EA - Observations of community building in Asia, a 🧵 by Vaidehi Agarwalla

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: Observations of community building in Asia, a 🧵, published by Vaidehi Agarwalla on December 11, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.This is a lightly edited twitter thread I wrote after EAGxSingapore. I figured it might be useful to post to the Forum as well.Caveatsthese are my takeaways (with some interpretation) not just problems people told me.summarized a bunch to fit into the 280 character limit (flag emoji FTW).good > perfectAsian CB's please correct me + enhance!Everyone - please ask clarification questions!What do we do with people? This isn’t unique to Asian CB’s, but there are strictly fewer and less attractive opportunities available. I might do a separate thread or add to this thought later.Some countries have less traction with English & worry about EA being presented as Western concept (e.g. Japan & Iran). Translation of key texts seems important, and could be a way to engage newer EAs with a concrete project (see a test from Estonia).Countries with lots of internal issues may have difficulty gaining EA traction, but it may be a matter of perspective and approach. A Turkey CB mentioned that the fact that another group from Iran was able to get traction was inspiring, since they perceived Iran as having worse problemsMultiple CB’s suggested that after talking to other EAs they started thinking more about city / uni group building rather than trying to build national groups to start with. For large countries (India) there are many choices, .....But some countries (Nepal, Pakistan, Vietnam) have 1 or 2 (Kathmandu, Karachi, Ho Chi Minh & Hanoi) major cities that are likely to be viable for EA groups. Kathmandu has all of Nepal’s top uni’s and best talent pool so in practice EA Nepal ~= EA Kathmandu.A few CBs want to/are starting local groups in liberal arts unis which they feel are more EA aligned. A challenge in Turkey is that vegans are abolitionist and against welfarism, and was concerned about discussing farmed animal welfare within EA.In Japan (+ others?), many students study abroad. There may be an opportunity to get those students interested in EA before they go (and connect them to local EA groups in the West), and catch them again after they return.E.g. 1 uni group struggled with reading group retention. It seemed plausible they could focus on their existing ~8 engaged members, or do a “trial week” for their reading group to help attendees evaluate fit early on.There is uncertainty over what messaging works best and non-existent testing. People mostly rely on their insights. More testing seems good, e.g. how much do you need to incorporate native philosophy vs. localizing examples and stories. bad e.g. "Asking someone who grew up or has spent a lot of time in LMICs to imagine a child drowning in a lake is not a hypothetical - it's something they might see and ask themselves every single day. This thought experiment loses a lot of its power. What are some alternatives?"Asking someone who grew up or has spent a lot of time in LMICs to imagine a child drowning in a lake is not a hypothetical - it's something they might see and ask themselves every single day. This thought experiment loses a lot of its power. What are some alternatives?Vietnam doesn’t have a big book-reading culture, so EA books could be less likely to be a way in. Perhaps focusing on blogs or podcasts or other formats is more promising?Many of us (including myself) learnt a lot from Israel on volunteer management and early stage group priorities. I believe a lot of value I provide CB's is expanding the option space and generating lots of specific examples. I wish more CB’s from around the world had attended.Early stage groups (which is most Asia groups today) could benefit from The Lean Startup model of validated learning - trying to optimize early activities to l...