WHAT: A book like "Strangers Drowning", but focused on the "E" of EA rather than the "A" of EA.
WHY: narrative can be such a tremendous force in changing people's lives. It's often more powerful than argument (even for brainy people).
There's already a lot of world literature and newspaper stories on people who have been tremendously altruistic. There is much less literature about people who have been tremendously altruistic and -- this is key -- have been motivated by their altruism to care about effectiveness and listen to the evidence.
I'd love to have a book with biographies or stories that traces -- in narrative rather than argument -- people whose love for others has pushed them to care about effectiveness, care about evidence, and generally care about a results-oriented outlook that focuses on what 'really works at the end of the day'. (Note that the book should not generally be about people who care about effectiveness and evidence -- but only about people who have deliberately chosen to do so out of altruism (rather than, say, out nerdiness)).
Possible biographies could include: Florence Nightingale, Ignaz Semmelweis, Deng Xiaoping, figures from EA and utilitarianism, some theologians in the 2nd world war who pragmatically looked towards ending the killing (Bonhoeffer, Barth, etc?), etc. Not vouching for this list of examples at all -- it's more to give an idea.
By the way, creating such a book could be a project for EAs with a different skillset than the cliché EAs.
Belief Network
Last updated: 2020-03-30
Category: group rationality; signal boosting
Proposal: Track people's beliefs over time, and what information gave them the biggest update.
Details: It could be done at the same time than the EA survey every year. And/or it could be a website that people continuously update.
Motivation: The goals are
1) to track which information is the most valuable so that more people consume it, and
2) see how beliefs evolve (which might be evidence in itself about which beliefs are true; although, I think most, including myself, wouldn't think this was the strongest form of evidence). It could be that most people make a similar series of paradigm shifts over time, and knowing which ones might help speed things up.
Alternative name: MindChange
What's been done so far: Post on LessWrong What are some articles that updated your beliefs a lot on an important topic? The EA survey also tracks some high-level views, notably on cause prioritization.
Update:
Just saw a similar idea I had (I think 2 years ago).
A Chrome Extension and Plug In to measure changes to one's world model and one's behaviors.
Goal: Try to find the articles that are the most likely to update our map and/or behaviors.