This is very similar to the comment I was going to make.
I admit that it has crossed my mind that even a moderate EA lifestyle is unusually demanding, especially in the longterm, and therefore could make finding a longterm partner more difficult. However, I do resonate with that last bit – encouraging inter-EA dating also seems culty and insular to me, and I’d like to think that most of us could integrate EA (as a project and set of values) into our lives in way that allows us to have other interests, values, friends, and so on (i.e., our lives don’t have to entirely revolve around our EA-esque commitments!). I don’t see why an EA and a non-EA who were romantically compatible couldn’t find comfortable ways to compromise on lifestyle questions – after all, plenty of frugal people find love, and plenty of vegan people find love, whose to say a frugal vegan couldn’t find love?
I responded to Marisa with this comment which pushes back on the notion that inter-EA dating is a particularly culty and insular phenomenon. Upshots:
Some public accusations of cultishness should be taken seriously, but EA should respond to them by doing what we do best: looking into scientific research, specifically about cults, in evaluating such allegations to ourselves. This is a more sensible approach than hand-wringing about hypothetical accusations of cultishness that haven’t been levelled yet. To do so only plays into the hands of moral panics over cults in public discourse that don’t themselves typically lessen the harms of cults, real or perceived.
Dozens if not hundreds in EA have dated, formed relationships, gotten married or started families in ways that have benefited themselves personally and also their capacity to do good. This is similarly true in its own ways of tens of millions of people who marry and start families within their own religions, cultures or ethnic groups, including in more diverse and pluralistic societies. While EA ought to be worried about ways in which it could cult-like, the common human tendency to spend our lives with those who share our own respective ways of life doesn’t appear to be high on that list.
One could argue that that’s a problematic tendency within societies at large and EA should aspire to more than that. Given my perception that those in EA who’ve formed flourishing relationships within the community have done so organically as individuals, there doesn’t seem to me to be a reason to encourage intra-community dating. Yet to discourage it based on a concern it may appear cult-like would be to impel community members to a kind of romantic asceticism for nobody’s benefit.
Yes. Basically the answer to “Should EAs date each other?” is “If they feel like it”, but they answer to “Should we think more about EAs dating each other?” is “No”.
Summary: There are multiple reasons why, in my opinion, we in EA should not encourage intra-community dating beyond how it arises organically in the community. Yet that’s not the same thing as not thinking about it. A modicum of public discussion about intra-community dating is probably not ‘culty’ compared to much of what the EA community already engages in regardless. One solution may be for those of us who are personal friends with each other in EA to make greater effort to provide support to each other in our mutual pursuits of romantic partners amenable to an EA lifestyle, especially including outside the EA community as well.
I agree the EA community should not systematically think about us dating each other. By “systematically,” I mean that I don’t think the EA community ought to try seeking a programmatic way for us to date each other. There are multiple reasons I expect doing so would be a poor choice for the EA community. The concern we’ve discussed in this thread in that is that it could make EA look ‘culty,’ which I agree is a legitimate concern. One issue I’ve got with how the EA community tends to think about brand management and public relations, or whatever the social movement equivalent for those concepts are, is that we tend to reflexively care about it only when it comes up at random, as opposed to thinking about it systematically.
That’s relevant because, relative to much more significant aspects of EA, whether we openly “think about dating each other” is not that ‘culty.’ There is some op-ed in a semi-popular magazine, print and/or online, about how communities concerned about AI alignment as an existential risk amount to doomsday cults. Much of the population perceives veganism as a cult. I’ve met a lot of people over the years who have told me that the phenomenon of widespread adoption of common lifestyle changes among community members still makes it gives off ‘culty’ vibes. Meanwhile, plenty of cultures within global society publicly and systematically encourage dating within their cultures. It seems like doing this along lines of national or religious identity is more publicly acceptable than doing so along racial lines. Like with what form it would likely take in EA, plenty of subcultures and movements that lend themselves to particular ways of life have online dating websites dedicated to their communities.
Thus, I think the other downsides to systematically encouraging dating within the EA community, such as the skewed gender ratio perhaps quickly resulting in the system failing to satisfy the needs of most involved individuals, are greater than EA appearing ‘culty.’ It’s important to distinguish why I think we shouldn’t systematically encourage intra-community dating because I also expect it would be wrong for us to “not think about” each other’s dating needs at all. For example, I don’t think it’s a negative thing that this EA Forum post and all these discussions in the comments are publicly taking place on the EA Forum. It seems to me the majority of community members never check the EA Forum with a frequency approaching a regular basis, never mind the millions of people who hear about EA but never become part of the movement. I think the solution is for us to extend private offers as peers in the same community to talk about each other’s efforts to find romantic partners who spend our lives with also fits with living the EA-inspired lives we each want to live out.
I do think you could compromise, but I worry that some EAs won’t want to. If you take Peter Singer’s drowning child thought experiment seriously you may not want to placate your non-EA girlfriend by going on that holiday abroad.
Taking that thought experiment seriously for many people really will entail a high degree of demandingness without much room for compromise.
I see the underlying idea here that everyone involved in EA is a “frugal vegan”. I haven’t been able to find any data, but my impression is that less than half of people involved in EA are vegan.
Similarly, you talk about not wanting to compromise on your spending habits, but the job you do and where you live probably make more of an impact than whether or not you eat cheese or go on holiday. If you meet someone at EA Global and end up taking foreign holidays to visit them in their country or moving to be with them, how is that more “right” than taking your non-EA girlfriend on a holiday?
All this to say that whether or not your girlfriend is an “Effective Altruist”, you’ll need to respect her beliefs and preferences and make some major compromises to have a healthy relationship.
I didn’t mean to make it seem that the underlying idea is that everyone in EA is a frugal vegan, that was meant to be a somewhat humorous example to illustrate a point. I think my core idea is that a significant proportion (but not all) EAs are sufficiently different to the average non-EA person as to make dating outside EA difficult (but not impossible).
I actually am someone who can compromise to a certain extent, for example I went to Singapore for my friend’s wedding in January, but I am thinking of those who don’t feel they can. I accept that one can more than make up for going on a holiday by doing good in their job, but taking a Singerian view seriously still means not going on that holiday in the first place and will probably entail aiming to find a girlfirend who lives nearby and not one who you have to fly to to visit.
All this to say that whether or not your girlfriend is an “Effective Altruist”, you’ll need to respect her beliefs and preferences and make some major compromises to have a healthy relationship.
Absolutely agree. My point is that if two similar EAs are dating these compromises may be less likely to seriously conflict with core ethical beliefs. Of course there will always be more personal compromises to make.
My point about the girlfriend in a different country is that the majority of EAs don’t live in your city, so if you decided to use an online dating service you’d be disproportionately likely to meet someone who lives a plane ride away.
Fair point. Overall I think I’m more positive about singles events / speed dating than a dating website. But I accept concerns over being able to find the right numbers and coming off as slightly cultish
This is very similar to the comment I was going to make.
I admit that it has crossed my mind that even a moderate EA lifestyle is unusually demanding, especially in the longterm, and therefore could make finding a longterm partner more difficult. However, I do resonate with that last bit – encouraging inter-EA dating also seems culty and insular to me, and I’d like to think that most of us could integrate EA (as a project and set of values) into our lives in way that allows us to have other interests, values, friends, and so on (i.e., our lives don’t have to entirely revolve around our EA-esque commitments!). I don’t see why an EA and a non-EA who were romantically compatible couldn’t find comfortable ways to compromise on lifestyle questions – after all, plenty of frugal people find love, and plenty of vegan people find love, whose to say a frugal vegan couldn’t find love?
I responded to Marisa with this comment which pushes back on the notion that inter-EA dating is a particularly culty and insular phenomenon. Upshots:
Some public accusations of cultishness should be taken seriously, but EA should respond to them by doing what we do best: looking into scientific research, specifically about cults, in evaluating such allegations to ourselves. This is a more sensible approach than hand-wringing about hypothetical accusations of cultishness that haven’t been levelled yet. To do so only plays into the hands of moral panics over cults in public discourse that don’t themselves typically lessen the harms of cults, real or perceived.
Dozens if not hundreds in EA have dated, formed relationships, gotten married or started families in ways that have benefited themselves personally and also their capacity to do good. This is similarly true in its own ways of tens of millions of people who marry and start families within their own religions, cultures or ethnic groups, including in more diverse and pluralistic societies. While EA ought to be worried about ways in which it could cult-like, the common human tendency to spend our lives with those who share our own respective ways of life doesn’t appear to be high on that list.
One could argue that that’s a problematic tendency within societies at large and EA should aspire to more than that. Given my perception that those in EA who’ve formed flourishing relationships within the community have done so organically as individuals, there doesn’t seem to me to be a reason to encourage intra-community dating. Yet to discourage it based on a concern it may appear cult-like would be to impel community members to a kind of romantic asceticism for nobody’s benefit.
Yes. Basically the answer to “Should EAs date each other?” is “If they feel like it”, but they answer to “Should we think more about EAs dating each other?” is “No”.
Summary: There are multiple reasons why, in my opinion, we in EA should not encourage intra-community dating beyond how it arises organically in the community. Yet that’s not the same thing as not thinking about it. A modicum of public discussion about intra-community dating is probably not ‘culty’ compared to much of what the EA community already engages in regardless. One solution may be for those of us who are personal friends with each other in EA to make greater effort to provide support to each other in our mutual pursuits of romantic partners amenable to an EA lifestyle, especially including outside the EA community as well.
I agree the EA community should not systematically think about us dating each other. By “systematically,” I mean that I don’t think the EA community ought to try seeking a programmatic way for us to date each other. There are multiple reasons I expect doing so would be a poor choice for the EA community. The concern we’ve discussed in this thread in that is that it could make EA look ‘culty,’ which I agree is a legitimate concern. One issue I’ve got with how the EA community tends to think about brand management and public relations, or whatever the social movement equivalent for those concepts are, is that we tend to reflexively care about it only when it comes up at random, as opposed to thinking about it systematically.
That’s relevant because, relative to much more significant aspects of EA, whether we openly “think about dating each other” is not that ‘culty.’ There is some op-ed in a semi-popular magazine, print and/or online, about how communities concerned about AI alignment as an existential risk amount to doomsday cults. Much of the population perceives veganism as a cult. I’ve met a lot of people over the years who have told me that the phenomenon of widespread adoption of common lifestyle changes among community members still makes it gives off ‘culty’ vibes. Meanwhile, plenty of cultures within global society publicly and systematically encourage dating within their cultures. It seems like doing this along lines of national or religious identity is more publicly acceptable than doing so along racial lines. Like with what form it would likely take in EA, plenty of subcultures and movements that lend themselves to particular ways of life have online dating websites dedicated to their communities.
Thus, I think the other downsides to systematically encouraging dating within the EA community, such as the skewed gender ratio perhaps quickly resulting in the system failing to satisfy the needs of most involved individuals, are greater than EA appearing ‘culty.’ It’s important to distinguish why I think we shouldn’t systematically encourage intra-community dating because I also expect it would be wrong for us to “not think about” each other’s dating needs at all. For example, I don’t think it’s a negative thing that this EA Forum post and all these discussions in the comments are publicly taking place on the EA Forum. It seems to me the majority of community members never check the EA Forum with a frequency approaching a regular basis, never mind the millions of people who hear about EA but never become part of the movement. I think the solution is for us to extend private offers as peers in the same community to talk about each other’s efforts to find romantic partners who spend our lives with also fits with living the EA-inspired lives we each want to live out.
I do think you could compromise, but I worry that some EAs won’t want to. If you take Peter Singer’s drowning child thought experiment seriously you may not want to placate your non-EA girlfriend by going on that holiday abroad.
Taking that thought experiment seriously for many people really will entail a high degree of demandingness without much room for compromise.
I see the underlying idea here that everyone involved in EA is a “frugal vegan”. I haven’t been able to find any data, but my impression is that less than half of people involved in EA are vegan.
Similarly, you talk about not wanting to compromise on your spending habits, but the job you do and where you live probably make more of an impact than whether or not you eat cheese or go on holiday. If you meet someone at EA Global and end up taking foreign holidays to visit them in their country or moving to be with them, how is that more “right” than taking your non-EA girlfriend on a holiday?
All this to say that whether or not your girlfriend is an “Effective Altruist”, you’ll need to respect her beliefs and preferences and make some major compromises to have a healthy relationship.
I didn’t mean to make it seem that the underlying idea is that everyone in EA is a frugal vegan, that was meant to be a somewhat humorous example to illustrate a point. I think my core idea is that a significant proportion (but not all) EAs are sufficiently different to the average non-EA person as to make dating outside EA difficult (but not impossible).
I actually am someone who can compromise to a certain extent, for example I went to Singapore for my friend’s wedding in January, but I am thinking of those who don’t feel they can. I accept that one can more than make up for going on a holiday by doing good in their job, but taking a Singerian view seriously still means not going on that holiday in the first place and will probably entail aiming to find a girlfirend who lives nearby and not one who you have to fly to to visit.
Absolutely agree. My point is that if two similar EAs are dating these compromises may be less likely to seriously conflict with core ethical beliefs. Of course there will always be more personal compromises to make.
My point about the girlfriend in a different country is that the majority of EAs don’t live in your city, so if you decided to use an online dating service you’d be disproportionately likely to meet someone who lives a plane ride away.
Fair point. Overall I think I’m more positive about singles events / speed dating than a dating website. But I accept concerns over being able to find the right numbers and coming off as slightly cultish