What are the use cases you envision for terms like these ones?
I appreciate the concern that people might feel deceived when finding out that the movement doesnât look quite like what they were expecting, but I think this might be better addressed by pointing out to new people EA is a broad group with a variety of interests, values, and attitudes.
Iâm concerned that splitting up EA according to aesthetics/âsubcultures might be harmful, and I think it should be handled with care. The human tendency to look for identity labels and subgroups to belong to is very strong, and subgroup identification can create insularity and group polarization, which are probably things we should avoid. It could also result in people altering beliefs in order to fit an identity framing as Lizka describes in the case of longtermism here.
Any large coalition will have variation across the group, and terms that describe subgroups can be helpful. However, while describing EA in terms of cause area or even terms like âlongtermistâ give me a strong idea what a person or group might be interested in and what might be valuable to them, Iâm not sure what information the aesthetic categories give me as a descriptor.
Thereâs also a lot of complexity in the connections between groups and ideas in EA, and I think this is an aspect of EA which should be encouraged and emphasized, not flattened into categories.
Thanks for the comment. I agree with most of this, and think that this is one of the major possible costs of labels like this, but I worry that some of these costs get more attention than the subtler costs that come from failing to label groups like this. Take the label of âEffective Altruismâ itself for example, the label does mean that people in the movement might have a tendency to rest easy, knowing that their conformity to certain dogmas is shared by âtheir peopleâ, but not using the label would mean sort of willfully ignoring something big that was actually true to begin with about oneâs social identity/âbiases/âinsularity, and hamper certain types of introspection and social criticism.
Even today there are pretty common write ups by people looking to dissolve some aspect of âEffective Altruismâ as a group identifier as opposed to a research project or something. This is well meaning, but in my opinion has led to a pretty counterproductive movement-wide motte and bailey often influencing discussions. When selling the movement to others, or defending it from criticism, Effective Altruism is presented as a set of uncontroversial axioms pretty much everyone should agree with, but in practice the way Effective Altruism is discussed and works internally does involve implicit or explicit recognition that the group is centered around a particular network of people and organizations, with their own internal norms, references, and overton window.
I think a certain cost like this, if to a lesser extent, comes from failing to label the real cliques and distinct styles of reasoning and approaches to doing good that to some extent polarize the movement. This is particularly the case for some of the factors I discuss in the post, like the fact that different parts of the movement feel vastly more or less welcoming to some people than others, or that large swaths of the movement may feel like a version of âEffective Altruismâ you can identify with, and others arenât, and this makes using the label of Effective Altruism itself less useful. For people who have been involved in different parts of the movement and are comfortable moving between the different subcultures, I would count myself here for instance, this tension may be harder to relate to, but it is a story I often hear, especially relating to people first being exposed to the movement. I think this is enough to make using these labels useful, at least within certain contexts.
Not sure how relevant, but this reminds me of stories from inside Valve, the noted semi-anarchistly-organized game developer. People can move to any project they want, and there are few/âno formal position titles. However, some employees have basically said that, because decision-making is sorta by consensus and some people have seniority and people can organize informally anyway, the result is a âshadow clique/âcabalâ that has disproportionate power. Which, come to think of it, would probably happen in the average anarchist commune of sufficient size.
TLDR just because the cliques donât exist formally, doesnât mean they donât exist.
Thanks for writing this up!
What are the use cases you envision for terms like these ones?
I appreciate the concern that people might feel deceived when finding out that the movement doesnât look quite like what they were expecting, but I think this might be better addressed by pointing out to new people EA is a broad group with a variety of interests, values, and attitudes.
Iâm concerned that splitting up EA according to aesthetics/âsubcultures might be harmful, and I think it should be handled with care. The human tendency to look for identity labels and subgroups to belong to is very strong, and subgroup identification can create insularity and group polarization, which are probably things we should avoid. It could also result in people altering beliefs in order to fit an identity framing as Lizka describes in the case of longtermism here.
Any large coalition will have variation across the group, and terms that describe subgroups can be helpful. However, while describing EA in terms of cause area or even terms like âlongtermistâ give me a strong idea what a person or group might be interested in and what might be valuable to them, Iâm not sure what information the aesthetic categories give me as a descriptor.
Thereâs also a lot of complexity in the connections between groups and ideas in EA, and I think this is an aspect of EA which should be encouraged and emphasized, not flattened into categories.
Thanks for the comment. I agree with most of this, and think that this is one of the major possible costs of labels like this, but I worry that some of these costs get more attention than the subtler costs that come from failing to label groups like this. Take the label of âEffective Altruismâ itself for example, the label does mean that people in the movement might have a tendency to rest easy, knowing that their conformity to certain dogmas is shared by âtheir peopleâ, but not using the label would mean sort of willfully ignoring something big that was actually true to begin with about oneâs social identity/âbiases/âinsularity, and hamper certain types of introspection and social criticism.
Even today there are pretty common write ups by people looking to dissolve some aspect of âEffective Altruismâ as a group identifier as opposed to a research project or something. This is well meaning, but in my opinion has led to a pretty counterproductive movement-wide motte and bailey often influencing discussions. When selling the movement to others, or defending it from criticism, Effective Altruism is presented as a set of uncontroversial axioms pretty much everyone should agree with, but in practice the way Effective Altruism is discussed and works internally does involve implicit or explicit recognition that the group is centered around a particular network of people and organizations, with their own internal norms, references, and overton window.
I think a certain cost like this, if to a lesser extent, comes from failing to label the real cliques and distinct styles of reasoning and approaches to doing good that to some extent polarize the movement. This is particularly the case for some of the factors I discuss in the post, like the fact that different parts of the movement feel vastly more or less welcoming to some people than others, or that large swaths of the movement may feel like a version of âEffective Altruismâ you can identify with, and others arenât, and this makes using the label of Effective Altruism itself less useful. For people who have been involved in different parts of the movement and are comfortable moving between the different subcultures, I would count myself here for instance, this tension may be harder to relate to, but it is a story I often hear, especially relating to people first being exposed to the movement. I think this is enough to make using these labels useful, at least within certain contexts.
Not sure how relevant, but this reminds me of stories from inside Valve, the noted semi-anarchistly-organized game developer. People can move to any project they want, and there are few/âno formal position titles. However, some employees have basically said that, because decision-making is sorta by consensus and some people have seniority and people can organize informally anyway, the result is a âshadow clique/âcabalâ that has disproportionate power. Which, come to think of it, would probably happen in the average anarchist commune of sufficient size.
TLDR just because the cliques donât exist formally, doesnât mean they donât exist.