https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-eidam/ + https://benjamineidam.com/ + https://benjamineidam.substack.com/
More will (probably, at some point) follow here.
Hi Minh,
thanks for commenting! Yeah, I've heard the "marketers win over experts" argument and I think it is a good one. But my "strategy" here is that in Germany we value work with values at least in theory relatively deeply. Like it is literally our culture with our poets etc.
In that sense education PLUS values would be a competitive advantage, but I don't know if the market sees it like that.
Only one way to find out, I guess.
Cheers
Ben
Thank you for engaging Max! :)
Yeah, I think / hope that EAGxBerlin will give this project / me one big / final push to give it a / the final direction / polish to go all in. Let's see.
Hm. First of IT is not a "ancient" concept either, but I get your point. But then again: This will be a University, not an official representative Institution. I think it will just play its small role in the growing EA-Ecosystem, but you never know, true. But I'm not fully thought through it, so more about this in an update of the article. Thanks a lot!
Cheers
Ben
Hi Max,
thanks for the reply! These are very good questions and mainly exactly what I meant with what I would probably forget about to mention it. So here we go:
Thank you!
Cheers
Ben
Hi Yi-Yang, thank you for your comment!
To 1.: Could you please elaborate on what you mean by "I know you're hoping to certification for your university, but the four courses you listed don't seem relevant."? Thank you!
To 2.: Don't you think that when you get more people who come in because they want to learn / qualify for better job-options in the future and go out with a lot of knowledge about - well the "world right now" + EA", that they would join EA-causes more freely? My experience tells me that this works. Although I never exactly trained people in the way that I intend for DI tbh.
3. I will update as soon as I have some useful thoughts about it.
About the talk to the community-builders: Do you have anyone specific in mind? Or sources, where I can find them? Thank you!
Cheers
Ben
Thanks for your comment Alex!
I think if you have people for 3-5 weeks at least and literally give them a new perspective on the world, a lot of them at least can realisticly consider EA because they simply know how to place it as a "meta" mental model. Which brings me to the answer to your question:
"How long do you expect students to participate?"
Based on my experience at least 4 weeks. Up to 16 weeks. As i wrote: I borrow concepts that are already working in the real-life context so no need to experiment there.
Cheers
Ben
Hi Dusan,
first thing: thank you a lot for your feedback, would love to bounce Ideas around with you! Just mail me at mail@benjamineidam.com please :)
"it seems like this is a project you already wanted to start, and has had an "EA" sticker added to it"
Actually, I wanted to start something EA way before I even had a thought about a project like this. But I can get it. Right now I choose to start with something that I have tested a lot and that works great in the "real world" with ~10%-20% EA in it. But I learned in my Intro-Fellowship, that there are a lot of intersections, plus my plan is to teach the content but constantly watch it through the perspective of EA. In the same way, the botanist looks at a forest in this example:
So in short: I think the content itself is relatively optimal between enabling students optimally for fulfilling their "Digikai" while the "meta-perspective" of EA frames all of it perfectly.
But this is just my point of view as I teach it, and it works "wonders" for my students right now. Like literally changing their view of the world.
I don't know if this will work on scale.
Again: Only one way to find out :)
"My emotional response is that having a curriculum 80% done without consulting with the broader EA field feels like going against the EA epistemic approach."
I 100% agree. That is why I share it now, that I'm more or less can see clearly a path how it could work. I think now it is a lot of fine-tuning, but i don't know how this will look like. I also don't want just chain hours of talking and chatting to each other without doing, but I really want to get more EAs involved and feedbacking this before really going "online".
I am really open to Ideas and just kick ~80% out of the sea if necessary. I just know technology and "love" the mental model of EA and have the "talent" to be an exciting teacher. So I want to use that.
But if it changes on the way, I'm ok with it. It really depends on the arguments.
Cheers
Ben