Iāve gotten more involved in EA since last summer. Some EA-related things Iāve done over the last year:
Attended the virtual EA Global (I didnāt register, just watched it live on YouTube)
Read The Precipice
Participated in two EA mentorship programs
Joined Covid Watch, an organization developing an app to slow the spread of COVID-19. Iām especially involved in setting up a subteam trying to reduce global catastrophic biological risks.
Although I first heard of EA toward the end of high school (slightly over 4 years ago) and liked it, I had some negative interactions with EA community early on that pushed me away from the community. I spent the next 3 years exploring various social issues outside the EA community, but I had internalized EAās core principles, so I was constantly thinking about how much good I could be doing and which causes were the most important. I eventually became overwhelmed because ādoing goodā had become a big part of my identity but I cared about too many different issues. A friend recommended that I check out EA again, and despite some trepidation owing to my past experiences, I did. As I got involved in the EA community again, I had an overwhelmingly positive experience. The EAs I was interacting with were kind and open-minded, and they encouraged me to get involved, whereas before, I had encountered people who seemed more abrasive.
Now Iām worried about getting burned out. I check the EA Forum way too often for my own good, and Iāve been thinking obsessively about cause prioritization and longtermism. I talk about my current uncertainties in this post.
When you got involved the second time around, did you start out with an in-person group, or online discussions? If the latter, was this mostly the Forum, or mostly other places?
I think I started out with r/āEffectiveAltruism and checking out effective altruism websites. Then, someone wrote a post on the subreddit encouraging people to post on the EA Forum because thatās where the action is. So now Iām mostly involved in the forum, but also some Facebook groups (although I try not to use FB often) and Discord.
Very glad your second bout of experiences with EA has been more positive! And sorry to hear that your earlier experiences were negative/āabrasive. Iād be interested to hear more about that, though that also feels like the sort of thing that might be personal or hard to capture in writing. But if you do feel comfortable sharing, Iād be interested :)
Additionally/āalternatively, Iād be interested in whether you have any thoughts on more general trends that could be tweaked, or general approaches that could be adopted, to avoid EA pushing people away like it did the first time you engaged. (Even if those thoughts are very tentative, they could perhaps be pooled with other tentative thoughts to form a clearer picture of what the community could do better.)
The main thing that originally drove me away from the movement was people being dismissive toward causes that the EA movement doesnāt focus on. At the time, I believed that conventional causes like climate change and international human rights advocacy (e.g. Amnesty International) are worth working on, and I wanted to know more about how they stack up against EAās focus areas. I heard comments like (paraphrased below):
In response to my suggestion that an EA student group partner with advocacy orgs at the university: āWe could, but a lot of them are probably not effective.ā
In response to my complaint that EA doesnāt focus enough on climate change: āYou have to prioritize among the global catastrophic risks. Climate change is the least of them all.ā (I think they meant to say āleast neglectedā, but just saying āleastā made it sound like they were saying climate change isnāt important.)
Do you think you wouldnāt have found it as negative/āabrasive if the people still basically argued against a focus on those causes or an engagement with other advocacy orgs or the like, but did so in a way that felt less like a quick, pre-loaded answer, and more like they:
were really explaining their reasoning
were open to seeing if you had new arguments for your position
were just questioning neglectedness/ātractability, rather than importance
I ask because I think thereāll be a near-inevitable tension at times between being welcoming to peopleās current cause prioritisation views and staying focused on what does seem most worth prioritising.[1] So perhaps the ideal would be a bit more genuine open-mindedness to alternative views, but mainly a more welcoming and less dismissive-seeming way of explaining āourā views. Iād hope that that would be sufficient to avoid seeming arrogant or abrasive or driving people away, but I donāt know.
(Something else may instead be the ideal. This could include spending more time helping people think about the most effective approaches to causes that donāt actually seem to be worth prioritising. But I suspect that thatās not ideal in many cases.)
[1] Iām not sure this tension is strong for climate change, as I do think there are decent arguments for prioritising (neglected aspects of) climate change (e.g., nuclear power, research into low-probability extreme risks). But I think this tension probably exists for human rights advocacy and various other issues many people care about.
Yeah. I agree that the tension exists. Cause prioritization is one of the core ideas of EA, so itās important for us to emphasize that, but delicately so that we donāt alienate others. Personally, I would use I-statements, such as āI care about <issue 1> too, but Iāve chosen to focus on <issue 2> instead because itās much more neglected,ā instead of you-statements that might put the listener on the defensive.
It also reminds me of the ideaāwhich Iāve either heard before or said beforeāof talking about taking the Giving What We Can pledge by telling the story of what led one to take it, rather than as an argument for why one should take it. A good thing about that is that you can still present the arguments for taking it, as they probably played a role in the story, and if other arguments played a role in other peopleās stories you can talk about that too. But it probably feels less pushy or preachy that way, compared to framing it more explicitly as a set of arguments.
I also think asking people questions about why they hold a view you think is wrong that suggestively indicate why you think itās wrong can be a good approach (e.g. āBut donāt you think...?ā).
Iāve gotten more involved in EA since last summer. Some EA-related things Iāve done over the last year:
Attended the virtual EA Global (I didnāt register, just watched it live on YouTube)
Read The Precipice
Participated in two EA mentorship programs
Joined Covid Watch, an organization developing an app to slow the spread of COVID-19. Iām especially involved in setting up a subteam trying to reduce global catastrophic biological risks.
Started posting on the EA Forum
Ran a birthday fundraiser for the Against Malaria Foundation. This year, Iām running another one for the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
Although I first heard of EA toward the end of high school (slightly over 4 years ago) and liked it, I had some negative interactions with EA community early on that pushed me away from the community. I spent the next 3 years exploring various social issues outside the EA community, but I had internalized EAās core principles, so I was constantly thinking about how much good I could be doing and which causes were the most important. I eventually became overwhelmed because ādoing goodā had become a big part of my identity but I cared about too many different issues. A friend recommended that I check out EA again, and despite some trepidation owing to my past experiences, I did. As I got involved in the EA community again, I had an overwhelmingly positive experience. The EAs I was interacting with were kind and open-minded, and they encouraged me to get involved, whereas before, I had encountered people who seemed more abrasive.
Now Iām worried about getting burned out. I check the EA Forum way too often for my own good, and Iāve been thinking obsessively about cause prioritization and longtermism. I talk about my current uncertainties in this post.
When you got involved the second time around, did you start out with an in-person group, or online discussions? If the latter, was this mostly the Forum, or mostly other places?
I think I started out with r/āEffectiveAltruism and checking out effective altruism websites. Then, someone wrote a post on the subreddit encouraging people to post on the EA Forum because thatās where the action is. So now Iām mostly involved in the forum, but also some Facebook groups (although I try not to use FB often) and Discord.
Very glad your second bout of experiences with EA has been more positive! And sorry to hear that your earlier experiences were negative/āabrasive. Iād be interested to hear more about that, though that also feels like the sort of thing that might be personal or hard to capture in writing. But if you do feel comfortable sharing, Iād be interested :)
Additionally/āalternatively, Iād be interested in whether you have any thoughts on more general trends that could be tweaked, or general approaches that could be adopted, to avoid EA pushing people away like it did the first time you engaged. (Even if those thoughts are very tentative, they could perhaps be pooled with other tentative thoughts to form a clearer picture of what the community could do better.)
The main thing that originally drove me away from the movement was people being dismissive toward causes that the EA movement doesnāt focus on. At the time, I believed that conventional causes like climate change and international human rights advocacy (e.g. Amnesty International) are worth working on, and I wanted to know more about how they stack up against EAās focus areas. I heard comments like (paraphrased below):
In response to my suggestion that an EA student group partner with advocacy orgs at the university: āWe could, but a lot of them are probably not effective.ā
In response to my complaint that EA doesnāt focus enough on climate change: āYou have to prioritize among the global catastrophic risks. Climate change is the least of them all.ā (I think they meant to say āleast neglectedā, but just saying āleastā made it sound like they were saying climate change isnāt important.)
Thanks for sharing :)
Do you think you wouldnāt have found it as negative/āabrasive if the people still basically argued against a focus on those causes or an engagement with other advocacy orgs or the like, but did so in a way that felt less like a quick, pre-loaded answer, and more like they:
were really explaining their reasoning
were open to seeing if you had new arguments for your position
were just questioning neglectedness/ātractability, rather than importance
I ask because I think thereāll be a near-inevitable tension at times between being welcoming to peopleās current cause prioritisation views and staying focused on what does seem most worth prioritising.[1] So perhaps the ideal would be a bit more genuine open-mindedness to alternative views, but mainly a more welcoming and less dismissive-seeming way of explaining āourā views. Iād hope that that would be sufficient to avoid seeming arrogant or abrasive or driving people away, but I donāt know.
(Something else may instead be the ideal. This could include spending more time helping people think about the most effective approaches to causes that donāt actually seem to be worth prioritising. But I suspect that thatās not ideal in many cases.)
[1] Iām not sure this tension is strong for climate change, as I do think there are decent arguments for prioritising (neglected aspects of) climate change (e.g., nuclear power, research into low-probability extreme risks). But I think this tension probably exists for human rights advocacy and various other issues many people care about.
Yeah. I agree that the tension exists. Cause prioritization is one of the core ideas of EA, so itās important for us to emphasize that, but delicately so that we donāt alienate others. Personally, I would use I-statements, such as āI care about <issue 1> too, but Iāve chosen to focus on <issue 2> instead because itās much more neglected,ā instead of you-statements that might put the listener on the defensive.
That makes sense to me.
It also reminds me of the ideaāwhich Iāve either heard before or said beforeāof talking about taking the Giving What We Can pledge by telling the story of what led one to take it, rather than as an argument for why one should take it. A good thing about that is that you can still present the arguments for taking it, as they probably played a role in the story, and if other arguments played a role in other peopleās stories you can talk about that too. But it probably feels less pushy or preachy that way, compared to framing it more explicitly as a set of arguments.
(These two pages may also be relevant: 1, 2.)
I also think asking people questions about why they hold a view you think is wrong that suggestively indicate why you think itās wrong can be a good approach (e.g. āBut donāt you think...?ā).