(1) Does believing in or identifying as EA require having a certain amount of hubris and arrogance?
(2) Is EA more likely to attract arrogant people than more modest people?
I think the answer to (1) is clearly no—you can believe that you should try to work out what the best way to use resources is, without thinking you are necessarily better than other people at doing it—it’s just that other people aren’t thinking about it. My impression is a lot of EAs are like this—they don’t think they’re in a better position to figure out the most effective ways of doing good than others, but given that most other people aren’t thinking about this, they may as well try.
I’m less sure about (2), and it depends what the comparison is—are we asking, “Is the average person who is attracted to EA more likely to be arrogant than the average person who is interested in altruism in a broader sense?”. It seems plausible that of all the people who are interested in altruism, those who are more arrogant are more likely to be drawn to effective altruism than other forms of altruism. But I’m not sure that EAs are on the whole more arrogant than people who promote other altruistic cause areas—in a way, EAs seem less arrogant to me because they are more willing to accept that they might be wrong, and less dogmatic in asserting that their specific cause is the most important one.
There’s a third question which I think is also important: is EA more likely to be perceived as arrogant from the outside than other similar social movements or specific causes? I think here there is a risk—stating that you are trying to figure out the best thing can certainly sound arrogant to someone else (even though, as I said above, it actually seems less arrogant to me than being dogmatic about a specific cause!) So maybe it’s important for us to think about how to present EA in ways that doesn’t come across as arrogant. One idea would be to talk more about ourselves as “aspiring” effective altruists that as simply effective altruists—we’re not trying to claim that we’re better at altruism than everyone else really, but rather that we are trying to figure out what the best way is.
There seem to be two questions here:
(1) Does believing in or identifying as EA require having a certain amount of hubris and arrogance?
(2) Is EA more likely to attract arrogant people than more modest people?
I think the answer to (1) is clearly no—you can believe that you should try to work out what the best way to use resources is, without thinking you are necessarily better than other people at doing it—it’s just that other people aren’t thinking about it. My impression is a lot of EAs are like this—they don’t think they’re in a better position to figure out the most effective ways of doing good than others, but given that most other people aren’t thinking about this, they may as well try.
I’m less sure about (2), and it depends what the comparison is—are we asking, “Is the average person who is attracted to EA more likely to be arrogant than the average person who is interested in altruism in a broader sense?”. It seems plausible that of all the people who are interested in altruism, those who are more arrogant are more likely to be drawn to effective altruism than other forms of altruism. But I’m not sure that EAs are on the whole more arrogant than people who promote other altruistic cause areas—in a way, EAs seem less arrogant to me because they are more willing to accept that they might be wrong, and less dogmatic in asserting that their specific cause is the most important one.
There’s a third question which I think is also important: is EA more likely to be perceived as arrogant from the outside than other similar social movements or specific causes? I think here there is a risk—stating that you are trying to figure out the best thing can certainly sound arrogant to someone else (even though, as I said above, it actually seems less arrogant to me than being dogmatic about a specific cause!) So maybe it’s important for us to think about how to present EA in ways that doesn’t come across as arrogant. One idea would be to talk more about ourselves as “aspiring” effective altruists that as simply effective altruists—we’re not trying to claim that we’re better at altruism than everyone else really, but rather that we are trying to figure out what the best way is.