My Lament to EA
Latest edit: I unpublished this for a while, but it was originally published May 4 (I didn’t realize republishing it would change the date.) again, I’m thankful to everyone.
Edit: so grateful and positively overwhelmed with most of the responses and support! Also, made a few edits in the article since posting.
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I am dealing with repetitive strain injury and don’t foresee being able to really respond to many comments extensively (I’m surprised with myself that I wrote all of this without twitching forearms lol!)
I’m a little hesitant to post this, but I thought I should be vulnerable. Honestly, I’m relieved that I finally get to share my voice. I know some people may want me to discuss this privately – but that might not be helpful to me, as I know (by personal and indirect experience) that some community issues in EA have been tried to be silenced by the very people who were meant to help. And to be honest, the fear of criticizing EA (despite people echoing calls for criticism!) is something I have disliked about EA – I’ve been behind the scenes enough to know that despite being well-intentioned, criticizing EA (especially openly) can privately get you excluded from opportunities and circles. This is an internal battle I’ve had with EA for a while (years). Still, I thought by sharing my experiences, I could add to the ongoing discourse in the community. I hope you can be gentle with me.
Appreciation and disillusionment
I want to start by saying I have many lovely friends and colleagues in the movement whom I deeply respect. You know who you are. :) My thoughts here are not generalized to the whole movement itself—just some problems I feel most have failed to recognize enough, stemming from specific experiences. I think more effort should be made to address these issues, or at least to consider them as the movement is built.
I joined EA in university (five years ago), thrilled to see an actual movement work on problems I thought were important in a way that I thought was important. I dove in, thinking I finally found the group of people I so wanted to find since grade school – a bunch of cool, intelligent, kind, altruistic nerds and geeks! And for a while, it was good. I’m happy thinking I made an impact over the past few years and learned so much about myself and how to be more mature and intelligent. I also have a lot of gratitude for this movement for teaching me so much and for shaping who I am today.
However, throughout the years, I became more disillusioned and saddened due to systemic issues within the movement – how it was structured in a way that allowed for a lot of negative things to happen, despite how much people really brainstormed and tried for it not to. I’ve experienced many degrading things I wish on no one directly because of EA. (Some of these experiences I mainly wish to keep private out of respect for some.)
Despite my efforts to enter the community and work hard, I burned out, physically, professionally, and personally. And it’s taken such a toll on me that for a while I did not fully recognize who I was anymore. I definitely think a lot of me was consumed by hurt and negativity, and I’m working on that. I’ve actually distanced myself from my local group for the longest time because I felt a lot of toxicity, feeling exploited, out of place, and even pressured to fit some kinda mold. People there have spread untrue things about me (and didn’t do anything when I approached CH), made me feel horrible about who I was as a person, and I (personally) sometimes disagreed with a lot of how they went about their work (though this is more an additional thing; I know I didn’t always have to agree of course). I sometimes felt like a case study of their “impact” even if I felt I was achieving things not because of them. (Edit: I hold a lot of good feelings for the current core team)
So, while I’ve had many great, eye-opening experiences and have made many amazing friends through EA, I don’t think my positive feelings are enough anymore for me to fully stay in it for a while. Instead, I will focus on my specific cause area and research field. (I acknowledge it might tie into EA sometimes and I accept that). This might even be good for me since I can fully focus on what I care about; my friends are still my friends, and my main support system has been out of EA, which has been crucial I think to staying sane.
All of this has not been an easy realization, nor one reached hastily, but after considerable reflection on the negative impacts these issues have had on my well-being. The following are non-exhaustive. If you’re hurt and saddened by this post for any reason, either you relate to it, or you’re a bit annoyed I had to post something like this (I get the feeling of wishing open criticism like this is more muted — I too have been worried about how much EA faced and didn’t want “team anti-EA” to score a point), I extend some kind of apology to you. If this helps you because you have been feeling somewhat similarly but thought you were alone, I am glad. This is not a eulogy or a rant, rather a lament to EA.
Specific challenges
When it has been uncomfortable for diversity and inclusion
Thankfully, I’ve never really experienced that many problems as a woman of color in EA. I’m grateful to those from other cultures who’ve welcomed me with open arms (even if it was easy for me to be intimidated by them). So while I’ve generally felt supported, there have been moments highlighting a discomforting lack of diversity and inclusion. Some of these include being the only girl in a room full of (mostly white) men discussing white political problems (I remember feeling so out of place and stupid), hearing about (and agreeing with) the discomfort non-Western people have with the audacity or domineering nature of some Western people, and our despondency on solving this, or feeling a divide between Western/non-Western people in groups I’ve participated in. Other recurrent, seemingly hard-to-solve problems may be limited job opportunities, slim pickings on job boards, and visa problems, which could foster disheartenment or unhealthy competition among peers in select groups.
When it primarily became about prestige or funding
When I did work on promoting EA, advice came around that it should look prestigious – this helped people want to get in. While this might have positively worked, sometimes, the way the environment was set led to some people who seemed hyper-focused on prestige (I have no strong opinions on whether that should be deemed good or bad; it probably can be both – good when these people still produce lots of good results, bad when that principle can underlie bad intentions or questionable motives, and hence lead to bad outputs or poor results). Why this might have been negative to me, is when EA became the go-to spot for opportunists, which may have led to select people aimlessly jumping from opportunity to opportunity. (Maybe this is not too bad, but if unchecked, I think it can lead to negative consequences or suboptimal efforts. It can also lead to wishy-washy people — once, a person seemed to join my uni group and give it their all but then just ghosted, and they admitted it was because they were excited with the position and how EA looked. This led to some crisis mode. Stuff like this morally challenged me.)
This type of mindset can cross-apply into funding as well. When funding was widespread prior to the FTX incident, I met people who were hyper-focused on funding that seemed to make learning about object-level knowledge or fundamental principles become irrelevant, and this, to me, led to ill-reasoned decision-making and miserly actions when the funding dried up. I get that some people are funding-focused because they need that more than others might. People have blamed me for this criticism before, because it was me not acknowledging my privilege; I was lucky to only care about the issues and focus less on the funding. I understand that. But it really morally challenged me when I almost saw so much greed and free-spending in EA, and yeah, miserly choices, in my opinion. Once, a community builder was asked the question, “What do you think about longtermist causes getting more funding these days?” and answered, “We go to where there is funding.” This was problematic to me because their choices did not seem deliberate, and their reasoning flawed — it didn’t matter if their group could make more impact on XYZ, it didn’t matter if longtermism was important or not, what mattered was it had funding; this way of thinking was very characteristic I think to their character, and when the funding decreased due to the FTX incident, I saw a lot of disillusionment and even bitterness among them and some people, causing a lot of ruckus in their local community.
Another incident that profoundly affected me was when I observed a decision by CEA to prioritize Ivy League and top universities (the specific term they used escapes me now) a few years ago. When I saw the post my heart actually dropped – I knew they made some effort to look after the non-top-unis (efforts of which I actually tried to help in) but I definitely felt less “worthy” to be in EA, despite knowing my own intelligence and capabilities. I think the CBs at the time just had this “this is the greater responsibility so even if this clearly de-prioritizes non-top-unis it is for the greater good” mindset. Before this, I refused to believe EA was elitist; I defended the movement from this criticism, and at that time, I respected their decision and reasoning, but seeing that did bum me out quite a lot – because it felt to me, that in order to make that kind of impact in EA, you had to be from the U.S., UK, or a top uni. I actually met people who told me that if I wanted to work on biosecurity, I should probably really only focus on the science superpowers. This was reinforced by 80K at one point. (Thankfully I think now that advice is being updated, but that definitely made career planning harder for me back then!) I also felt that if I didn’t have the same XYZ traits as the typical EA then I’d never fit in fully or be prioritized (I was thankful for people who made non-EA traits louder and more welcoming).
Edit: it surprises me that this is the main discussion in the comments. I want to reiterate my statement that I understood why they went about this decision but that it didn’t make me feel good. While some people can let their emotions flow with logical reasoning, it’s not that easy to do.
When professional <> social dynamics were unhealthy
This has been talked about a lot the past couple of years and has been an underlying facet of a lot of negative experiences people may have due to EA. I personally have experienced a lot of trauma due to these unhealthy dynamics, which led to personal grievances impacting professional interactions, making it difficult to navigate the community space comfortably for a long time. (Edit: I continue waking up with a racing heartbeat after nightmares due to what happened to me personally in EA.)
The professional <> personal line is extremely blurred in EA – it’s easy for everyone to be a friend and simultaneously, a colleague, potential collaborator, and boss. While that might be fun and welcoming sometimes, it also can lead to a very dense and potentially toxic/unhealthy network to be in. For instance, avoiding individuals who have caused you harm within the movement can be nearly impossible. What if you could never escape people who hurt you in the movement? People who have made you extremely uncomfortable (knowingly/unknowingly)? What if you have to be in the same office space, conference, workshop, retreat, or house? In life, you might more easily ignore these people, but when it’s almost everywhere and part of your profession, it can be very anxiety-inducing. I had a panic attack once because I saw a specific person in a workshop in an EAG and I had to eject myself right away. (Edit: I’ve actually stopped myself from pursuing opportunities that otherwise would have been good for me/I was a good fit for, because of factors like this)
Julia Wise’s post, “Power Dynamics Between People in EA,” was extremely important to me when it came out. I hope this discussion can be expanded and taken seriously within EA. A particular discussion I wish to be more expanded or valued in EA is how some strong cultural behaviors (despite some healthy mitigations some individuals have tried to set up) of the people in the movement may actually be extremely negatively pressuring to some (e.g., polyamory, the ability to be colleagues with an ex-partner) because they may be the standard in some way for the “bigwigs” or are a factor to being welcomed in the community. For example, someone who might heavily respect a poly or monogamish person might expect their partner to be as okay with it. (Just caveating this is an example. Also, I respect the poly community; I appreciate them. I just know the culture/relationship style doesn’t work for me, and it caused me a lot of trauma to have felt pressure in some kinda way here – there have been some instances of unintentional pressure)
A discussion definitely must be had about how to keep the whole plethora of cultures/upbringings respected and not realize how culture-shocking maintaining the majority can be for some. I also think sometimes there’s a pressure to be that stereotypical EA. I definitely felt so bad for so long that I wasn’t that person. Most people know who this type of person is. I think I fit a large part of the mold but not really — and the “not really” part might have been detrimental to my self-esteem. I think it’s extremely hard to be a “perfect EA” when people come from such different upbringings and when the world has so many systemic issues, and yet there still is a sense of isolation if you are a little different. Some CBs might call this a “natural filtering mechanism” and let it be (“Ah, they don’t like EA so much, so whatever, let them! Helps us find who are higher fidelity!”), but I still think it needs more thought.
When empathy is deprioritized, and logic/consequentialism/utilitarianism becomes toxic
Probably what I dislike the most about EA is the lack of empathy, the lack of effort in strengthening empathy, and the lack of value people have for empathy in favor of logic or great intellectual stimulation. How this can look to me is flawed foundational principles influencing actions that lead to net negativity in the long run (I am of the opinion that this is akin to some of SBF’s past actions). I think most EAs would like to believe this is not the case with them, but their actions have spoken to me otherwise. I strongly believe in the importance of empathy. A supposed fundamental principle in EA is radical empathy – a concerted effort to understand and share the feelings of another (person/group/etc.). However, my time in EA showcased to me that this is potentially overlooked in the name of consequentialism or logic. (Now, I am not mutually excluding empathy and logic. Holden Karnofsky talked about how logical reasoning can lead to morally sound conclusions. I do agree that logic can help one recognize the logical consequences of their actions, which can lead to greater empathy). However, my impression of some people in the movement is that they’re there simply because they’re fascinated by the numbers or intellectual stimulation, and due to this, can lack (what I believe are) other fundamental values to pursue altruism in a beneficial, kind way. While effective decision-making often involves a measure of dispassionate analysis, losing sight of the empathetic core that inspires our work risks alienating those we aim to help and those within our community.
Something Peter Singer wrote in TLYCS that stuck with me was along the lines of boasting about donating – if it leads to more donations from others, then it can be considered a good thing. This is the type of consequentialism I agree with. What I’m trying to point out is that maybe the potential that there are people who are in the movement for only the reasons listed above (or even as I said earlier, prestige or funding) may not so much be a bad thing, especially if it means they are potential geniuses who think about world problems on a grand scale. But if they lack being in touch with the problems as they navigate through scope insensitivity or are what I believe is extremely utilitarian, they may:
Ignore minority rights if it results in greater overall happiness for the majority – some people might not think this is a problem. But as someone from the Global South, of course I care about this. When I think of the world 10,000 years from now, I hope not only for a world that ideally flourishes and exists but also has a balanced set of people and diverse representation on the decision-making table. If the world existed in 10,000 years, ideally, the diversity problems we’re experiencing now won’t continue to exist.
Manipulate happiness to achieve desired outcomes – potentially abusing their power and lying if it means people follow what they want. A behavior we’ve heard was done by many leading figures of the moment.
End up with unintended consequences – e.g., prioritizing short-term gains over long-term sustainability – what I think happened with the FTX incident. Despite the EA movement gaining lots of success for a while, these led to much damage and crises.
To me, these are reasons why maximization becomes problematic, shifting from a focus on the number of lives saved to a more selfish pursuit veiled as altruism. In my view, this mindset has contributed to the setbacks the movement has faced in recent years. It definitely became a much worse problem for me when people defended hurtful, harmful, possibly net-negative actions and opinions from people in the guise of impact. (“Hey, X is fine despite X’s horrible comments and actions because X produced Y and can make Z, etc.!”) It’s disheartening to me when EAs seem to only prioritize logic and outputs over people’s well-being, even compromising lives or silencing feelings for their goals.
Parting ways for now
I care deeply about what EA ideally stands for, but I’ve chosen to distance myself and focus on its values outside the movement/community. (I.e., I now identify as “EA-adjacent.” I may still engage in the EA Forum specifically for work-related things! I have an upcoming post, actually lol). I guess I’m just distancing and focusing more on the work than the community. I still hope to make an impact, lead with empathy, and heal from broken ideals. Thank you to everyone who has been a part of my journey. The best effective altruists I know are deeply empathetic and willing to set healthy boundaries for their personal lives as well. I hope to encourage people to do this. I continue to be inspired by these people and wish them the best. I once read helpful advice from Will MacAskill’s TIME article I think, to try not to make your whole life EA — once your work, friends, support system, and partner for example are all EA, it has the potential to come crashing down in one fell swoop. This is a horrible feeling.
I hope one day, if it’s right, I can enter the EA community again and feel welcome, but if not, that’s alright. I still feel extremely excited to make an impact. I guess ultimately I think I’ve learned and come to terms with the fact that EA is not for everyone, even if you’re one to believe in what the movement stands for, what https://effectivealtruism.com/ says on its front page. And I guess that’s okay. I hope the movement can make room for that.
I look forward to seeing how EA grows and hope to one day reengage with the community under better circumstances. Thanks for reading!
(Edit:) To clarify: I still see myself engaging specifically with content and work, but not the community for a long while. I still have a lot of colleagues and friends in EA, and my interest in a lot of the goings-on remains (why henceforth I still see myself engaging with forum content.)
I think your current outlook should be the default for people who engage on the forum or agree with the homepage of effectivealtruism.com. I’m glad you got there and that you feel (relatively) comfortable about it. I’m sorry that the process of getting there was so trying. It shouldn’t be.
It sounds like the tryingness came from a social expectation to identify as capital ‘E’ capital ‘A’ upon finding resonance with the basic ideas and that identifying that way implied an obligation to support and defend every other EA person and project.
I wish EA weren’t a question of identity, but behavior. Which actions are you choosing to take and why? Your reasons can draw on many perspectives at once and none needs to dominate. Even the question of “should I do meta EA work/advocacy?” can be taken this way and I think something like it is what’s at stake in the “should I identify as EA?” question.
I personally do meta work and feel free to criticize particular EA-identifying people and organizations. I also feel free to quit this work all together and be quieter about cause-spanning features of EA. If I quit and got quieter, I’d feel like that’s just another specific thing I did, rather than some identity line in the sand I’ve crossed. Maybe it’s because my boss sucked; maybe it’s because I felt compelled to focus on tax policy instead of GCRs, but it wouldn’t be because of my general feelings of worthiness or acceptance by the EA monolith.
A lot of what I’m saying is couched in the language of personal responsibility on your part in what kinds of identity questions you ask yourself, but I want to be clear that the salience of the identity question is also socially created by people asking questions in the direction of fidelity to ideas and their logical limits as a sort of status test, e.g. which utilitarian bullets you will or won’t bite. As much as we shouldn’t preoccupy ourselves with such questions, we shouldn’t preoccupy others with them either.
Hey
I am really sorry to hear about all of these negative experiences. I feel lucky to have gotten to work with you over the years and seen the positive impact you have had on others in the community and the exciting work you have moved into. I think the community will be losing a really lovely person. I admire both your courage in posting this and that you are prioritizing your well-being right now.
I was sad to hear that our team contributed to your negative experiences though I definitely understand. When I first was introduced to the idea of focusing on top universities, I also felt quite uncomfortable with the implications. I knew so many brilliant people not from those top universities and knew many systemic disadvantages prevent people from attending them.
That being said, I do still endorse this prioritization (though not an exclusive one!). In case it’s useful context, for you or others reading this post, I’ve written some reasons why I think this.
When piloting new forms of support or being limited in the number of universities a small team can give higher touch support to, hard decisions have to be made about which universities get that support.
I believe most of the people who go on to have incredibly impactful careers will come from outside those top universities. That is part of why we set up UGAP—to help provide support and opportunities to promising individuals and groups around the world who might not have the same access and advantages.
However, top universities are the places with the highest concentrations of people who ultimately have a very large influence on the world. Partially that is because of the screening mechanisms of the university and but partially it is because of the built-in benefits and unfair advantages that students receive while they attend those universities. Given that this is the reality we’re working with, I believe we should do our best to leverage the existing system and opportunities at these universities to help get more people into high-impact careers. That often means focusing resources on those universities even though that can be demotivating to others.
Again, just wanted to note that I appreciate you sharing this post and am sorry to hear about your experience. I am wishing you the best.
I think this as a piece of reasoning represents a major problem in the perceptions of EA. While it might be factually true, there are two problems with relying on it:
It means surrendering ourselves to this existing state as opposed to trying to change it and create a more equal world.
It means the goal of EA community building is regarded as a funnel trying to get individuals into existing positions determined by the system already in place. There is an alternative: building not a pool of individuals, each of which is separately regarded as a marginal talent contribution—but rather a diverse community that could think more robustly about how to change the world for better, and not be mostly confined to rich, white, technological, western perspectives. IMO this alternative is much more important than the funnel.
On the one hand, I am generally sympathetic to the broader concern.
On the other hand, a suggestion that EA should attempt to change certain deep-rooted truths about the way the world works to “create a more equal world” in addition to its object-level workloads wouldn’t score well with me. As a general matter, the development of non-elite American college students is not neglected or cost-effective, so it is not a viable object-level initiative. It’s only viable as a meta project to the extent that it indirectly contributes to object-level success.
I don’t think focusing CEA resources on elite universities is inherently inconsistent with your second point. Maybe I’m showing my age, but back when I was an undergraduate, most student organizations had access to funding through student government, but little in the way of external subsidy or support. Except for modest sums given to newspaper editors and such, students didn’t get paid for leadership. When trips/retreats were subsidized, the subsidies were partial and the trips were generally within a few hours’ driving distance and on a modest budget. In most cases, there were no external organizations helping student leadership out. (I recognize that this setup makes it more difficult for student of modest means. That was my experience as well—my family was low-income enough that even the school concluded my parents could contribute almost nothing to educational expenses.)
Although there was a shift toward concentrating resources on top universities, it seems from a glance at the UGAP program that the resources that are out there for non-top university EA groups still exceed what student groups generally get in the broader world. To be clear, I’m sure the pulling back of support for non-top university groups was difficult for their organizers who had previously received more support, and that the existence of more supported groups at top universities is discouraging for organizers elsewhere. But the existence of more recruiting-focused programs at top universities does not somehow makes EA inaccessible everywhere else. Thus, it is not inconsistent in my view with working toward “a diverse community that could think more robustly about how to change the world for better.”
A few years ago, I started an EA university group in Chile, got funding and support through UGAP, then got advising through 80k and continued mentoring through OSP. This year, I got hired at CEA’s Groups team.
It’s difficult to trace counterfactual impact, but I suspect this wouldn’t have been possible if UGAP hadn’t helped me get a group started, or if CEA wasn’t able to recognize good talent outside top universities.
I’m biased now, but I think people miss how most of our team’s efforts go to scalable support, which doesn’t necessarily target top universities (and includes universities like mine). Selecting top universities is a good heuristic for getting high-quality group members, but you also get diminishing returns fast because you’re bottlenecked by having great organizers at these universities who are in need of support. This, alongside the fact that there is such a thing as great groups outside of top universities, is why we still spend a lot of time, resources, and money on other universities worldwide.
I’m on the one hand happy to hear that the groups team isn’t as elite-focused as I had thought; on the other hand, I’m still troubled by the margin-based reasoning.
Could you clarify what you mean by margin-based reasoning in this context?
Treating each new person as a separate investment and trying to optimize for their marginal utility for EA, instead of looking at the aggregate effect on the movement of all the community building efforts.
Specifically in your comment, justifying diversifying investment in groups by saying “high quality group members” are the goal but top universities have bottlenecks which can’t be easily solved by just pouring more money into them—instead of arguing that it’s better to have a new group in Chile than a new group in Harvard, even if hypothetically people there were less qualified for existing EA jobs.
Is the portion of efforts that currently do not go to top universities quantifiable, or at least subject to reasonable estimation? I would guess that people who were adversely affected by changes would be more vocal, which could lead to others overestimating the magnitude of those changes on non-top university support.
I love this point and expect I’ll want to link to it in the future; can I suggest putting it on your shortform to make it more accessible?
Thanks, I’ve never used shortform but I’ll try tomorrow
Hi Jessica! I also was happy to work with you. Thanks for commenting. I want to reiterate that I understood this decision and why it was done, but I can’t say it made me feel good (esp when it happened. Maybe one good way to describe it was it felt CEA had favorite kids). And I’ve gotten lots of private messages after this post voicing out similar sad feelings. As someone who does believe in effective decision-making and impartiality in this, I really just understood and accepted it.
I think in my post I was trying to voice out my feelings of sadness I’ve held in, of different aspects of EA and EA CB. Some people can easily make their emotions in tune with their rationally held beliefs. I’m not exactly like that — so despite understanding why CEA did it, it still made me sad about who I was at that period of time. It didn’t mean I couldn’t get into an Ivy League in the future, but it did mean I wasn’t an Ivy League then (not that I hadn’t thought about it, many factors just made it so that college had to be where I was based in), and that automatically made an invisible barrier between me and my Ivy League colleagues.
I agree with some sentiments of others in this comment section — that it plays to the system, and I guess that’s somewhat the fastest most effective way sometimes. But it does make me sad because it makes me feel that so many people in this theoretical future are bound to the status quo.
I am partially sad that a lot of people seem to be missing the point. It kinda proves the point I was trying to make
Thanks for sharing this post again. Your feelings here are totally valid and I know others share them, as you say. You make great points about feeling neglected and reinforcing privileges.
I did my undergrad at McMaster University in Canada. A good school, but not an elite one (just below the University of Birmingham, and above the University of Warwick, according to THE rankings). Our most famous alumnus is known for starring as Barf the anthropomorphic dog in Spaceballs.
Sometimes I do feel jealous of people who went to fancy schools. But I also often feel kind of proud that I’m doing good work and can compete with fancy school colleagues and peers, despite not having the advantage of a shiny school on my CV. Curious if you or others relate to that at all.
For what it’s worth, I sympathise with the need to make some hard prioritisation decisions—that’s what EA is about, after all. Nonetheless, it seems like the choice to focus on top universities has been an insufficiently examined heuristic. After all, the following claim...
… is definitely false unless the only categorisation we’re doing of people is ‘the university they go to’. We can subdivide people into any categories we have data on, and while ‘university’ provides a convenient starting point for a young impact-focused organisation, it seems like a now-maturing impact-focused organisation should aspire to do better.
For a simple example, staying focused on universities, most university departments receive their own individual rankings, which are also publicly available (I think the final score for the university is basically some weighted average of these, possibly with some extra factors thrown in).
I’m partially motivated to write this comment because I know of someone who opted to go to the university with the better department for their subject, and has recently found out that, by opting to go to the university with the lower overall ranking, they’re formally downgraded by both immigration departments and EA orgs.
So it seems like EA orgs could do better simply by running a one-off project that pooled departmental rankings and prioritising based on that. It would probably be a reasonably substantial (but low skill) one-off cost with a slight ongoing maintenance cost, but if ‘finding the best future talent’ is so important to EA orgs, it seems worth putting some ongoing effort into doing it better. [ETA—apparently there are some premade rankings that do this!]
This is only one trivial suggestion—I suspect there are many more sources of public data that seem like they could be taken into account to make a fairer and (which IMO is equivalent) more accurate prioritisation system. Since as the OP points out, selecting for the top 100 universities is a form of strong de facto prejudice against people from countries that don’t host one, it might be also worth adding some multiplier to people at the top departments in their country—and so on. There might be quantifiable considerations that have nothing to do with university choice.
Having said that, if CEA or any other org does do something like this, I hope they’ll
a) have the courage to make unpopular weighting decisions when the data clearly justifies them and
b) do it publicly, open sourcing their weighted model, so that anyone interested can see that the data does clearly justify it—hopefully avoiding another PELTIVgate.
I’m curious which direction the disagree voters are disagreeing—are they expressing the view that quantifying people like this at all is bad, or that if you’re going to do it, this is a more effective way?
Perhaps that it doesn’t seem to clearly relate to the context of Jessica’s comment, which I understand to be about prioritizing support for EA student groups at “top” universities. That decision seemingly has to be made on a university level, and—unless the university is particularly strong in a priority area—overall rating is probably the best measure.
Whether field-specific rating is a better measure in other contexts, and whether it is reasonably practical to use it in those contexts, is likely a case-by-case determination. I’d also note that in US undergraduate programs, admission is generally to the university as a whole allowing the student to select any major. I suspect your position is stronger where admission is to a specific program/department and thus the specific program’s reputation is relevant to the applicant characteristics needed to get in.
I have never done community building and am probably ignorant of many ongoing initiatives so maybe I am stating the obvious below.
I am just wondering about mid-career professionals: Could one not easily abandon the focus on elite universities for this group? I think I have seen calls for getting more mid-career professionals into EA (@Letian Wang mentions this in another comment on this post), and I think at a mid-career point people have sufficient track record in their discipline/industry that one can almost completely disregard their education. In my experience, some of the most talented people I have worked with were people who either never considered moving to the UK/US to attend elite universities, or who just did not take university too seriously but later found ways to make significant contributions in their field. Maybe this is more true outside of research roles, as researchers still seem to have a harder time “decoupling” from their undergrad.
The focus on top universities is to access the people there. Mid-career people (outside of researchers) are no longer at university, so they are not primarily accessed through university groups. I don’t think anyone is applying a harsh undergrad filter to people with strong track records in their field (at least, I’d expect most EAs to be less credentialist that is the norm for e.g. government hiring), and I’m confused why you would think this was the case.
That makes sense. I guess it’s then not really that EA is elitist, but the part of EA that focuses on students.
I think ‘elitism’ is not a helpful frame for understanding things here.
It’s not that it is elitist in the sense that they value top university students more, it’s elitist in that they want people who are more likely to go on to have outsized influence/money to give more of that away to others.
It doesn’t make as much sense to ask poorer students to give away more of their income, or shift their career away from one that maximises their own and their families welfare for the benefit of others.
I think it’s elitist (and inaccurate) to assume that only attendees of a small number of elite universities will have the future funds to give away.
And ultimately it’s not a straight decision between whether to fund a student group at Oxford or one at Oxford Brookes, it’s a decision whether to pay student society leaders at a small number of target universities so much they feel uncomfortable about it and fund expensive retreats for them, or spreading movement building budget more widely to support outreach in more places (that’s not to suggest there aren’t other challenges to setting up more student groups in places that don’t have an existing community). I can see the argument that focusing resources on a handful of courses at a handful of elite universities makes sense for recruitment into a small number of highly specialised positions, but not for maximising future fundraising capacity.
Choosing which universities to focus on and how you run a uni group are two different questions.
Why do you think that it’s inaccurate that people at top universities are more likely to go on to have outsized influence?
I think it’s inaccurate that only people at top universities are likely to have outsized influence, or to dismiss everyone else as “poorer students” that it “doesn’t make as much sense” to encourage to engage in altruistic activity. The university Sorting Hat really isn’t that good.
And more specifically from a movement building perspective it usually makes sense to prioritise reaching more people than to ensure a small group of [already advantaged] people have access to particularly lavish allowances. Students at elite universities’ ability to achieve outsized impact later in life probably isn’t particularly closely linked to the size of the stipend the current organizer of their well-established EA group is able to claim from central funding bodies, whereas actually having some outreach at other universities is going to have more impact, even if fewer of those students’ impact will be outsized and the median earn to give amounts might be a little lower.
Edit: not really sure what’s so controversial here, though I’ve amended the quote just in case it’s because my representation of DavidNash’s original comment was considered uncharitable.
I agree that it’s inaccurate to say that it’s only people at top universities who are likely to have outsized influence, but that’s not what I said.
Maybe you’re combining the idea that there is too much spending on top universities with the idea that the spending could be spread out amongst more of them rather than spent on non university movement building.
For movement building strategy, it will depend on whether you think a mass movement achieves your goals better than specific fields. For example in animal welfare, it makes sense for GFI to target entrepreneurs and tissue engineers whereas vegan advocacy is aimed more at students and a wider audience.
I believe the connection (which might or might not directly pick up on something you are defending?) is that if you go beyond merely starting your student community building with top universities first as a heuristic, and you further concentrate spending on the top universities to extreme degrees, you are in fact assuming a very strong distinction between those universities. David T has described the distinction in an approximate way as saying there are ‘only’ influential/high-earning-potential people at top universities.
The assumption of a strong distinction can be read from how the decision to concentrate implies it takes a huge amount of marginal funding before the diminishing returns of giving the next dollar to top unis is considered less valuable than giving a first dollar to a mid-range uni.
To defend large disparities between funding of different universities, it’s not enough to say ‘well you have to draw the line somewhere as you can only fund so many universities’; you need to further justify the choice to treat top universities as being in another class.
And arguably that’s an elitist worldview which sees a large difference between top unis and the rest — it’s more elitist if it talks about large talent gaps, implying top unis are able to filter students on intelligence very well; and it’s less elitist if it talks only about ‘people who will go on to be influential’, putting the blame of elitism on the society that rewards elite resumes.
That’s how I relate what David T has been saying, to what you said, DavidNash.
I agree that movement building strategy may vary in specific fields and with your specific examples (and hinted as much about recruitment in my first post!) so I don’t think our differences are irreconcilable!
But your original post conveyed—perhaps more strongly than you intended—the sentiment that it didn’t make much sense to try to persuade people [who in most cases don’t even hear about EA] outside a small number of elite universities to pledge or do direct work [versus the CEA tweaking priorities to direct even more funding to generally already well-established and well-funded student orgs]. If the context was that for every student at $randomuni that was asked to pledge, someone at Oxford never heard about EA, maybe there would be some truth that it made less sense to fund outreach ti them, but I don’t think that represents the reality at all. If anything, the OP and various others have suggested that the funding available in some circumstances is even sufficient to have a negative impact on incentives; on the other hand there’s probably a high return to reaching people who would otherwise not have even heard of EA taking Giving Pledges or contemplating the many areas of direct work that don’t need elite academic credentials.
As for taking the opposite stance and actively trying to spread funding to more universities or workplaces, I recognise there are many other challenges to incubating organizations without the people and institutions already in place and don’t claim to have a solution, but I suspect it would be net positive, and generally more net positive than lowering the funding bar for groups already best positioned to access EA resources. But tbh my comment was less making a particular case for funding and more pushing back on the negative framing of the idea of funding outreach to “poorer students” in a subthread provoked by someone talking about how the original decision was a setback to their attempts to defend the movement against accusations of elitism.
(I also broadly endorse the third David’s interpretation of my argument, FWIW :D)
Thank you for writing this post, I know how stressful writing something like this can be and I hope you give yourself a break!
I especially agree with your points about the lack of empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and care about how other people are hurt or upset by your actions, no matter their background. This is an important part of moral reasoning, and is completely compatible with logical reasoning. One should not casually ignore harms in favour of utilitarian pursuits, that’s how we got SBF (and like, stalinism). And if you do understand the harms, and realize that you have to do the action anyway, you should at least display to the harmed parties that you understand why they are upset.
The OP was willing to write up their experience and explain why they left, but I wonder how many more people are leaving, fed up, in silence, not wanting to risk any backlash? How many only went to a few meetings but never went further because they sensed a toxic atmosphere? The costs of this kind of atmosphere are often hidden from view.
Hey, super appreciate this! I agree. I’ve gotten sooo many echoes of solidarity from others (people in and people who have left EA) but they were all private, and I understand why
Like others, I just want to say I’m so sorry that you had this experience. It isn’t one I recognise from my own journey with EA, but this doesn’t invalidate what you went through and I’m glad you’re moving in a direction that works for you as a person and your values. You are valuable, your life and perspective is valuable, and I wish all you all the best in your future journey.
Indirectly, I’m going to second @Mjreard below—I think EA should be seen as beyond a core set of people and institutions. If you are still deeply driven by the ideals EA was inspired by, and are putting that into action outside of “the movement”, then to me you are still “EA” rather than “EA Adjacent”.[1] EA is a set of ideas, not a set of people or organisations, and I will stand by this point.
Regardless, I wish you all the best, and that if you want to re-engage you do so on your terms.
though ofc you can identify however you like
I appreciate that! I definitely believe I am EA in ideals but I just felt immediate relief identifying as EA adjacent because it made me feel more solid in the ideals without having to interact so deeply with the community
Thanks for taking the time to write this and be vulnerable despite your concerns (and the RSI!).
I definitely resonate with some of what you’ve written, and share some of your frustrations. I might expand my thoughts here or via DM in future if you’d be interested, but in the meantime, I just wanted to say that I’m really sorry it’s been a tough time.
I am glad to hear that you’ve had some good experiences along with the difficult ones (though this mixture of appreciation for and frustration with the EA community can be quite the emotional rollercoaster). I’m also glad you’re doing what feels right for you.
Thank you for all the work and effort you’ve put in. I (and I know others too) have really enjoyed learning about your projects and I’m excited to see what you work on going forward, even if it’s from a bit more of a distance. It’s been lovely getting to know you a little and my metaphorical door is open if you’d like to chat sometime in future.
[If there are concerns you’d like to talk to the Community Health Team about, you can contact us here.]
Charlotte! So nice to hear from you, you’re definitely one of the loveliest people I’ve met in EA. I’d love to talk about it one day maybe! You’re right that it’s frustrating to have this mix of emotions. I just decided I had too many negative ones to feel I was being productive — after writing this post I’ve been immensely happier and more productive!
Hope you’re well :)
Sorry for this dumb question but what are white political problems? Is this referring to stuff like rural drug overdoses?
I’m sorry to hear about your negative experiences in EA.
Sorry also to hear that—have you tried voice recognition software? It was a game changer for me back in 2000 (and it’s gotten a lot better since then!) - both for RSI and productivity.
I appreciate this! RSI is the bane of my existence HAHA. I do a bit of voice recognition but nothing too complicated. My friends make fun of me now, like I’m Louis Litt with his voice recorder 😆 what software do you use?
(Haven’t done complicated software ’cause one that was good doesn’t run on a Mac and others are just okay? Mac’s works but it’s quite slow)
I use Dragon, and it looks like it does work for Mac. You can trade off speed for accuracy, but I go for accuracy because I usually have enough pauses while I’m dictating that it catches up. You train for a few minutes at the beginning, and if you correct when it makes a mistake, it gets very accurate.
I think your observations about a Western feel to most of EA is important. Being born in a Western country myself I can see that everything from the choice of music on podcasts to perhaps more importantly the philosophers and ideologies referenced is very Western-centric. I think there are many other philosophical traditions and historical communities we can draw inspiration from beyond Europe—it is not like EA is the first attempt at doing the most good in the world (I have some familiarity with Tibetan Buddhism and they have fairly strong opinions on everything from machine consciousness to how to help the most people most effectively). I like how many EA organizations use the concept of Ikigai, for example, but think we can do more. I think it is important both for talent like yourself, but also for engaging effectively on global AI policy, animal welfare in the global south and of course global health and poverty alleviation efforts. I also think there might be lessons worth highlighting on podcasts, in talks etc. from the many current EA-associated organizations interacting with stakeholders across a variety of cultures—given their success it feels like they must have found ways to be culturally sensitive and accommodating non-Western viewpoints. Perhaps we simply just do not highlight this part of EA enough and instead focus on intellectually interesting meta ideas which are a bit more distance from EAs “contact surface” across the globe. Sorry for the rant, I hope this comment might be useful!
So, I am Chinese and have lived in the west for about half of my life, and I think I can contribute a few very personal vantage points.
The Western centric-ness is less about what music the podcast plays or even what intellectual traditions the movement draws its intellectual roots from. It’s more about the personality and social dynamics. I’ll summarise what makes blending into the community challenging for me. And I’ll be very blunt here
While EAs on average has more intellectual humility than the average person, the white and male overrepresented crowd strikes me as argumentative, overly confident, likes talking far more than listening, and listen to respond rather to understand. It makes talking to them exhausting
Given the lack of boundary between personal and professional life in EA, it’s much harder to progress your professional standing if you don’t enjoy the social activities typical of the white EA crowd. Gossips, opportunities and networking happens in these activities. It’s a problem for immigrants in general but much more so when “professional <> personal line is extremely blurred in EA”. It can be as simple as not enjoying hiking / house parties or not knowing what D&D is and not interested in it. Or it can be more controversial ones like not interested in being vegan due to enjoying food from your country of origin.
Thanks that is super helpful and I think also super action-relevant. I can right away myself go to EA events keeping in mind:
To make sure I am listening proportionally (e.g. in a crowd of 4, not talking more than ~25% of the time, allowing time for silence/others to say something)
To make sure I spend some of the time I am talking to ask questions about the non-EA passions of those I am talking to—perhaps they love some activity I always have been curious about/wanting to learn
Thanks a lot for pushing back on my comment—I realize my phrasing above was clumsy/wrong—I should have written something more like “Being born in a Western country myself, the below observations are probably missing the mark but hopefully they can start a conversation to help make more people feel like they belong in EA.”
I’m not pushing back on your comment, nor do I think there’s anything wrong with it! In fact, I’m very appreciative of your effort to making a difference.
It’s just very interesting that what other people think is the problem and what actually impacts me are fundamentally different. I used to not want to believe that personal experience presents a significant barrier to mutual understanding, but being embedded in a crowd so different from myself really changed my mind on that cosmopolitan pipe dream.
The many subtle ways homogenous groups exclude outsiders are not unique to EA, it’s just amplified by the aforementioned unique dynamics and perhaps also higher level of neurodiversity. I’ve yet to see good, systematic solutions to this type of problems other than time and more exposure. I’m also much more concerned about other dimensions of homogeneity, like class, education background, age, or even lack of on the ground, non-EA job experience.
I’ve never affiliated with a university group. I’m sad to hear that at least some university groups seem to be trying to appeal to ambitious prestige-chasers, and I hope it’s not something that the CEA Groups team has applied generally. I wonder if it comes from a short-sighted strategy of trying to catch those who are most likely to end up in powerful positions in the future, which would be in line with the reasons there has been a focus on the most prestigious universities. I call it short-sighted because filling the next generation of your movement with people who are light on values and strong on politics seems like a certain way to kill what’s valuable about EA (such as commitments to altruism and truth-seeking).
I’ll note that I think that choosing to prioritize resources (or support) for top universities doesn’t imply that one thinks that EAs need to be any less altruistic or truth-seeking. One can prioritize groups at top universities while (for example) maintaining the same threshold for what a good organizer or group member looks like. These kinds of strategies might result in less diversity overall, but I don’t think they result in having less altruistic people.
Indeed not. I think that trying to appeal to those who chase prestige selects against truth-seeking and altruism, and I don’t think merely focusing on top unis has that effect. I’m responding to the part of the post about appealing to prestige chasers.
I think prestige has been one strategy in CB but not one wholly applied across CBs, it’s been one I noticed worked a lot in certain groups based on my experience
I just wanted to put it out here that, yes, my ex and I met in EA, and reflecting on our past, I appreciate the moments of growth and laughter we shared. as well as our work together. Though our paths have diverged, I’m grateful for the lessons learned and the memories we created together.
Executive summary: The author expresses appreciation for the EA movement but also disillusionment due to systemic issues, leading them to distance themselves from EA while still focusing on their specific cause area and research field.
Key points:
The author experienced degrading things and burnout due to EA, despite initial positive experiences and impact.
Specific challenges included occasional lack of diversity and inclusion, over-emphasis on prestige and funding, and unhealthy professional-social dynamics.
The author felt pressure to fit a certain EA mold and that empathy was sometimes deprioritized in favor of logic and consequentialism.
Toxic applications of utilitarianism were observed, such as ignoring minority rights, manipulating others, and pursuing short-term gains.
The author has distanced themselves from EA for now to focus on the underlying values in an adjacent way, while hoping the movement grows to be more accommodating.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.
Dear kta,
I just wanted to reach out as EA Philippines’ previous community health focal to say that on behalf of the core team, we are truly sorry about the difficult experiences you had with select people in the community. It saddens us that we couldn’t do more to help when you needed it most and we’ve let you down. We acknowledge that at that time, we could have done better in supporting you and ensuring you felt that your feedback was valued.
Since then, we’ve made significant changes to our community health support. With a new team in place, we’ve been working diligently to improve our processes. Some of the key changes we’ve implemented and plan to implement include:
Enforce our community’s ‘Code of Conduct’ consistently—These updated guidelines will not only cover incidents of bullying, harassment, or misconduct but also provide guidelines for members on how to interact more meaningfully with other community members who may come from different backgrounds or viewpoints. This also includes Conflict of Interest policies for leaders and members. Anyone participating in EA Philippines’ activities will be required to adhere to these guidelines.
Establish better guidelines addressing grievances or concerns—We’ve received grievances and concerns through our community feedback form with a process on how to address them, but we intend to improve this by being more particular about what process to take per type of grievance (e.g., feedback on strategy, a complaint against a community member’s behavior, concern on a core team or board member’s actions or decisions). The EA PH core team will consult with CEA’s Community Health Team and other local groups (i.e., EA NYC) on this for best practices we can adopt to our context.
Expand the community health focal system—At present, a core team member acts as the community health focal. We will explore appointing a community health focal who isn’t part of the core team or the board because we recognize this might be more suitable for some cases, especially if the grievance involves members, the core team, or the board. This is to help promote an impartial contact for any community health concerns. Internally, the core team and board members will also follow guidelines to ensure they remain accountable and perform their duties effectively and ethically.
We understand sharing your experience was tough, and we’re again very sorry for not being able to fully relieve you of the hurt and address your concerns. We’re here to learn and ensure that the same thing doesn’t happen again. We remain committed to making EA Philippines a safe and inclusive space for its community members, where they will be supported during difficult times. We still appreciate your presence and contributions to the community and wish you happiness and fulfillment in your projects and all you do. Our lines are always open if you would like to further engage about these matters or would need our help at any point in the future.
Take care,
Tanya