| No | Category | Risk | Description | Risk Triggers | Mitigation Strategies | Likelihood |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1.1 | Coordination Failure | Diversion from higher-
impact roles | People diverted from 80K roles:
- Longtermist roles
- UK/US focused
People diverted from EA org roles in general | There is a drop in competition for EA jobs | Establish whether people are good fits before encouraging other strategies. Ensure high fidelity messaging, spend time determining strategy on this topic. | Possible. However, many non-80K paths are not specified, so we would have to be doing worse than no research, which is unlikely. |
1.2 | Coordination Failure | Dilution of rigour of EA career advice | Lowering standards of rigour of EA-recommended paths outside US/UK | Ineffective Orgs endorsed | 1-1 calls
Establishing minimum thresholds for research conducted, encourage high levels of transparency
Focus more on career capital building vs direct impact. | Somewhat possible. LCAN will not have full control over this, organisers are already doing such research. |
2.1 | Harm to community building | Diverting groups from higher impact activities | Less focus on other early-stage community building activities e.g. developing social connections, helping people with small/medium actions, transmitting high-quality EA content | Organisers aren’t having as much impact as they used to | 1-1 calls
Ensure organisers have a good grasp of national-level strategy, members, etc. and are doing activities that make sense.
Connect them to more estalished organisers & CEA | Somewhat Possible. |
2.2 | Harm to community building | Diverting groups from higher impact activities | Focusing on the wrong career-focused activities | Providing information instead of prescribing activities. | Unlikely. The value of different career activities has not been thoroughly studied, and we have done research which will make decisions based on data. | |
2.3 | Harm to community building | This project prioritizes the wrong “Tier” of member | Focus too much on some people (e.g. more promsiing or less promising) | Community health metrics | 1-1 calls
Improve general knowledge on filtering.
Do checks periodically between organizers
Providing information instead of prescribing activities. | Unlikely to result from LCAN activities. This is an ongoing issue for many groups |
2.5 | Harm to community building | Value Drift and Movement Fragmentation | Career efforts are diverted from the hubs | A reduction in average years of engagement | Ensuring connections between localities and the core EAs via EAGx and EAGs.
Regional and national groups can help support local groups and connect them to others. | Unlikely to result from LCAN activities. |
3.1 | Harm to other cause areas (non-meta) | Reputation risks, info-hazards, putting wrong people in sensitive positions | Low-quality advice/execution if organisers make decisions too hastily or do not invest enough time into research, or encourage the wrong people into roles | Reputation risks e.g. EA in the policy space
Info-hazards e.g. AI governance roles - people talking about x-risks | 1-1 Calls
Checks with EA leaders and relevant cause-area experts
Don’t jump to associate someone with EA explicitly
Encourage group organisers to track people in these fields in the long-term
Suggest low-risk ways for people to test their fit (skills, personal) for a career path rather than going directly into a career | Possible. Those working in longtermist causes need to be careful. |