EA - Much EA value comes from being a Schelling point by LRudL

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: Much EA value comes from being a Schelling point, published by LRudL on September 10, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. TL;DR: A significant way in which the EA community creates value is by acting as a Schelling point where talented, ambitious, and altruistic people tend to gather and can meet each other (in addition to more direct sources of EA value like identifying the most important problems and directly pushing people to work on them). It might be useful to think about what optimising for being a Schelling point looks like, and I list some vague thoughts on that. A Schelling point, also known as a focal point, is what people decide on in the absence of communication, especially when it's important to coordinate by coming to the same answer. The classic example is: you were arranging a meeting with a stranger in New York City by telephone, but you used the last minute of your phone credit and the line cut off after you had agreed on the date but not location or time - where do you meet? "Grand Central Station at noon" is an answer that other people may be especially likely to converge on. (Schelling points can be thought of as a type of acausal negotiation.) When the Schelling point is the selling point Schelling points are often extremely powerful and valuable. A key function of top universities is to be Schelling points for talented people. (Personally, I'd call it the most important function.) There are other valuable things too: courses that go deeper, the signalling value to employers, and so on. However, talented people generally have a preference for hanging out with other talented people, both for social reasons and to find collaborators for ambitious projects and future colleagues. At the same time, talented people are also generally spread out and present only at low densities. Top universities select hard on (some measures of) talent, and through this create environments with high talent density. A big chunk of the reason why people apply to top universities is because other people do so too, and I'd guess that even if the academic standards of Stanford, MIT, or Cambridge eroded significantly, the fact that they've established themselves as congregating points for smart people will keep people applying and visiting for a long time. (Note that this is related to, but not equal to, the prestige and status of these places. It is possible to imagine Schelling points that are not prestigious. For example, my impression is that this described MIT at one point - it became a congregating point for uniquely ambitious STEM students and defence research before it achieved high academic status. It is also possible to imagine prestigious places that are not Schelling points, though this is a bit harder since anything with prestige becomes a Schelling point for high social status (though prestige Schelling points and talent Schelling points need not co-occur). More generally, since prestige is a thing many people care a lot about, there is a high correlation between a place being prestigious or high status and being a Schelling point for at least some type of person. However, the mechanisms are distinct - a person selecting their university based on status is selecting based on what they get to write on their CV, while a person selecting their university based on it being a Schelling point for smart people is selecting based on the fact that many other smart people that they can't coordinate with but would like to meet will also choose to go there.) Another example is Silicon Valley. Sure, the area has many strengths - being rich and inside a large stable free market - but by far the greatest argument for living in Silicon Valley is that others also choose it. This leads to a (for now) unique combination of entrepreneurial people, great programmers, venture cap...