Executive summary: This reflective, experience-based post introduces the “EA Tree of Questions” as a conversational tool to help community builders quickly identify whether someone shares the core beliefs necessary for meaningful engagement with Effective Altruism, enabling more efficient and respectful dialogue with skeptics.
Key points:
The “EA Tree” metaphor distinguishes between foundational beliefs (the trunk) and more complex cause-specific ideas (the branches); debating advanced topics is often fruitless if someone doesn’t accept the core trunk principles.
Three trunk questions—Altruism, Effectiveness, and Comparability—form the basis for determining if a person is philosophically aligned enough to engage meaningfully with EA ideas.
Practical advice is offered for when to concede, engage, or disengage based on real conversations, aiming to avoid unproductive debates and reduce social costs in outreach settings.
Institutional trust is presented as a later-stage concern that shouldn’t be a conversation starter; it matters only after agreement on more fundamental principles.
The post encourages tailoring conversations to a person’s values and level of receptiveness, especially when EA can appear demanding or overly quantitative.
The author invites community input and treats the model as a work-in-progress, acknowledging variability in reactions and emphasizing the importance of respectful engagement.
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.
Executive summary: This reflective, experience-based post introduces the “EA Tree of Questions” as a conversational tool to help community builders quickly identify whether someone shares the core beliefs necessary for meaningful engagement with Effective Altruism, enabling more efficient and respectful dialogue with skeptics.
Key points:
The “EA Tree” metaphor distinguishes between foundational beliefs (the trunk) and more complex cause-specific ideas (the branches); debating advanced topics is often fruitless if someone doesn’t accept the core trunk principles.
Three trunk questions—Altruism, Effectiveness, and Comparability—form the basis for determining if a person is philosophically aligned enough to engage meaningfully with EA ideas.
Practical advice is offered for when to concede, engage, or disengage based on real conversations, aiming to avoid unproductive debates and reduce social costs in outreach settings.
Institutional trust is presented as a later-stage concern that shouldn’t be a conversation starter; it matters only after agreement on more fundamental principles.
The post encourages tailoring conversations to a person’s values and level of receptiveness, especially when EA can appear demanding or overly quantitative.
The author invites community input and treats the model as a work-in-progress, acknowledging variability in reactions and emphasizing the importance of respectful engagement.
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.