Sorry for the delay. Yes this seems like the crux.
It would be very surprising if there weren’t others who are in a similar boat, except being somewhat more averse to longtermism and somewhat less appreciative of the rest of the EA, the balance swings the other way and they avoid the movement altogether.
As you pointed out, there’s not much evidence either way. Your intuitions tell you that there must be a lot of these people, but mine say the opposite. If someone likes the Givewell recommendations, for example, but is averse to longtermism and less appreciative of the other aspects of EA, I don’t see why they wouldn’t just use Givewell for their charity recommendations and ignore the rest, rather than avoiding the movement altogether. If these people are indeed “less appreciative of the rest of EA”, they don’t seem likely to contribute much to a hypothetical EA sans longtermism either.
Further, it seems to me that renaming/dividing up the community is a huge endeavor, with lots of costs. Not the kind of thing one should undertake without pretty good evidence that it is going to be worth it.
One last point, for those of us who have bought in to the longtermist/x-risk stuff, there is the added benefit that many people who come to EA for effective giving, etc. (including many of the movement’s founders) eventually do come around on those ideas. If you aren’t convinced, you probably see that as somewhere on the scale of negative to neutral.
All that said, I don’t see why your chapter at Microsoft has to have Effective Altruism in the name. It could just as easily be called Effective Giving if that’s what you’d like it to focus on. It could emphasize that many of the arguments/evidence for it come from EA, but EA is something broader.
I agree it’d be good do rigorous analyses/estimations on what the costs vs benefits to global poverty and animal welfare causes are from being under the same movement as longtermism. If anyone wants to do this, I’d be happy to help brainstorm ideas on how it can be done.
I responded to the point about longtermism benefiting from its association with effective giving in another comment.
Sorry for the delay. Yes this seems like the crux.
As you pointed out, there’s not much evidence either way. Your intuitions tell you that there must be a lot of these people, but mine say the opposite. If someone likes the Givewell recommendations, for example, but is averse to longtermism and less appreciative of the other aspects of EA, I don’t see why they wouldn’t just use Givewell for their charity recommendations and ignore the rest, rather than avoiding the movement altogether. If these people are indeed “less appreciative of the rest of EA”, they don’t seem likely to contribute much to a hypothetical EA sans longtermism either.
Further, it seems to me that renaming/dividing up the community is a huge endeavor, with lots of costs. Not the kind of thing one should undertake without pretty good evidence that it is going to be worth it.
One last point, for those of us who have bought in to the longtermist/x-risk stuff, there is the added benefit that many people who come to EA for effective giving, etc. (including many of the movement’s founders) eventually do come around on those ideas. If you aren’t convinced, you probably see that as somewhere on the scale of negative to neutral.
All that said, I don’t see why your chapter at Microsoft has to have Effective Altruism in the name. It could just as easily be called Effective Giving if that’s what you’d like it to focus on. It could emphasize that many of the arguments/evidence for it come from EA, but EA is something broader.
I agree it’d be good do rigorous analyses/estimations on what the costs vs benefits to global poverty and animal welfare causes are from being under the same movement as longtermism. If anyone wants to do this, I’d be happy to help brainstorm ideas on how it can be done.
I responded to the point about longtermism benefiting from its association with effective giving in another comment.