was in charge of IT and software at Alvea ex-boardmember of EA Germany co-founded two small startups ex-human rights observer with Peace Brigades International
Thank you so much for writing about this.
This insight felt especially important to me:
„If you decide, by default, that everyone in your group is self-aware, well-intentioned, and telling the truth, and you then make their intent a central factor in assessing misconduct, you will almost never find abuse.“
So often EAs are used to everyone cooperating that they struggle to notice when someone is actually doing something bad.
Thank you for that addition.
I think my post is due for an update soon. I still hold mostly the same concerns as described in the post, but by now the trade-offs between convenience and risk have shifted for many people due to
the more obvious rise of fascism
anyone having the capability with LLMs now to extremely cheaply evaluate each person who's data they have access to
Judging from your description and the images Ameliorate or DebateMap may come close. The name for this tool category I have encountered is either argument mapping or concept mapping. You should also have a look at Whysaurus, the way it handles contributions seems close to what you describe.
I'm also building an argument analysis tool, but it's probably not what you're looking for, since it focuses more on identifying cruxes between two users: Fences.
As part of that work, I'm also creating a page that compares all these tools, I'll comment here once that is finished.
Thanks for writing up your thinking on this, and also more in general for doing the hard work of community building. 🙌
I think Tess makes good points in their comment about the huge amounts of uncertainty contained in that impact potential factor, and I would go a step further and say:
The factor i is a red herring, and it is harmful for community building to try and predict it.
"intuitively" predicting this is extremely succeptible to bias and rationalizations
overconfident community builders using this to justify their decisions will come off as arrogant and elitist
it will increase impostor syndrome ("my local group doesn't have a high enough impact potential")
it's dependent on which ethical frameworks are correct
core EA orgs weren't able to predict the hugely negative impact of SBF
Using it to decide who is "most worthy of outreach" is in direct conflict with core strenghts of the EA community: cause-neutrality and openness to neglected approaches to making the world a better place.
What should be done instead?
Aim to build a broad, diverse community that is welcoming and non-judgemental and accurately communicates EA ideas to a large audience. Build a community that you would want to be part of. Does this mean abandoning quantitative measures? No, we can still measure if we achieve our goals:
measure participant's understanding of core EA ideas
measure diversity
measure people reached
measure giving pledges
measure money donated
The high impact potential people (those mythical creatures) will find their way once they have come in contact with an accurate representation of EA ideas. It's not the job of community builders to identify and guide them (because they can't), their job is to build an awesome community that communicates EA ideas with high fidelity so that many people come in contact with good first hand accounts of these ideas instead of simplified straw-man versions of EA in take-down articles about scandals in the EA community.
Give a man a fish, and he can eat for a day. Give him a fishing rod, and he can feed himself. Alternatively, don’t poison the fishing waters, abduct his great-grandparents into slavery, then turn up 400 years later on your fucking gap year talking a lot of shite about fish.
A […] report linking deforestation in the Amazon to soy and beef production was published in Science […], Forbes and BBC then mistakenly announced that 1/5 of the entire national exports were so contaminated.
Â
Sadly this kind of misrepresentation of scientific papers or overgeneralization of their actual results seems to be a common pattern. Have you tried to contact the authors at Forbes and BBC? Maybe writing letters to the editor could be a quick way to curb some of the harms of sub par science reporting? (at least in cases where  the article misinterprets the underlying paper)
Thank you so much for writing about this. This insight felt especially important to me:
So often EAs are used to everyone cooperating that they struggle to notice when someone is actually doing something bad.
Thank you for that addition. I think my post is due for an update soon. I still hold mostly the same concerns as described in the post, but by now the trade-offs between convenience and risk have shifted for many people due to
Wondering how much of the higher happiness and general nice things in Scandinavian countries can be attributed to really high taxes on alcohol.
70% ➔ 50% disagreeEven what we think of as our terminal values may change once we examine them closer.
it's easy to be wrong about what futures are more valuable, but it's pretty clear that extinction closes off all future options of creating value.
Judging from your description and the images Ameliorate or DebateMap may come close. The name for this tool category I have encountered is either argument mapping or concept mapping. You should also have a look at Whysaurus, the way it handles contributions seems close to what you describe.
I'm also building an argument analysis tool, but it's probably not what you're looking for, since it focuses more on identifying cruxes between two users: Fences. As part of that work, I'm also creating a page that compares all these tools, I'll comment here once that is finished.
Thanks for writing up your thinking on this, and also more in general for doing the hard work of community building. 🙌
I think Tess makes good points in their comment about the huge amounts of uncertainty contained in that impact potential factor, and I would go a step further and say:
The factor i is a red herring, and it is harmful for community building to try and predict it.
Using it to decide who is "most worthy of outreach" is in direct conflict with core strenghts of the EA community: cause-neutrality and openness to neglected approaches to making the world a better place.
What should be done instead?
Aim to build a broad, diverse community that is welcoming and non-judgemental and accurately communicates EA ideas to a large audience. Build a community that you would want to be part of. Does this mean abandoning quantitative measures? No, we can still measure if we achieve our goals:
The high impact potential people (those mythical creatures) will find their way once they have come in contact with an accurate representation of EA ideas. It's not the job of community builders to identify and guide them (because they can't), their job is to build an awesome community that communicates EA ideas with high fidelity so that many people come in contact with good first hand accounts of these ideas instead of simplified straw-man versions of EA in take-down articles about scandals in the EA community.
Yeah, I mainly posted it because it's good comedy. That doesn't mean I think Give Directly should adopt it.
As inspiration, here's a quote by Scottish stand-up comedian Frankie Boyle on how patronizing the teaching-to-fish idea is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X5KmQxvO5U&t=1537s
Â
Sadly this kind of misrepresentation of scientific papers or overgeneralization of their actual results seems to be a common pattern.
Have you tried to contact the authors at Forbes and BBC? Maybe writing letters to the editor could be a quick way to curb some of the harms of sub par science reporting? (at least in cases where  the article misinterprets the underlying paper)