Evolutionary psychology professor, author of 'The Mating Mind', 'Spent', 'Mate', & 'Virtue Signaling'. B.A. Columbia; Ph.D. Stanford. My research has focused on human cognition, machine learning, mate choice, intelligence, genetics, emotions, mental health, and moral virtues. Interested in long termism, X risk, longevity, pronatalism, population ethics, AGI, China, crypto.
Looking to collaborate on (1) empirical psychology research related to EA issues, especially attitudes towards long-termism, X risks and GCRs, sentience, (2) insights for AI alignment & AI safety from evolutionary psychology, evolutionary game theory, and evolutionary reinforcement learning, (3) mate choice, relationships, families , pronatalism, and population ethics as cause areas.
I have 30+ years experience in behavioral sciences research, have mentored 10+ PhD students and dozens of undergrad research assistants. I'm also experienced with popular science outreach, book publishing, public speaking, social media, market research, and consulting.
James -- this is helpful and interesting.
I agree that marcomms spend for CEA should probably be higher -- but also hopefully spent more effectively on public outreach, not just internal-facing meetings and in-community organization. But I have very little information about what they're doing, or what their strategy is, so my confidence about this is low.
In terms of hiring constraints, one difficulty I sometimes see is a tendency for EA organizations to try to hire young talent from within EA, rather than finding mid-career or more senior talent that's highly EA-aligned, and highly experienced and effective.
David -- I agree that direct replies & rebuttals to Trump, Sacks, etc are unlikely to work.
However, there are many conservative influencers (e.g. Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin, etc) who really don't know much about EA, who have been nudged to take an anti-EA stance for the moment, but who are smart enough to be persuadable to rethink their views.
I think that's where the leverage is -- the relatively open-minded political influencers with substantial follower counts who are active on X, YouTube, Substack, etc.
David - to many people, almost every aspect of EA is intrinsically scandalous:
-- the utilitarianism, consequentialism, sentientism
-- the globalism, open borders rhetoric, anti-nationalism
-- the openness to alternative lifestyles and relationship styles
-- etc
Within EA, these all seem perfectly normal. Outside the EA bubble, to a typical suburban family in Arizona or Ohio, they're all scandalously bizarre.
Nick -- I agree, of course. Absolutely.
Where is Center for Effective Altruism?
Where is 80,000 Hours?
Where is Rethink Priorities?
Where is Coefficient Giving?
Are they all asleep at the wheel? Or just waiting for this to blow over -- while millions of Americans get a negative view of EA locked into their worldview?
Bella -- interesting data; thanks for sharing.
Just to be clear, this is just Wikipedia pageviews?
I suspect they're telling us something about interest in EA, but I don't get the sense that the pro-accelerationist MAGA partisans being riled up against EA by the Trump administration are they kind of guys who are going to read the Wiki entry to make sure their hot takes on EA are evidence-based.
James -- more good points; I agree.
Especially about perfectionism about EA knowledge & credentials getting in the way of 'good enough' outreach.
I think a lot of comms/PR/marketing/outreach skills generalize quite well across topic domains and cause areas, so it may be more useful for EA orgs to hire excellent comms people who know a bit about EA, than to hire hard-core EA veterans who know only a little bit about comms. A balanced team would be ideal -- but any EA comms team should include at least a couple of people who have done PR outreach for other kinds of organizations, companies, etc.