The common attitude was something like “we’re utilitarians, and we want to do as much good as we can. EA has some interesting people and interesting ideas in it. However, it’s not clear who we can trust; there’s lots of fiery debate about cause prioritization, and we just don’t at all know whether we should donate to AMF or the Humane League or MIRI. There are EA orgs like CEA, 80K, MIRI, GiveWell, but it’s not clear which of those people we should trust, given that the things they say don’t always make sense to us, and they have different enough bottom line beliefs that some of them must be wrong.” It’s much rarer nowadays for me to hear people have an attitude where they’re wholeheartedly excited about utilitarianism but openly skeptical to the EA “establishment”.
I actually agree that there seems to have been some shift roughly along these lines.
My view is roughly that EAs were equally disposed to be deferential then as they are now (if there were a clear EA consensus then, most of these EAs would have deferred to it, as they do now), but that “because the ‘official EA consensus’ (i.e. longtermism) is more readily apparent” now, people’s disposition to defer is more apparent.
So I would agree that some EAs were actually more directly engaged in thinking about fundamental EA prioritisation because they did not see an EA position that they could defer to at all. But other EAs I think were deferring to those they perceived as EA experts back then, just as they are now, it’s just that they were deferring to different EA experts than other EAs. For example, I think earlier years many EAs thought that Giving What We Can (previously an exclusively poverty org, of course) and GiveWell, were the EA experts, and meanwhile there were some ‘crazy’ people (MIRI and LessWrongers) who were outside the EA mainstream. I imagine this perspective was more common outside the Bay Area.
I feel like there are many fewer EA forum posts and facebook posts where people argue back and forth about whether to donate to AMF or more speculative things than there used to be.
Agreed, but I can’t remember the last time I saw someone try to argue that you should donate to AMF rather than longtermism. I’ve seen more posts/comments/discussions along the lines of ‘Are you aware of any EA arguments against longtermism?’ Clearly there are still lots of EAs who donate to AMF and support near-termism (cause prioritisation, donation data), but I think they are mostly keeping quiet. Whenever I do see near-termism come up, people don’t seem afraid to communicate that they think that it is obviously indefensible, or that they think even a third-rate longtermist intervention is probably incomparably better than AMF because at least it’s longtermist.
My view is roughly that EAs were equally disposed to be deferential then as they are now (if there were a clear EA consensus then, most of these EAs would have deferred to it, as they do now), but that “because the ‘official EA consensus’ (i.e. longtermism) is more readily apparent” now, people’s disposition to defer is more apparent.
This is an interesting possibility. I still think there’s a difference. For example, there’s a lot of disagreement within AI safety about what kind of problems are important and how to work on them, and most EAs (and AI safety people) seem much less inclined to try to argue with each other about this than I think we were at Stanford EA.
Agreed, but I can’t remember the last time I saw someone try to argue that you should donate to AMF rather than longtermism.
I think this is probably a mixture of longtermism winning over most people who’d write this kind of post, and also that people are less enthusiastic about arguing about cause prio these days for whatever reason. I think the post would be recieved well inasmuch as it was good. Maybe we’re agreeing here?
Whenever I do see near-termism come up, people don’t seem afraid to communicate that they think that it is obviously indefensible, or that they think even a third-rate longtermist intervention is probably incomparably better than AMF because at least it’s longtermist.
I don’t see people say that very often. Eg I almost never see people say this in response to posts about neartermism on the EA Facebook group, or on posts here.
I actually agree that there seems to have been some shift roughly along these lines.
My view is roughly that EAs were equally disposed to be deferential then as they are now (if there were a clear EA consensus then, most of these EAs would have deferred to it, as they do now), but that “because the ‘official EA consensus’ (i.e. longtermism) is more readily apparent” now, people’s disposition to defer is more apparent.
So I would agree that some EAs were actually more directly engaged in thinking about fundamental EA prioritisation because they did not see an EA position that they could defer to at all. But other EAs I think were deferring to those they perceived as EA experts back then, just as they are now, it’s just that they were deferring to different EA experts than other EAs. For example, I think earlier years many EAs thought that Giving What We Can (previously an exclusively poverty org, of course) and GiveWell, were the EA experts, and meanwhile there were some ‘crazy’ people (MIRI and LessWrongers) who were outside the EA mainstream. I imagine this perspective was more common outside the Bay Area.
Agreed, but I can’t remember the last time I saw someone try to argue that you should donate to AMF rather than longtermism. I’ve seen more posts/comments/discussions along the lines of ‘Are you aware of any EA arguments against longtermism?’ Clearly there are still lots of EAs who donate to AMF and support near-termism (cause prioritisation, donation data), but I think they are mostly keeping quiet. Whenever I do see near-termism come up, people don’t seem afraid to communicate that they think that it is obviously indefensible, or that they think even a third-rate longtermist intervention is probably incomparably better than AMF because at least it’s longtermist.
This is an interesting possibility. I still think there’s a difference. For example, there’s a lot of disagreement within AI safety about what kind of problems are important and how to work on them, and most EAs (and AI safety people) seem much less inclined to try to argue with each other about this than I think we were at Stanford EA.
I think this is probably a mixture of longtermism winning over most people who’d write this kind of post, and also that people are less enthusiastic about arguing about cause prio these days for whatever reason. I think the post would be recieved well inasmuch as it was good. Maybe we’re agreeing here?
I don’t see people say that very often. Eg I almost never see people say this in response to posts about neartermism on the EA Facebook group, or on posts here.