As an EA organizer when I was a grad student at Harvard, I developed an implicit model of community organizing at a university that is complimentary to the funnel model of Center for Effective Altruism (CEA) that was super popular a few years ago. I call mine “optimizing the seed:pollen ratio”. I’m not going to justify outreach as a strategy or advocate for any specific means of outreach—the point is to share my model of outreach efficacy. It’s a fun bonus that my model is well-explained by analogy to a biology concept, which I hope to explain well as a secondary objective.
I'm a year late to comment, and what a year it's been, this post was a month or so before FTX happened. It's now a new EA world. I wonder if your thoughts have changed.
I totally agree with this thesis...I believe focusing on seeds is what has made EA too elitist...it's easy to be elitest when you want the best people to solve big problems, but in real life I think it breaks down and creates an insular community that suffers other problems reducing it's effectiveness.
I have so many thoughts on how EA should send out a million pollen spores and reach a much broader audience and welcome those who will, to come in. And I think the arts, and more specifically documentary film is a huge missing piece that could be hugely energizing every single EA aligned org in the world and absolutely putting the great ideas of EA into more people's heads. But the STEM kind of "cultural monolith" is very unwelcoming to artists, so the dearth of arts remains...I believe EA needs to change this to evolve into it's "third wave" and it will also include a more natural balance between bednets and longtermism, and EA's enjoying communion at table together rather than Huel alone at desk...a balance of normal human ways of living and art is always there at the heart of that.
Useful model, and my hunch is you're right about needing a more pollen in EA community organising.
The link to Robert Trivers' textbook is broken.
I'm a year late to comment, and what a year it's been, this post was a month or so before FTX happened. It's now a new EA world. I wonder if your thoughts have changed.
I totally agree with this thesis...I believe focusing on seeds is what has made EA too elitist...it's easy to be elitest when you want the best people to solve big problems, but in real life I think it breaks down and creates an insular community that suffers other problems reducing it's effectiveness.
I have so many thoughts on how EA should send out a million pollen spores and reach a much broader audience and welcome those who will, to come in. And I think the arts, and more specifically documentary film is a huge missing piece that could be hugely energizing every single EA aligned org in the world and absolutely putting the great ideas of EA into more people's heads. But the STEM kind of "cultural monolith" is very unwelcoming to artists, so the dearth of arts remains...I believe EA needs to change this to evolve into it's "third wave" and it will also include a more natural balance between bednets and longtermism, and EA's enjoying communion at table together rather than Huel alone at desk...a balance of normal human ways of living and art is always there at the heart of that.