80,000 Episode Re: Size of Community
By Danny Lipsitz 🔸 @ 2020-06-16T01:18 (+14)
[EDIT: Found below in the comments] I am trying to find an 80,000 Hours episode, probably from 1-2 years ago at least, in which Rob gives his opinions on the ideal size of the EA community. I remember him giving some arguments for why we don't necessarily want it to be as big as possible. Can anyone point me in the right direction and save me some searching time?
MichaelA @ 2020-06-30T01:15 (+4)
I think maybe it's the episode with Stefan Schubert. I don't actually remember the episode well, but apparently it includes discussion of "Should EA get more involved in politics, or steer clear of it? Would it be a bad idea for a talented graduate to get involved in party politics?" And Schubert co-wrote the related post Hard-to-reverse decisions destroy option value.
Also potentially relevant:
- The episode with Peter Singer, which included discussion of "The pros and cons of keeping EA as one big movement".
- These EA analyses of how social social movements rise, fall, can be influential, etc.
- These EA analyses of political polarisation
BryonyMC @ 2020-06-16T01:43 (+4)
pretty sure you are talking about the interview with Dr. Nick Beckstead. https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/nick-beckstead-giving-billions/#transcript
Just search the page (command key + F) for the number "2000" to find that part of the conversation.
Danny Lipsitz @ 2020-06-16T03:17 (+1)
Thank you. This is definitely at least part of what I was remembering! Was there a separate one then involving arguments for EA remaining apolitcal? (I know there's may be small mentions of that on several episodes.)
JoshYou @ 2020-06-16T15:57 (+2)
Not from the podcast but here's a talk Rob gave in 2015 about potential arguments against growing the EA community: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH4_ikhAGz0