Almost all new EA recruits are converted in college by friends and/or by reading a very small number of writers (e.g. Singer).

Maybe currently, but it doesn't have to be. Many people within the Boston EA community seem to have come to it post college and through in-person discussions.

This is something that cannot be replicated by most adults, who are bad writers and who are not friends with college students.

Do college EAs need more support? Would better versions of things like ThINK's modules help? Funding for free food for meetings? Would subsidizing TLYCS distribution or some upcoming EA book do much to increase the spread of ideas?

If you can convince one new person to be an EA for $100k you're more efficient than successfully raising your kid to be one, and that's ignoring time-discounting.

having lots of children is a strategy that many religions have effectively employed for the bulk of their members

I think religions mostly expand at first through conversion and then once they start getting diminishing returns switch to expanding through reproduction. EA isn't to this changeover point yet, and isn't likely to be for a while. But I also don't know that much about it.

I mostly disagree with both parts of the sentence "Except that it's much cheaper to convince other people's kids to be generous, and our influence on the adult behavior of our children is not that big." I would argue that

(1) Almost all new EA recruits are converted in college by friends and/or by reading a very small number of writers (e.g. Singer). This is something that cannot be replicated by most adults, who are bad writers and who are not friends with college students. We still need good data on the ability of typical humans to covert others to EA ideas, but my anecdotal observations (e.g. Matt Wage) suggest that this is MUCH harder than you might think.

(2) Despite one's acceptance of genetic fatalism, it's known that the biggest influences a parent can have are the religious and political associations of their children. Insofar as donating is determined more by affiliating with the EA movement than by bio-determined factors like IQ, we can expect parents to strongly induce giving by their children.

We can look to evangelical religions to get an idea of what movement building techniques are most effective for the bulk of the population. Yes, many religions have missionaries, but this is usually a small group of unusually motivated and charismatic people. But having lots of children is a strategy that many religions have effectively employed for the bulk of their members.

(One potential counter example I'd be interested to hear about is the effectiveness of the essentially compulsory missionary work for Mormon men.)

The invention of nuclear weapons seems like the overwhelmingly best case study.

1. New threat/power comes from fundamental new scientific insight.
2. Existential risks (nuclear winter, run-away nitrogen fusion in atmosphere).
3. Massive potential effects, both positive and negative (nuclear power for everything, medical treatments, dam building and other manipulation of Earth's crust, space exploration, elimination of war, nuclear war, increased asymmetric warfare, reactor meltdowns, increased stability of dictatorships). Some were realized.
4. Very large first-mover advantage with times scales of less than a year.
5. Feasible development in secret.

Nuclear weapons differed in that the world was already at war when they were developed, so policy makers would be in a different mindset and have different incentives. But otherwise, I think the parallels are as good as you could possibly hope for. The only other competitor is the (overly broad) case of molecular nano-tech, but this hasn't actually happened yet so you don't have much to go on. In contrast, the Manhattan Project is extensively documented.

As a personal anecdote, I have never felt anything that I was inclined to call "willpower depletion". As a teenager, I decided that "willpower" was just a loaded term/metaphor for dynamic consistency, and that calling it "willpower" was harmful to the way people thought about themselves as agents. I decided that other people's feeling of "willpower depletion" was nothing more than sensing oneself in transition from one value system to another.

But claims that the theorized "executive system", a cognitive system whose function is almost by definition to maintain dynamic consistency, was seated in the prefrontal cortex and needed more glucose than other brain functions, made me consider that maybe "willpower" is in fact an appropriate term... but I still never actually felt anything like a "depleting resource", which I found confusing.

So I'll be less confused again if the belief dependency you mention is correct, and causal. In any case, I hope it is, so that people can achieve better dynamic consistency by not thinking of it as "expendable". I'm at least one example consistent with that theory.

It is usually better to read textbooks in an area before reading papers (particularly just-published one) in the area. Can anyone recommend a textbook that covers this material or material that would tend to help one understand this material?

I've never heard of willpower depletion. I've heard people say that they don't have enough willpower, but not that they're out of willpower. Surely willpower is a long-term stat like CON, not an diminishable resource like HP.

I've never thought that I've had much willpower (possibly a nocebo effect originally generalised from a few early cases?). But on those occasions where I have used my willpower, this has always made subsequent uses easier. I can't imagine using it up.

I myself would like to be part of such a community. But I wouldn't like colleges to offer courses in it, because it seems to be a negative-sum game. What would the world look like now if we had a million graduates of such a curricula in the US? I suspect most people taking the courses would do so in order to go into marketing or politics, and thus reduce the signal-to-noise ratio when choosing products or politicians even more.

How can you disavow Dark Arts? This is the Dark Arts.

I'm not just relying on my memories from my own crim law class in law school; I pulled out one of my old textbooks to check myself in writing the comment. "Under common law, an intentional homicide committed in 'sudden heat of passion' as the result of 'adequate provocation' mitigates the offense to voluntary manslaughter." Joshua Dressler, Understanding Criminal Law (1995). The book goes on to discuss the specific case of the murderous husband.

I believe my account is accurate with respect to the common law, although possibly not with respect to the current state of the law in all common law jurisdictions. Hence the caveats about the law possibly having been changed by statute or otherwise.

I always find it worthwhile, but maybe it's not what you are expecting or looking for. It's become a social group, with a slightly intellectual bent. It's not an attempt to recreate LessWrong in-person. The core group really has become a community, as in: make connections, understand each other, communicate, and in certain ways, offer mutual support. I find the discussion almost always stimulating, and even though I only go up once every month.

Q: Generally, what kinds of meetups would you enjoy attending?