worth. Are you asking because the cover is still editable? Congratulations on the launch!