Does believing in or identifying as an EA involve a fair amount of hubris and arrogance? To be an EA, and make EA-based decisions, you have to essentially believe that you have some insight into the best way to use resources to make the world a better place. The type of question whose answers EA demands are extremely difficult. When EAs think they have all, or even some, of the answers on how to go about EA, how much arrogance does it reflect? Would something like EA attract overly cocky people?
Personally, I believe I know a whole community which collectively knows how to use resources (much) better than average, and at a larger/leveraged scale, if not for the whole world. This is because I’m concerned about (apparent) hubris and arrogance within effective altruism, but I identify as one regardless.
Most people believe they know better than others, even if they don’t claim to know better than everyone else.
I believe what may be overlooked in the original question is the base rate of people who believe they’re doing the best work. That is, humans have at least somewhat of a natural tendency towards privileging their own ideas for doing good as the best. Since effectiveness isn’t emphasized in most altruism, I believe most people don’t think their own approaches are ‘literally the best’, so much as naively thinking they’re just ‘very very good’.
If one individual is the only one to express their disagreement with some form of charity, especially if it’s represented by a big movement, they’re likely to be lambasted ad hominem. So, there’s a disincentive for publicly criticizing charity, even for correct opinions widely held in secret.
Promoting doing ‘the most good’ requires courage but has drawbacks.
In an civil and media environment when criticizing charitable endeavors is controversial, claiming to (try to) do the best may be taboo. I believe effective altruists have thought about what to do more than most others and, I don’t believe we’re missing out on some hidden heuristic for philanthropy that works really well for everyone else. People identify with the good they do, so they may get defensive. When pressed, we admit we don’t claim absolute confidence in our evaluations, that we seek to change our own minds, and that we’re merely doing the best we can.
Putting up the stronger front of advocacy that is trying to literally be the best comes at the cost of (apparently) having hubris. I believe this presents an image problem which will need to constantly be mitigated, and also a real problem we must constantly protect against.
Effective altruism seems to have good defense mechanisms against attracting arrogance.
I believe some effective altruists will be afflicted with over-confidence, and hubris. However, continually normalizing critical thinking, openness to (self-)criticism, and the proper use of humility mitigates this. In particular, being a self-critical movement includes effective altruists criticizing ideas of other effective altruists as they’re newly presented. I’ve observed even on Facebook effective altruists of all stripes are quick to neutralize cocky people, who tend to bring arguments that aren’t as well thought-out.
(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.
I don’t think you have to know the best way to use resources to make the better place. All you have to do is want to know it, try to figure it out, and act on your best guess.
Does believing in or identifying as an EA involve a fair amount of hubris and arrogance? To be an EA, and make EA-based decisions, you have to essentially believe that you have some insight into the best way to use resources to make the world a better place. The type of question whose answers EA demands are extremely difficult. When EAs think they have all, or even some, of the answers on how to go about EA, how much arrogance does it reflect? Would something like EA attract overly cocky people?
Personally, I believe I know a whole community which collectively knows how to use resources (much) better than average, and at a larger/leveraged scale, if not for the whole world. This is because I’m concerned about (apparent) hubris and arrogance within effective altruism, but I identify as one regardless.
Most people believe they know better than others, even if they don’t claim to know better than everyone else.
I believe what may be overlooked in the original question is the base rate of people who believe they’re doing the best work. That is, humans have at least somewhat of a natural tendency towards privileging their own ideas for doing good as the best. Since effectiveness isn’t emphasized in most altruism, I believe most people don’t think their own approaches are ‘literally the best’, so much as naively thinking they’re just ‘very very good’.
If one individual is the only one to express their disagreement with some form of charity, especially if it’s represented by a big movement, they’re likely to be lambasted ad hominem. So, there’s a disincentive for publicly criticizing charity, even for correct opinions widely held in secret.
Promoting doing ‘the most good’ requires courage but has drawbacks.
In an civil and media environment when criticizing charitable endeavors is controversial, claiming to (try to) do the best may be taboo. I believe effective altruists have thought about what to do more than most others and, I don’t believe we’re missing out on some hidden heuristic for philanthropy that works really well for everyone else. People identify with the good they do, so they may get defensive. When pressed, we admit we don’t claim absolute confidence in our evaluations, that we seek to change our own minds, and that we’re merely doing the best we can.
Putting up the stronger front of advocacy that is trying to literally be the best comes at the cost of (apparently) having hubris. I believe this presents an image problem which will need to constantly be mitigated, and also a real problem we must constantly protect against.
Effective altruism seems to have good defense mechanisms against attracting arrogance.
I believe some effective altruists will be afflicted with over-confidence, and hubris. However, continually normalizing critical thinking, openness to (self-)criticism, and the proper use of humility mitigates this. In particular, being a self-critical movement includes effective altruists criticizing ideas of other effective altruists as they’re newly presented. I’ve observed even on Facebook effective altruists of all stripes are quick to neutralize cocky people, who tend to bring arguments that aren’t as well thought-out.
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.
I don’t think you have to know the best way to use resources to make the better place. All you have to do is want to know it, try to figure it out, and act on your best guess.