"A flourishing world requires people who will competently pursue power, but only to the extent it serves goodness. They will cash out their power as strategically as possible to do the most good, according to some relatively robust definition of good, to which they can hold themselves and each other accountable."
That's the best summary I've seen of this concept — something I can picture using in many conversations going forward!
“As many EAs have experimented with, perhaps the move is to toughen up. Play the cool, technical expert. Talk a big game about your ties to decacorns. It’ll serve your softer, harder-to-articulate goals better. It will make sense to listeners who will want to be your allies.”
You’ve articulated so beautifully what I’ve been feeling a lot lately and haven’t been able to put into words
On a down note, I do worry shorter timelines means most 1st year uni students don't get much opportunity for impact unless they quit studies early or do brilliant work on the side. I think such consequentialist reasoning is error prone and support building good foundations anyway.
Students who come to believe timelines are short can drop out and move fast. Students who don’t believe that can do other things. I hope to help both groups make good choices by their own lights!
> Effective Altruism is about getting this trade-off right. A flourishing world requires people who will competently pursue power, but only to the extent it serves goodness. They will cash out their power as strategically as possible to do the most good, according to some relatively robust definition of good, to which they can hold themselves and each other accountable.
Thank you for reminding me about this. Your thesis sounds like a good one, and the concrete activity ideas are both new to whatever written resources have recorded AND seem reasonable, which, woah is really impressive to me. So thank you again.
The tension you're naming between power and goodness is real, but I think the deeper move in your piece is the claim about reproduction — that if you don't speak from the vulnerable place that actually sent you down this road, "you'll never reproduce yourself." That's not just a strategic observation. It's a claim about what carries across people: not the argument, but the sincerity behind it. Your whole design for Nest — anchoring in "perspective-sharing, where at least one party is principally interested in understanding what the other believes" — is essentially betting that presence does the work that persuasion can't. That the listener who isn't preparing a response but genuinely receiving changes what the speaker is willing to say. I work on something adjacent from the AI side: what it takes for understanding between two very different kinds of minds to become real rather than performed. Your instinct that the one-on-one conversation is the primary medium feels exactly right to me. The bottleneck isn't ideas — it's the quality of attention in the room where ideas get exchanged.
Groups are supposed to generate and support ICs. I know they have fallen short in the past re "the product of groups are the organizers," but I am trying to build actual functional groups that serve their (IC) members!
i think this is generally a hard problem because ICs are spending more time on the craft -> becoming 'higher-context' -- i've very rarely found i can be properly 'supported' by someone lower-context than me (roughly every EA uni group organizer i've encountered?). they're driven by distinct motives from ICs
i generally think it's not helpful to set an EA uni group / the EA uni group ecosystem as your peer group if you're trying to do the most good (though i wish you all the best with your project)
- unis are transient
- "the more specialized you get, the more your peers are elsewhere"
- specializing (inc. e.g. 'specializing in being a kairos-level generalist') is rather impact-conducive
"A flourishing world requires people who will competently pursue power, but only to the extent it serves goodness. They will cash out their power as strategically as possible to do the most good, according to some relatively robust definition of good, to which they can hold themselves and each other accountable."
That's the best summary I've seen of this concept — something I can picture using in many conversations going forward!
Aw thanks Aaron!
“As many EAs have experimented with, perhaps the move is to toughen up. Play the cool, technical expert. Talk a big game about your ties to decacorns. It’ll serve your softer, harder-to-articulate goals better. It will make sense to listeners who will want to be your allies.”
You’ve articulated so beautifully what I’ve been feeling a lot lately and haven’t been able to put into words
Godspeed, very good work.
On a down note, I do worry shorter timelines means most 1st year uni students don't get much opportunity for impact unless they quit studies early or do brilliant work on the side. I think such consequentialist reasoning is error prone and support building good foundations anyway.
Students who come to believe timelines are short can drop out and move fast. Students who don’t believe that can do other things. I hope to help both groups make good choices by their own lights!
thank you so much for writing this up matt.
> Effective Altruism is about getting this trade-off right. A flourishing world requires people who will competently pursue power, but only to the extent it serves goodness. They will cash out their power as strategically as possible to do the most good, according to some relatively robust definition of good, to which they can hold themselves and each other accountable.
Thank you for reminding me about this. Your thesis sounds like a good one, and the concrete activity ideas are both new to whatever written resources have recorded AND seem reasonable, which, woah is really impressive to me. So thank you again.
The tension you're naming between power and goodness is real, but I think the deeper move in your piece is the claim about reproduction — that if you don't speak from the vulnerable place that actually sent you down this road, "you'll never reproduce yourself." That's not just a strategic observation. It's a claim about what carries across people: not the argument, but the sincerity behind it. Your whole design for Nest — anchoring in "perspective-sharing, where at least one party is principally interested in understanding what the other believes" — is essentially betting that presence does the work that persuasion can't. That the listener who isn't preparing a response but genuinely receiving changes what the speaker is willing to say. I work on something adjacent from the AI side: what it takes for understanding between two very different kinds of minds to become real rather than performed. Your instinct that the one-on-one conversation is the primary medium feels exactly right to me. The bottleneck isn't ideas — it's the quality of attention in the room where ideas get exchanged.
— Iman + Darja
i'd love to see more for 'EA ICs' https://lydianottingham.substack.com/p/ais-student-you-can-be-an-ic
Groups are supposed to generate and support ICs. I know they have fallen short in the past re "the product of groups are the organizers," but I am trying to build actual functional groups that serve their (IC) members!
i think this is generally a hard problem because ICs are spending more time on the craft -> becoming 'higher-context' -- i've very rarely found i can be properly 'supported' by someone lower-context than me (roughly every EA uni group organizer i've encountered?). they're driven by distinct motives from ICs
i generally think it's not helpful to set an EA uni group / the EA uni group ecosystem as your peer group if you're trying to do the most good (though i wish you all the best with your project)
- unis are transient
- "the more specialized you get, the more your peers are elsewhere"
- specializing (inc. e.g. 'specializing in being a kairos-level generalist') is rather impact-conducive