Why Hasn’t Effective Altruism Grown Since 2015?
If this data isn’t surprising to you, it should be.
Several EA organizations work on actively growing the community, have been funding community growth for years and view it as an active priority:
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80,000 Hours: The Problem Profiles pagelists “Building effective altruism” as a “highest-priority area”, right up there with AI and existential risk.
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Open Philanthropy: Effective Altruism is one of their Focus Areas. They write “We’re interested in supporting organizations that seek to introduce people to the idea of doing as much good as possible, provide them with guidance in doing so, connect them with each other, and generally grow and empower the effective altruism community.”
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EA Funds: One of the four funds is dedicated to Effective Altruism Infrastructure. Part of its mission reads: “Directly increase the number of people who are exposed to principles of effective altruism, or develop, refine or present such principles”
So if EA community growth is stagnating despite these efforts, it should strike you as very odd, or even somewhat troubling. Open Philanthropy decided to start funding EA community growth in 2015/2016 [1]. It’s not as if this is only a very recent effort.
As long as money continues to pour into the space, we ought to understand precisely why growth has stalled so far. The question is threefold:
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Why was growth initially strong?
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Why did it stagnate around 2015-2017?
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Why has the money spent on growth since then failed to make a difference?
