While i was reading, i kind of identify myself immediately with the generalist concept and skill. I have always defined myself like that, meaning not being specialized in something. I always had the capacity to adapt and learn from different sectors.
I do believe in effective altruism and that is why i am in a critical moment regarding the work of non profits because i think that they do not follow this principle anymore. Usually the work and what is being delivered is not so much focused on people, but actually more in managing money and getting more money. The focus on the outcomes and impact (improving people's lives) has become secondary. So actually what i am trying to find out is other ways to actually promote an effective altruism :). Hope this course can provide me with some answers.
Reading this, the idea of the “EA Spark” resonates. I can picture someone with that mix of altruism, analytical habits, and willingness to update quickly. But as a newcomer to the EA In-Depth Program, I’m not sure I should or could embody all of these traits immediately. What’s encouraging is that many of them seem trainable: reasoning transparency, alliance mentality, and clear communication feel like skills to practice, not fixed traits. This makes me hopeful that growth in EA is about learning and iterating, not arriving fully formed.
At the same time, I see the risk of idealizing a “type” that can feel exclusionary. I hope the community recognizes that impact comes in diverse forms, and that the spark doesn’t have to be fully lit to contribute meaningfully. My goal in this program is to explore which traits I can realistically develop, test myself against these ideals, and remember that quieter, less-networked contributions can be just as valuable as the more obvious EA “core skills.”
I really like the thought of the EA spark :) 🔥 I’m on week 6 of my EA intro course which is really interesting. I’m feeling stuck in terms of finding so many issues worth pursuing, knowing my skill set and also how much more I want to and plan to learn whilst balancing with just getting out and adding to the action to help make change. I can;t seem to find how to help as traditional job applications have not been successful which is surprising since I resigned from a senior position in the tech space (“soft AI” ) to pursue opportunities in climate friendly areas plus AI - since I was in the field. Any advice as to how I can unstick and get out to help make change??
I agree with this descriptively, but at this moment in time the way EA evolved to basically require all these things makes me sad because that isolates the idea from the broader world and isolates EAs from pursuing interventions that are outside of their norm, like big tent mass movement building (which I believe is the way forward with AI Safety, but EAs to consider anti-Scout mindset or something).
I think I might be missing what’s distinctive here. A lot of the traits listed — strong knowledge of the field, engagement with the community, epistemic humility, broad curiosity — seem like general predictors of success in any many fields.
Are you pointing at something that’s unusually clustered in EA, or is your claim more about how trainable and highly predictive this combination is within the EA context?
I thought the same. Curious whether you think these traits are unusually clustered in EA (vs. just “general predictors of success”), or whether the claim is mainly that the bundle is more trainable/predictive in EA contexts.
Also, this is my first week in the EA In-Depth Program, so I’m excited to notice this “in the wild.”
Nice, I hope you train this bundle well! Was it linked somewhere in the In-Depth Program?
Here are 4 hypotheses for what could be going on:
Any generally smart person, in an EA context, will develop a bunch of these traits, to their advantage
There's some factor that's not general intelligence, but not specific to EA, that will cause these to be more correlated than expected, but would also apply to someone if they went into another field like biotech
There's some factor that causes these traits to be more correlated in the EA context in particular, such that noticing this allows you to find people who are unusually good fits for doing EA-style work
That factor is trainable
1 & 2 are kinda interesting, but you don't need a post on the EA Forum to tell you about intelligence and something like "competence for intellectual work."
3 starts to get interesting because then you can take someone's ability to both speak fluently about fish welfare and to use probabilities as a sign that someone will be able to understand and improve your organizations strategy, and even to be unusually cooperative.[1]
If that last clause sounds dangerous to you, I don't disagree. I think over-reliance of the cooperativeness of other people sharing these traits has caused more than one problem. I nevertheless think this is one of the things that makes EA extremely powerful as an idea.
4 is where you might start getting really hyped about projects like an In Depth Fellowship or an EA Forum. 🙂
That's what correlation means. Learning about correlations means you can update your bayesian prior about one fact when you learn about a correlated fact.
I agree they're generally useful. I claim[1] they're especially useful in EA. But that's not enough to make this interesting.
There are many generally useful correlated traits where the correlation with general mental ability is stronger than the correlation between those traits. So being a good writer is good, and also being good at solving math problems is good. And they're positively correlated. But most things are, just through general intelligence.
What becomes interesting is identifying a cluster of traits that are more correlated with each other than with intelligence, and also predictive of success. These are rare, and usually wrong.[2] If such a cluster can be identified, than knowing about it can help you identify talent that will do well.
If such a cluster is also trainable, well then, you've got a real prize.
This is a helpful way to describe a pattern I’ve seen too. I especially liked the emphasis on agentic behavior and scout mindset. I wonder how we can make space for people who share these traits but don’t fully buy into all EA assumptions.
Interestingly, having come across this a couple of years into learning about EA and interacting with people interested in EA, I think my "proficiency" in some of these skills has increased. I expect that this is because I now have many friends and co-workers who are good at a lot of the things listed above. So it now seems "dumb" for me to not be agentic or to not have reasoning transparency.
I claim that there’s a special thing about some EAs. It’s really hard to describe this using a low number of bits, which should make me skeptical that it exists. I’ve here settled on describing the collection of skills that people with that thing have. I claim that this set of highly correlated traits predicts success in EA about as well as raw intelligence (or more), and is much more trainable. I won’t justify this, and instead, please accept this draft amnesty post gesturing at a thing.
Epistemic status: I find this model useful, and make this claim with the part of me that buys into it, but I’m aware that it doesn’t land for many people I describe it to, including those who I would describe as having this skillset. So take it as a model but not one with my full endorsement.
The “skills”:
Highly altruistic
Impact comes first
Alliance mentality is easy with other EAs
Scout mindset
This and the above factors kinda work well together. When you’re really dedicated to the mission, it’s easier to put down your pride, realize you were wrong and start focusing on the right thing.
This person probably speaks in a lot of probabilities
Has learned to differentiate between their inside view and when they’re deferring
Related: good at reasoning transparency
Generalists
You can count on them having a breadth of knowledge about whatever area they’re in. When you believe something is the most important thing in the world, it’s easier to motivate yourself to learn about adjacent things. And they have done enough heroically diving into to help their allies that they’ve learned areas outside their main specialty.
Knows EA ideas very well
Need someone to explain EA 101? Easy. Biosecurity 101? They gotchu. The cause area they know least about? They probably can do a half-decent job.
If a new consideration is coming down the pipe that hasn’t made its way into their team’s official strategy yet, they’re probably tracking it, and may already be adjusting their behavior
Has engaged with the EA community
They have a network and a reputation
If their work comes under fire on the EA Forum, they can write a reasonable response, because they know how to communicate with EAs
Cluster of EA-ish traits that are less central to the definition, but are correlated:
Growth mindset
Probably does better than you’d expect at talking about feelings, controlling for whatever level of analytical they are
Probably skeptical of the sorts of established wisdom I think are dumb :p
Agentic?
Knows there are no adults in the room
The EA Spark
Nicole Ross called the potential for the EA Core Skillset “the EA Spark”, which I also love, and I expect may evoke the right idea if my previous writings have failed.
Disclaimer
I think there are people who are committed EAs, who really don’t buy into the whole enchilada. I’m sympathetic to that being an option. So: “What the hell, JP, you’re telling me that I can only ‘have this skillset’ if I accept all these independent claims that EAs make?” Am I? I’m not sure. I do think that many people can have the EA Core Skillset without buying into everything, or engaging much with EA. But many do, and without a better definition I just want to gesture at this cluster.
This is the third in a sequence of posts taken from my recent report: Why Did Environmentalism Become Partisan?
Summary
Rising partisanship did not make environmentalism more popular or politically effective. Instead, it saw flat or falling overall public opinion, fewer major legislative achievements, and fluctuating executive actions.
Public Opinion...
I think right now EAs might be making a significant mistake by paying insufficient attention to the political realm. As EAs we tend to figure out what’s most impactful for us to work on and focus hard. That’s great! But there are various actions that are ‘non-delegatable’ - the extent to which an individual can do the action is limited (like voting, going to a protest, making hard money contributions to particular campaigns). It might be useful if we were all more in the habit of doing variou...
This post presents the executive summary from Giving What We Can’s impact evaluation for 2025. At the end of this post we share links to more information, including the full report and...
While i was reading, i kind of identify myself immediately with the generalist concept and skill. I have always defined myself like that, meaning not being specialized in something. I always had the capacity to adapt and learn from different sectors.
I do believe in effective altruism and that is why i am in a critical moment regarding the work of non profits because i think that they do not follow this principle anymore. Usually the work and what is being delivered is not so much focused on people, but actually more in managing money and getting more money. The focus on the outcomes and impact (improving people's lives) has become secondary. So actually what i am trying to find out is other ways to actually promote an effective altruism :). Hope this course can provide me with some answers.