Many people within the Boston EA community seem to have come to it post college and through in-person discussions.
Hmm. I haven’t spent much time in the area, but I went to the Cambridge, MA LessWrong/Rationality “MegaMeetup” and it was almost exclusively students. Is there a Boston EA community substantially disjoint from this LW/Rationality group that you’re talking about?
More generally, are there many historical examples of movements that experience rapid growth on college campuses but then were able to grow strongly elsewhere? Civil rights and animal welfare are candidates, but I think they mostly fail this test for different reasons.
If you can convince one new person to be an EA for $100k you’re more efficient than successfully raising your kid to be one, and that’s ignoring time-discounting.
I honestly do not think this is possible, and again I look to religious organizations as examples where (my impression is that) finding effective missionaries is much harder than getting the minimal funding they need to operate at near-maximum efficiency. This is something we need more data on, but I expect a lot of the rosy pictures people have of translating money or other fungibles into EA converts will not stand up to scrutiny, in much the same way that GiveWell has raised by an order of magnitude its estimates of the cost of saving a life in the developing world. I especially think that the initial enthusiasm of new EAers converted through repeatable methods (like 80k hours) will fade more quickly in time than “organic” converts and children raised in EA households (to an even greater extent than for religions).
I think religions mostly expand at first through conversion and then once they start getting diminishing returns switch to expanding through reproduction. EA isn’t to this changeover point yet, and isn’t likely to be for a while.
Maybe. I have the impression that religions most used missionaries to expand geographically, and hit diminishing returns very quickly once they had a foothold. Basically, I guess that as soon as a potential convert knows the organization exists, you’ve essentially already hit the wall of diminishing returns. I agree as long as EA stuff has non-structural geographic lumpiness (i.e. geographic concentrations that are a result of accidents of history rather than for intrinsic reasons related to where EA memes are most effective) then EA missionary work may be the major driver of growth. But I think the EA memes are most effective on a wealthy, technologically connected sub-population which we may quickly saturate in just a few years.
I hear many more people describe their own conversion experience as something akin to “I heard the argument, and it just immediately clicked” (even if personal inertia prevented them making immediate drastic changes). I do not hear many people describe it as “I had heard about these ideas a few times, but it was only when Bob [who was supported by EA funding] took the time to sit and talk with me for a few hours that I was convinced.” (Again, that’s just anecdotal.)
Can we look at the history of the Catholic church during times when new populations of potential converts became accessible through exploration/colonization? What fraction of the church’s resources went to missionary work, and did the church reduce its emphasis on having children so that parents would have more free money to give to the church?
Incidentally, these kind of questions are what make me wish we had more EA historians. We could use a lot more data and systematic analysis.
I went to the Cambridge, MA LessWrong/Rationality “MegaMeetup” and it was almost exclusively students
Weird; that’s not my memory of it or my perception of the group. The meetup was at Harvard, which meant we had a couple more students than usual, but I think 80%+ of the local people at the meetup were out of school.
At the meetup yesterday night, which I remember better, there were about 15 of us and I think only one student (late 30s statistics grad student).
Is there a Boston EA community substantially disjoint from this LW/Rationality group that you’re talking about?
There’s a lot of overlap, but it’s a separate group. Looking over the rsvps at our most recent dinner I count 8 people who also go to lesswrong, and 15 who don’t. On the same list i count three students.
are there many historical examples of movements that experience rapid growth on college campuses but then were able to grow strongly elsewhere?
The history of movements is something I’d like to know more about, but haven’t really looked into much. (One thing I found frustrating when I did is that there’s a huge amount of survivorship bias.)
Facebook did this, though it’s not a movement.
I expect a lot of the rosy pictures people have of translating money or other fungibles into EA converts will not stand up to scrutiny
I agree, and am similarly pessimistic. But $100k is still a lot of money, and we don’t yet have that much experience trying to figure out how to spend it.
I do not hear many people describe it as “I had heard about these ideas a few times, but it was only when Bob [who was supported by EA funding] took the time to sit and talk with me for a few hours that I was convinced.”
There are very few Bobs who are supported by EA funding, but I can think of several people who switched to EA after lots of talking with existing EAs. Right now we have relatively little personal outreach and relatively more digital/idea-based outreach, so we should expect to meet more people who were receptive to the arguments when they heard them remotely.
did the church reduce its emphasis on having children so that parents would have more free money to give to the church?
I’m not sure the church was strategic or flexible enough to do this, and even then I doubt kids were anywhere near as expensive as then. Specifically, I think the age at which a kid went from net-consumer to net-producer was something like 9 compared to today’s 22. (But I’m not very informed on this.)
historians … we could use a lot more data and systematic analysis.
Hmm. I haven’t spent much time in the area, but I went to the Cambridge, MA LessWrong/Rationality “MegaMeetup” and it was almost exclusively students. Is there a Boston EA community substantially disjoint from this LW/Rationality group that you’re talking about?
More generally, are there many historical examples of movements that experience rapid growth on college campuses but then were able to grow strongly elsewhere? Civil rights and animal welfare are candidates, but I think they mostly fail this test for different reasons.
I honestly do not think this is possible, and again I look to religious organizations as examples where (my impression is that) finding effective missionaries is much harder than getting the minimal funding they need to operate at near-maximum efficiency. This is something we need more data on, but I expect a lot of the rosy pictures people have of translating money or other fungibles into EA converts will not stand up to scrutiny, in much the same way that GiveWell has raised by an order of magnitude its estimates of the cost of saving a life in the developing world. I especially think that the initial enthusiasm of new EAers converted through repeatable methods (like 80k hours) will fade more quickly in time than “organic” converts and children raised in EA households (to an even greater extent than for religions).
Maybe. I have the impression that religions most used missionaries to expand geographically, and hit diminishing returns very quickly once they had a foothold. Basically, I guess that as soon as a potential convert knows the organization exists, you’ve essentially already hit the wall of diminishing returns. I agree as long as EA stuff has non-structural geographic lumpiness (i.e. geographic concentrations that are a result of accidents of history rather than for intrinsic reasons related to where EA memes are most effective) then EA missionary work may be the major driver of growth. But I think the EA memes are most effective on a wealthy, technologically connected sub-population which we may quickly saturate in just a few years.
I hear many more people describe their own conversion experience as something akin to “I heard the argument, and it just immediately clicked” (even if personal inertia prevented them making immediate drastic changes). I do not hear many people describe it as “I had heard about these ideas a few times, but it was only when Bob [who was supported by EA funding] took the time to sit and talk with me for a few hours that I was convinced.” (Again, that’s just anecdotal.)
Can we look at the history of the Catholic church during times when new populations of potential converts became accessible through exploration/colonization? What fraction of the church’s resources went to missionary work, and did the church reduce its emphasis on having children so that parents would have more free money to give to the church?
Incidentally, these kind of questions are what make me wish we had more EA historians. We could use a lot more data and systematic analysis.
Weird; that’s not my memory of it or my perception of the group. The meetup was at Harvard, which meant we had a couple more students than usual, but I think 80%+ of the local people at the meetup were out of school.
At the meetup yesterday night, which I remember better, there were about 15 of us and I think only one student (late 30s statistics grad student).
There’s a lot of overlap, but it’s a separate group. Looking over the rsvps at our most recent dinner I count 8 people who also go to lesswrong, and 15 who don’t. On the same list i count three students.
The history of movements is something I’d like to know more about, but haven’t really looked into much. (One thing I found frustrating when I did is that there’s a huge amount of survivorship bias.)
Facebook did this, though it’s not a movement.
I agree, and am similarly pessimistic. But $100k is still a lot of money, and we don’t yet have that much experience trying to figure out how to spend it.
There are very few Bobs who are supported by EA funding, but I can think of several people who switched to EA after lots of talking with existing EAs. Right now we have relatively little personal outreach and relatively more digital/idea-based outreach, so we should expect to meet more people who were receptive to the arguments when they heard them remotely.
I’m not sure the church was strategic or flexible enough to do this, and even then I doubt kids were anywhere near as expensive as then. Specifically, I think the age at which a kid went from net-consumer to net-producer was something like 9 compared to today’s 22. (But I’m not very informed on this.)
Yes!