Like some sort of philosophical query machine that the people who are actually in power, or have influence and a public persona, would have to actually follow directives from – or at least, would face heavy costs if they began to do things against the wishes of this group
Anything that is reliable influential seems like it would be attacked by individuals seeking influence. Maybe it needs to be surprisingly influential, like the surprising influence of the consents in Anathem (for those that haven’t read it, there is a group of monks who are regularly shut off from the outside would and have little influence, but are occasionally emerge into the real world and are super effective at getting stuff done).
I know that LW has managed to seed some people into these organizations so that they are at least exposed to these ideas and so-on, and I know that this has had some pretty positive effects, but I also am somewhat skeptical that this will be enough as EA orgs grow and become more mainstream than they are. Every large organization must move towards greater bureaucracy and greater inertia as they grow, and if they become misaligned it becomes very difficult for them to change course. Correctly seeding them seems to be the best strategy but beyond that it is an unsolved problem.
I think EA might be able to avoid stagnation if there is a healthy crop of new organisations that spring up and it is not just dominated by behemoths. So perhaps expect organisations to be single shot things, create lots of them and then try and rely on the community to differentially fund the organisations as we decide whatever is needed.
Anything that is reliable influential seems like it would be attacked by individuals seeking influence. Maybe it needs to be surprisingly influential, like the surprising influence of the consents in Anathem (for those that haven’t read it, there is a group of monks who are regularly shut off from the outside would and have little influence, but are occasionally emerge into the real world and are super effective at getting stuff done).
I think EA might be able to avoid stagnation if there is a healthy crop of new organisations that spring up and it is not just dominated by behemoths. So perhaps expect organisations to be single shot things, create lots of them and then try and rely on the community to differentially fund the organisations as we decide whatever is needed.