Elliot Temple's Quick takes

It's bad for all discussion topics to become inactive and ignored after around a day, like Reddit. The forum model, where topics go back to the top when anyone replies in them, is better for having longer, more serious or thoughtful discussions. Attention should be allocated to topics more based on writing activity instead of based on upvotes with a 1-2 day limit even for upvoted topics. Standard forums aren't a perfect system (e.g. they reward controversy) but they work better. I'm sure there's room for refinement of the forum model to help with problems if effort was put into a better system. But the basic current concept, that everything old gets ignored, is bad.

There's a big incentive to never write anything important or serious in comments, unless maybe a topic is new and popular (and it's hard to write important, serious things fast enough for that to work).

EA is trying to affect the allocation of money. I suspect affecting the allocation of attention could be higher leverage and do more good. Put another way, ideas matter more than money, so the emphasis on directing donations isn't the highest leverage. Money does bring attention but isn't the most efficient way to get attention, let alone direct attention where you want, which is different than attracting attention. EA does effect attention, sometimes fairly intentionally and sometimes more as a side effect. But EA's goal is more about money than attention.

There may be other very important resources besides money or attention. Consideration should be given to what offers the most leverage to try to affect the allocation of. What is the best big picture goal or mix of goals for EA? Why emphasize money so much?

Being too busy to do something or engage with some idea means prioritizing some other activities or ideas. It's a standard excuse given to avoid giving any actual reason for deprioritizing the thing you're not doing, which prevents any truth-seeking about what priorities are correct.

I’ve seen the idea that getting other people to donate can be more effective than donating. It’s potentially higher leverage. What if you persuade ten people to donate? That action – that donation of some time and effort – does more good than donating money yourself (assuming you aren’t rich and couldn’t donate a ton).

Meta approaches often have higher leverage. They also have downsides and risks. If people only tried to persuade others, and no one wanted to donate, some problems would come up.

The right approach is to do some of the meta approach and some non-meta approach. All of one or the other is worse than a mix.

I forget where I read this, but I think so far I’m basically summarizing an existing EA idea. Now here’s my new thought:

There is a meta-meta-approach which is even higher leverage, and some of it should be done too. It is persuade people about how to do persuasion better – e.g. discussing rational debate methods. If you give ten people effective tips on how to debate rationally, then they can potentially each go persuade ten people to donate. The potential leverage is very high.