I’ve been involved in the community since 2012 - the changes seem drastic to me, both based on in-person interactions with dozens of people as well as changes in the online landscape (e.g. the EA Forum/EA Facebook groups).
But that is not in itself surprising. The EA community is on average older than when it started. Youth movements are known for becoming less enthusiastic and ambitious over time, when it turns out that changing the world is actually really, really hard.
A better test is: how motivated do EAs feel who are of a similar demographic to long-term EAs years ago when EA started? I have the impression they are much less motivated. It used to be a common occurrence in e.g. Facebook groups to see people writing about how motivating they have found it to be around other EAs. This is much rarer than it used to be. I’ve met a few new-ish early 20s EAs and I don’t think I can even name a single one who is as enthusiastic as the average EA was in 2013.
I wonder whether the lack of new projects being started by young EAs is partially caused by this (though I am sure there are other causes).
To be clear, I don’t think there has been as drastic a change since 2018, which is I think when you started participating in the community.
Thanks for sharing more details on your perspective.
For context, I’ve been following GiveWell since 2012 and took the Giving What We Can pledge + started Yale’s EA group in 2014. But I wasn’t often in touch with people who worked at EA orgs until 2017.
My job puts me in touch with a lot of new people (e.g. first-time Forum posters, people looking to get into EA work), and I find them to be roughly as enthusiastic as the student group members I’ve worked with. But that’s often tempered by a kind of conservatism that seems to come from EA messaging—they’re more concerned about portraying ideas poorly, accidentally causing harm through their work, etc.
This may apply less to more experienced people, though I wonder how much of the feeling of “insufficiency” is closer to a feeling of deeper uncertainty about whether the person in question is focusing on the right things, given the number of new causes and ways of thinking about EV that have become popular since the early years.
Overall, I think you’re better-positioned to make this evaluation than I am, and I’m really glad that this post was written.
I agree that absolute impact is the better way of looking at this. You talk about the original pitch of EA of donating 10% of your salary and saving quite a few lives. But now that same person can donate the same amount of money to the long-term future and potentially save orders of magnitude more lives in expectation. So I think EA has gotten more exciting. I could see if someone has inflexible career capital in the global poverty or animal space and little ability to donate and became convinced of the value and tractability of the long-term future, that this could decrease one’s relative impact. But I think this is less common than the case of being able to pivot (at least somewhat) towards higher impact. So I think a change in enthusiasm is more related to general trends with age and movements, rather than a change in perception of relative impact.
I’ve been involved in the community since 2012 - the changes seem drastic to me, both based on in-person interactions with dozens of people as well as changes in the online landscape (e.g. the EA Forum/EA Facebook groups).
But that is not in itself surprising. The EA community is on average older than when it started. Youth movements are known for becoming less enthusiastic and ambitious over time, when it turns out that changing the world is actually really, really hard.
A better test is: how motivated do EAs feel who are of a similar demographic to long-term EAs years ago when EA started? I have the impression they are much less motivated. It used to be a common occurrence in e.g. Facebook groups to see people writing about how motivating they have found it to be around other EAs. This is much rarer than it used to be. I’ve met a few new-ish early 20s EAs and I don’t think I can even name a single one who is as enthusiastic as the average EA was in 2013. I wonder whether the lack of new projects being started by young EAs is partially caused by this (though I am sure there are other causes).
To be clear, I don’t think there has been as drastic a change since 2018, which is I think when you started participating in the community.
Thanks for sharing more details on your perspective.
For context, I’ve been following GiveWell since 2012 and took the Giving What We Can pledge + started Yale’s EA group in 2014. But I wasn’t often in touch with people who worked at EA orgs until 2017.
My job puts me in touch with a lot of new people (e.g. first-time Forum posters, people looking to get into EA work), and I find them to be roughly as enthusiastic as the student group members I’ve worked with. But that’s often tempered by a kind of conservatism that seems to come from EA messaging—they’re more concerned about portraying ideas poorly, accidentally causing harm through their work, etc.
This may apply less to more experienced people, though I wonder how much of the feeling of “insufficiency” is closer to a feeling of deeper uncertainty about whether the person in question is focusing on the right things, given the number of new causes and ways of thinking about EV that have become popular since the early years.
Overall, I think you’re better-positioned to make this evaluation than I am, and I’m really glad that this post was written.
I agree that absolute impact is the better way of looking at this. You talk about the original pitch of EA of donating 10% of your salary and saving quite a few lives. But now that same person can donate the same amount of money to the long-term future and potentially save orders of magnitude more lives in expectation. So I think EA has gotten more exciting. I could see if someone has inflexible career capital in the global poverty or animal space and little ability to donate and became convinced of the value and tractability of the long-term future, that this could decrease one’s relative impact. But I think this is less common than the case of being able to pivot (at least somewhat) towards higher impact. So I think a change in enthusiasm is more related to general trends with age and movements, rather than a change in perception of relative impact.