EA - EA university groups are missing out on most of their potential by Johan de Kock

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EA university groups are missing out on most of their potential, published by Johan de Kock on January 7, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.The inception of the Purpose and Life Planning TrackContextMany people think that Effective Altruism university groups are incredibly valuable. “To solve pressing global problems — like existential risk, global poverty, and factory farming - we need more talented, ambitious, altruistic people to focus full-time on these issues. Hundreds of thousands of these people are clustered at the world's top universities” (CEA, n.d.).I agree. However, I believe that most EA uni groups, and even the EA community as a whole, are missing out on the majority of their potential to make the most out of this opportunity. This is because the current paradigm for community building emphasises finding talented and ambitious people that want to tackle the world's most pressing problem, and not to create them. This strategy has potentially serious limitations which is preventing us from creating as much counterfactual impact as possible.TL;DR - A summary of the main pointsIf EA university groups want to contribute as well as they can to empowering individuals to tackle the world's most pressing problems, we should not be cherry picking those students who are already naturally inclined to learn more about EA ideas. By only focusing on students who are already interested in EA ideas, we are missing the major opportunity to engage many more ambitious people to work on the world's most pressing problems, if approached from a different angle.Most university students are very young adults. Many are ambitious and conscientious but they are simply not at a point in their life where they have deeply internalised the desire to make doing good a core part of their life; If they don’t decide to join your introduction fellowship, or even drop out, it does not mean that they are not a good fit for EA. The life of university students is changing very quickly and there are many conflicting interests.Before people want to learn more about EA ideas and how to apply them to their lives they must regard this as valuable. Furthermore, before EA ideas can be properly internalised, the proper foundation must be laid.I identify four root causes, particularly for younger adults, that prevent an individual from being naturally inclined to EA ideas.First, people don't understand the link between being happy and doing good. Many people think that pursuing hedonic (feeling-based) happiness is the best way to live a happy life. Eudaimonic happiness (purpose-based happiness) tends to be more effective at this, however. People don’t know this. Making people aware of this difference might change their perspective on life and what they want to prioritise.Second, people often want to find a purpose in life, but it is not clear what that is and how to build one. Purpose consists to a large extent out of using your strengths to make the world a better place.Third, people have not internalised the underlying reasons about why doing good matters. Before somebody can be intrinsically motivated for something they need to understand why it is important and what the underlying reasons are. I think that we can do a lot better as a community to help people internalise these reasons.Four, learning about EA can be intimidating. Many EA ideas go against our evolutionary tendencies, such as prioritising our loved ones. Unless people have built a certain level of psychological and emotional resilience it is likely that taking EA ideas seriously is going to be too demanding.If these four points are addressed effectively it is possible to make a lot more people interested in learning about EA, and applying the ideas to their life (after initially being uninterested in your EA Introducti...