Comments
Posting in a personal capacity.
I'm excited about EA doing more to shout about its wins and defend itself against bad-faith detractors and would love to see more discussion of what it could concretely look like for EA to take more control of its own narrative in this way.
I think the core point here is right: whether we like it or not, there is a narrative about EA that gets constructed, and if we choose not to do our own narrative shaping, then EA’s critics control more of the narrative. Choosing not to engage doesn’t make the narrative ‘authentic’ and the status quo isn’t ‘neutral’. EA has had a lot of cool wins, almost nobody outside the community knows about them, so I want to see more people pointing out the wins and pointing out how EA principles informed these wins.
I think @Andy Masley has been a great example of what this can look like in practice. Andy has written a lot about a topic not usually associated with EA, data center water usage, but has written and engaged publicly in a way that’s clearly informed by EA ideas, and he's unashamed about his connection to EA. I’d personally love to see more of this. There's an EA thought leadership gap right now, with not many people who write and speak publicly from an EA perspective. I'd love to see a new generation of people who write, speak, and engage publicly on a variety of topics from a perspective informed by EA principles.
I also don’t think that doing more of this is the same thing as trying to make EA cool or trying to expand it. It’s just trying to make sure that people have a clearer understanding of what EA principles are and what they have led to in the world so far, the good and the bad. I’d love an end state where people who are into EA ideas are clearer about how they see EA and their relationship to it, and for people not to feel embarrassed to say they're into EA ideas or part of the EA community.
I'm keen to hear more concrete ideas for what doing more good proactive narrative shaping could look like.
I disagree pretty strongly with this.
The biggest danger to EA is being cool. I mean this completely seriously. When EA becomes cool, people who don't care about EA show up to secure money and status. When EA becomes cool, that reputation needs defending, which is often corrosive to truth. EA being unpopular enough to deter status-seekers while not being so universally loathed that even mission-aligned nerds hesitate to associate with it for fear of social repercussions is exactly where we ought to be.
I think the argument of "EA could achieve more if it had a better reputation" is compelling, intuitive, and wrong. It seems like you're imagining a cool version of EA that tons of smart people want to join, but also maintains the same level of mission alignment and commitment to truth. I think this is actually impossible.
EA's impact is a product of magnitude * direction. A better reputation increases our magnitude, but it's very easy for that direction to get much closer to zero. (And, since we take the money of committed altruists, a direction that is insufficiently positive is actually net-negative, thanks to opportunity cost)
I don't think 'having a better reputation' means 'being cool'.
I think 'having a better reputation' means people primarily associating EA with core ideas such as evidence, cost-effectiveness, impact, impartiality, counterfactual thinking (rather than e.g. FTX).
I suspect there are plenty of 'mission-aligned nerds' out there who have been put off EA because they first hear about the bad stuff rather than the good stuff (though I also expect the overwhelming majority of 'mission-aligned nerds' simply haven't heard of EA at all).
I'd go further and say that the FTX-ish reputation "EA is where extremely wealthy Silicon Valley nerds brag about their generosity whilst mostly funnelling money to people like them and using it as an avenue for self-promotion" also attracts the wrong sort of people - before there were people complaining about FTX being a scam, there were people complaining about the perceived ease of getting funding by FTX attracting the insincere.
(Other negative EA stereotypes contribute to putting well-intentioned people off, but I'm not sure they actually attract the wrong people)
(You reminded me of this essay.)
I think the magnitude × direction framing is really useful, and I agree the risk is real.
At EA Netherlands, I've been thinking about this through the lens of Ben Todd's notion of "community capital" — roughly, the stock of shared values, trust, human capital, coordination capacity, norm-following, and reputation that a community accumulates over time. The worry you're describing is essentially that outreach erodes community capital. And it can — if you do it carelessly.
But my ambition is to try to monitor this over time. If we surveyed relevant aspects of the community periodically — tracking its values, the degree to which people are following community norms, the actions people are taking, the degree of interconnectedness between members, and the quality of human capital coming in — we might be able to detect whether outreach efforts are degrading the direction term, and course-correct if they are.[1]
If that's feasible, it turns a binary question ("should we grow or not?") into an empirical one ("is this particular form of growth maintaining alignment?"). Some forms of outreach might pass the test, and others might not. But you'd want to check rather than assume.
I think the implicit model in your comment is one where we have to choose — stay small and aligned, or grow and dilute. But perhaps there's a third option: invest seriously in both outreach and monitoring community capital, and course-correct over time.
Out of interest, has this been considered, @David_Moss?
It has been considered for the EA Survey! I'm not sure why this was never prioritised for inclusion, after being raised. But if the meta orgs we work with say they want us to include these questions in the survey going forward, we will.
Good to know! If it doesn't get included in the EA Survey, we might consider doing it ourselves at the national level (M&E budget allowing...).
But obviously, international data that would allow us to compare across regions would be more useful.
Good point. However, my claim is not that "EA should be cool" and we should work to make it mainstream... I pretty much agree with you on that. My point is that EA should put more effort into building its own narrative to the general public (and it doesn't mean trying to make it look cool), otherwise it will be built by someone else, and the outcome will very likely not be beneficial for EA itself.
EA diluting its message to expand would result in more unqualified people applying for jobs on the EA jobs boards, which will make them worse job boards.
Although I don't think EA should go mainstream and have its message diluted, I think this statement is wrong. Unqualified and qualified applicants would have the same probability of stumbling across EA if it ever goes mainstream. I think this idea that "smart people don't consume mainstream stuff" is very wrong.
'When EA becomes cool, people who don't care about EA show up to secure money and status. When EA becomes cool, that reputation needs defending, which is often corrosive to truth.'
I think that's very well said.