“Movement building” can mean a ton of things. I would actually like to taboo it since it’s so broad. We should evaluate individual ideas on what they actually achieve.
Things that EA folks have done which seem like they might be “movement building” --
It’s a shame that none of this movement building discussion relates to strategy, only to tactics. If you believe The Movement Action Plan model for movement building, then that’s literally a recipe for disaster. Strategic movement building isn’t hard, but it may be hard to implement when EA is such a decentralised heterogeneous movement. That doesn’t mean doctrines can’t be produced for EA’s to adopt if they so choose.
Movement building strategising templates are available here
See the headings:
critical path analysis
cutting the issue
power mapping
problem tree analysis
These tools can be be supplemented with tools designed for strategising in multiagent environments. See the periodic table of strategy.
Without strategy it might be hard to identify counterintuitive movement tactics that make a lot of sense in light of overall movement goals. To illustrate, different libertarian philosophies would advocate it more strategic for libertarians to join the Australian Labor Party (anti-libertarian, socialist party), Australian Liberal Party (conservative party with libertarian influence), the Australian Greens Party (consequentialist green party) or the Australian Liberal Democrats (deontologically libertarian party) or the Australian Sex Party (consequentialism libertarian party) where the Australian labor party and the Australian liberal party are the 2 dominant parties and either of them wins elections in coaliation or alliance with other parties and their is preferential run off voting.
“Movement building” can mean a ton of things. I would actually like to taboo it since it’s so broad. We should evaluate individual ideas on what they actually achieve.
Things that EA folks have done which seem like they might be “movement building” --
giving TED talks
running the EA camp at Burning Man
putting on the EA Summit
founding GiveWell
posting on the EA Facebook page
pledging to give 10% of income
you see, these things are all quite different...
A few more examples of movement building:
Hosting/attending meetups
Writing blogposts
Getting media coverage
Coining terms
Introducing people to each other
Drawing Jack Chick-style pamphlets and handing them out on street corners
It’s a shame that none of this movement building discussion relates to strategy, only to tactics. If you believe The Movement Action Plan model for movement building, then that’s literally a recipe for disaster. Strategic movement building isn’t hard, but it may be hard to implement when EA is such a decentralised heterogeneous movement. That doesn’t mean doctrines can’t be produced for EA’s to adopt if they so choose.
Movement building strategising templates are available here
See the headings:
critical path analysis
cutting the issue
power mapping
problem tree analysis
These tools can be be supplemented with tools designed for strategising in multiagent environments. See the periodic table of strategy.
Without strategy it might be hard to identify counterintuitive movement tactics that make a lot of sense in light of overall movement goals. To illustrate, different libertarian philosophies would advocate it more strategic for libertarians to join the Australian Labor Party (anti-libertarian, socialist party), Australian Liberal Party (conservative party with libertarian influence), the Australian Greens Party (consequentialist green party) or the Australian Liberal Democrats (deontologically libertarian party) or the Australian Sex Party (consequentialism libertarian party) where the Australian labor party and the Australian liberal party are the 2 dominant parties and either of them wins elections in coaliation or alliance with other parties and their is preferential run off voting.