Peter Singer
I find EAs who live on a fixed income and give the rest away inspiring to parts of me. People who live out their beliefs as fully as they can. Not sure Singer literally does this, but it sounds like the sort of thing he'd do. In that sense he's inspiring - I have an imagined form which encourages parts of me.
I also note that some other parts of me find this exhausting rather than inspiring. I've not found a good answer to that contradiction.
Personally, I found this article to be full of inspiring people for me - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/magazine/global-life-span.html
Here are my notes I took on the article at the time:
PS. If you want to read the article but can't, try this extension https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-javascript/jfpdlihdedhlmhlbgooailmfhahieoem?hl=en-US
Jocko Willink, whose philosophy of extreme ownership was a healthy antidote against blame-avoidance and blame-distribution processes in my brain. Instead he tries to exclusively focus on how he could’ve acted differently to achieve his or the group’s goal. Also big on discipline, being ambitious, prioritizing your problems, and other stuff.
Sam Harris by not being scared about voicing controversial opinions and trying to contribute to what we have of a free market place of ideas. Also mindfulness, careful reasoning about consciousness, and trying to have the big picture in view.
Many EAs who maybe would prefer not being named, but who inspired me to think for myself, eg to start writing book reviews, to be more vulnerable with others, to be more ambitious, and so much more.
Tyler Cowen for motivating me to read more, and more widely.
Robin Hanson for publicly wondering about the big questions without being inhibited by what other people think about his ideas.
Daniel Schmachtenberger. Look up some of his youtube interviews. I like especially the one with Lex Fridman (https://youtu.be/hGRNUw559SE). He's a very thoughtful, yet humble person. His approach is very multi-disciplinary, systems-level, holistic. For me he is a role model for how he combines the world-knowledge and self-knowledge, and how clearly he is able to articulate his ideas, which I think are very EA-compatible (he mentions EA from time to time, but I haven't heard any endorsement from him). Yet he goes further than what is discussed within EA eg. on the topics of personal development and meaning making.
Daniel's website: https://civilizationemerging.com/
A project he is a part of: https://consilienceproject.org/
Also very relevant to EA: Psychological Pitfalls of Engaging With X-Risks & Civilization Redesign w/ Daniel Schmachtenberger: https://youtu.be/SkItTnRJ_1M
Bruce Friedrich, executive director of The Good Food Institute. Before GFI even existed he impressed me with his savvy and commitment in effective advocacy for farm animals while he was at PETA. I don't know anyone else who has been so good at long term planning to reduce suffering and then executing on that plan. Except maybe Dustin Moskowitz or Bill Gates, but I am more impressed with Friedrich since he did not start out from a place of wealth.
Many of the paths EAs take towards impact are difficult, confusing, and very heavy-tailed: the most effective people on that path can achieve far more impact than the median. Under those circumstances, it is especially useful to have role models: examples of people achieving very high impact doing roughly the thing you are trying to do.
Finding role models, however, can be easier said than done. It's not enough for very inspiring people to exist: you need to learn about them, identify them as people you could benefit from emulating, and access key information about the things you might want to emulate (traits, habits, decisions, et cetera). The usual way to do this is via media (podcasts, biographies, et cetera) – but if your ideal role model isn't famous, or doesn't appear in media you consume, they are likely to pass you by. The main alternative to media is gossip – but gossip is quite low-bandwidth and is often least accessible to those who are in greatest need of role models.
EAs seeking role models have two broad places they can look: within the EA community, or outside it. Role models within the community are ideal in that they (i) are likely to more closely match the kind of thing you are trying to do, (ii) align with your values in a way that helps you emulate them more whole-heartedly, and (iii) are more likely to appear in media you already consume (especially the 80,000 Hours podcast).
However, the EA community is relatively small, and high-status public figures within the community are highly enriched for certain groups at the expense of others. If you want to do AI safety research, or global priorities research, or grantmaking, there are a decent number of well-known and super-impressive people in the community for you to emulate; if instead you want to do operations, or community building, or a host of other important paths, you will often need to identify role models on your own.
Role models outside the community are far more numerous and diverse, but also far less discoverable: one person on a given path might identify and benefit greatly from a particular role model, but another person on the same path might completely miss them, simply because they listen to different podcasts or read different books. Under these circumstances, it's valuable to create a place where people can share information on their favourite role models, so that other people with similar goals can discover them more easily.
So, with all that said, who are your role models? Whose example inspires you, and why do you find them inspiring? What resources (books, podcasts, articles, et cetera) can other people use to learn about those role models, and hopefully be similarly inspired?
I'm particularly interested in collating information on lesser-known role-models: either inspirational people from outside the EA community, or role models from within the community whose example should be better known. Role models for career paths that tend to be under-represented among public figures (e.g. operations roles, community builders, event organisers, civil servants...) are especially welcome.
This list is certainly profoundly not-exhaustive for me but I'd rather post this version than spend ages thinking of a better answer and ultimately not posting anything. So, here goes: