The Nonlinear Library EA - Potential Pitfalls in University EA Community Building by jessica mccurdy
May 8, 2024
11:17
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Potential Pitfalls in University EA Community Building, published by jessica mccurdy on May 8, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
TL;DR: This is a written version of a talk given at EAG Bay Area 2023. It claims university EA community building can be incredibly impactful, but there are important pitfalls to avoid, such as being overly zealous, overly open, or overly exclusionary. These pitfalls can turn away talented people and create epistemic issues in the group.
By understanding these failure modes, focusing on truth-seeking discussions, and being intentional about group culture, university groups can expose promising students to important ideas and help them flourish.
Introduction
Community building at universities can be incredibly impactful, but important pitfalls can make this work less effective or even net negative. These pitfalls can turn off the kind of talented people that we want in the EA community, and it's challenging to tell if you're falling into them. This post is based on a talk I gave at EAG Bay Area in early 2023[1]. If you are a new group organizer or interested in becoming one, you might want to check out this advice post.
This talk was made specifically for university groups, but I believe many of these pitfalls transfer to other groups. Note, that I didn't edit this post much and may not be able to respond in-depth to comments now.
I have been in the EA university group ecosystem for almost 7 years now. While I wish I had more rigorous data and a better idea of the effect sizes, this post is based on anecdotes from years of working with group organizers. Over the past years, I think I went from being extremely encouraging of students doing university community building and selling it as a default option for students, to becoming much more aware of risks and concerns and hence writing this talk.
I think I probably over-updated on the risks and concerns, and this led me to be less outwardly enthusiastic about the value of CB over the past year. I think that was a mistake, and I am looking forward to revitalizing the space to a happy medium. But that is a post for another day.
Why University Community Building Can Be Impactful
Before discussing the pitfalls, I want to emphasize that I do think community building at universities can be quite high leverage. University groups can help talented people go on to have effective careers. Students are at a time in their lives when they're thinking about their priorities and how to make a change in the world. They're making lifelong friendships. They have a flexibility that people at other life stages often lack.
There is also some empirical evidence supporting the value of university groups. The longtermist capacity building team at Open Philanthropy ran a mass survey. One of their findings was that a significant portion of people working on projects they're excited about had attributed a lot of value to their university EA groups.
Common Pitfalls in University Group Organizing
While university groups can be impactful, there are several pitfalls that organizers should be aware of. In this section, I'll introduce some fictional characters that illustrate these failure modes. While the examples are simplified, I believe they capture real dynamics that can arise.
Pitfall 1: Being Overly Zealous
One common pitfall is being overly zealous or salesy when trying to convince others of EA ideas. This can come across as not genuinely engaging with people's arguments or concerns. Consider this example:
Skeptical Serena asks, "Can we actually predict the downstream consequences of our actions in the long run? Doesn't that make RCTs not useful?"
Zealous Zack[2] responds confidently, "That's a good point but even 20-year studies show this is working. There's a lot of research that has gone into it. So, it really d...
TL;DR: This is a written version of a talk given at EAG Bay Area 2023. It claims university EA community building can be incredibly impactful, but there are important pitfalls to avoid, such as being overly zealous, overly open, or overly exclusionary. These pitfalls can turn away talented people and create epistemic issues in the group.
By understanding these failure modes, focusing on truth-seeking discussions, and being intentional about group culture, university groups can expose promising students to important ideas and help them flourish.
Introduction
Community building at universities can be incredibly impactful, but important pitfalls can make this work less effective or even net negative. These pitfalls can turn off the kind of talented people that we want in the EA community, and it's challenging to tell if you're falling into them. This post is based on a talk I gave at EAG Bay Area in early 2023[1]. If you are a new group organizer or interested in becoming one, you might want to check out this advice post.
This talk was made specifically for university groups, but I believe many of these pitfalls transfer to other groups. Note, that I didn't edit this post much and may not be able to respond in-depth to comments now.
I have been in the EA university group ecosystem for almost 7 years now. While I wish I had more rigorous data and a better idea of the effect sizes, this post is based on anecdotes from years of working with group organizers. Over the past years, I think I went from being extremely encouraging of students doing university community building and selling it as a default option for students, to becoming much more aware of risks and concerns and hence writing this talk.
I think I probably over-updated on the risks and concerns, and this led me to be less outwardly enthusiastic about the value of CB over the past year. I think that was a mistake, and I am looking forward to revitalizing the space to a happy medium. But that is a post for another day.
Why University Community Building Can Be Impactful
Before discussing the pitfalls, I want to emphasize that I do think community building at universities can be quite high leverage. University groups can help talented people go on to have effective careers. Students are at a time in their lives when they're thinking about their priorities and how to make a change in the world. They're making lifelong friendships. They have a flexibility that people at other life stages often lack.
There is also some empirical evidence supporting the value of university groups. The longtermist capacity building team at Open Philanthropy ran a mass survey. One of their findings was that a significant portion of people working on projects they're excited about had attributed a lot of value to their university EA groups.
Common Pitfalls in University Group Organizing
While university groups can be impactful, there are several pitfalls that organizers should be aware of. In this section, I'll introduce some fictional characters that illustrate these failure modes. While the examples are simplified, I believe they capture real dynamics that can arise.
Pitfall 1: Being Overly Zealous
One common pitfall is being overly zealous or salesy when trying to convince others of EA ideas. This can come across as not genuinely engaging with people's arguments or concerns. Consider this example:
Skeptical Serena asks, "Can we actually predict the downstream consequences of our actions in the long run? Doesn't that make RCTs not useful?"
Zealous Zack[2] responds confidently, "That's a good point but even 20-year studies show this is working. There's a lot of research that has gone into it. So, it really d...