Hot take: if you think that we’ll have at least 30 more years of future where geopolitics and nations are relevant, I think you should pay at least 50% as much attention to India as to China. Similarly large population, similarly large number of great thinkers and researchers. Currently seems less ‘interesting’, but that sort of thing changes over 30-year timescales. As such, I think there should probably be some number of ‘India specialists’ in EA policy positions that isn’t dwarfed by the number of ‘China specialists’.
Just learned that 80,000 hours’ career guide includes the claim that becoming a Russia or India specialist might turn out to be a very promising career path.
I’ve been wondering recently whether CFAR should try having some workshops in India for this reason. Far more people speak English than in China, and I expect we’d encounter fewer political impediments.
Also, anecdotally, there have been lots of Indian applicants (and attendees) at ESPR throughout the years. Seems like people there also think rationality is cool (lots of the people I interviewed had read HPMOR, there are LW meetups there, etc. etc.)
Brazil is another interesting place. In addition to the large populations and GDP, anecdotally based on online courses I’ve taken, philosophy meme groups etc, Brazilians seem more interested in Anglo-American academic ethics than people from China or India, despite the presumably large language barrier.
fwiw the global poverty part of EA already does a fair amount of work in India. I know EA is a bit (and increasingly) fragmented between different cause areas, but that still might be a useful entry point?
Hot take: if you think that we’ll have at least 30 more years of future where geopolitics and nations are relevant, I think you should pay at least 50% as much attention to India as to China. Similarly large population, similarly large number of great thinkers and researchers. Currently seems less ‘interesting’, but that sort of thing changes over 30-year timescales. As such, I think there should probably be some number of ‘India specialists’ in EA policy positions that isn’t dwarfed by the number of ‘China specialists’.
For comparison, in a universe where EA existed 30 years ago we would have thought it very important to have many Russia specialists.
Just learned that 80,000 hours’ career guide includes the claim that becoming a Russia or India specialist might turn out to be a very promising career path.
I’ve been wondering recently whether CFAR should try having some workshops in India for this reason. Far more people speak English than in China, and I expect we’d encounter fewer political impediments.
Also, anecdotally, there have been lots of Indian applicants (and attendees) at ESPR throughout the years. Seems like people there also think rationality is cool (lots of the people I interviewed had read HPMOR, there are LW meetups there, etc. etc.)
Also fyi, a nontrivial fraction of new users on LessWrong have Indian sounding usernames.
Brazil is another interesting place. In addition to the large populations and GDP, anecdotally based on online courses I’ve taken, philosophy meme groups etc, Brazilians seem more interested in Anglo-American academic ethics than people from China or India, despite the presumably large language barrier.
fwiw the global poverty part of EA already does a fair amount of work in India. I know EA is a bit (and increasingly) fragmented between different cause areas, but that still might be a useful entry point?