It’s certainly possible that a version of this content could address the belongingness concerns I identified.
About belongingness more generally: When the question of splitting up EA (e.g., into neartermist and longtermist branches) has arisen, people have generally been opposed. But I think a consequence of that position is that certain central organizations need to reflect a rough balance of different cause areas and neartermist/longtermist perspective within the movement. Stated differently, I don’t think it is plausible for both of the following conditions to be true: “CEA is a broad-based organization for promoting effective altruism” and “CEA clearly gives the impression that certain key methodologies, cause areas, or philosophical views that are prominent within the community are second-rate.” There are arguments for giving up the first statement to free CEA from the constraints it imposes, but they do impose costs. In my view, any argument that “CEA should do X,” where X creates risks of causing disunity, needs to acknowledge the downsides and explain why the marginal benefit of housing the work at CEA outweighs them.
As far as epistemics, I tend to prefer decentralized epistemic institutions to the extent practicable. Maybe that’s a bias from my professional training (as a lawyer), but in general I’d rather have a robust epistemic marketplace in which almost everyone can promote their ideas without having to compromise on belongingness grounds, rather than setting up CEA (or any similar organization) as promoter of views that do not reflect broad community consensus. EAs, EA-adjacent people, and EA-interested people can evaluate epistemic claims for themselves, and centralizing epistemics creates the usual risks of any system with a single point of failure.
It’s certainly possible that a version of this content could address the belongingness concerns I identified.
About belongingness more generally: When the question of splitting up EA (e.g., into neartermist and longtermist branches) has arisen, people have generally been opposed. But I think a consequence of that position is that certain central organizations need to reflect a rough balance of different cause areas and neartermist/longtermist perspective within the movement. Stated differently, I don’t think it is plausible for both of the following conditions to be true: “CEA is a broad-based organization for promoting effective altruism” and “CEA clearly gives the impression that certain key methodologies, cause areas, or philosophical views that are prominent within the community are second-rate.” There are arguments for giving up the first statement to free CEA from the constraints it imposes, but they do impose costs. In my view, any argument that “CEA should do X,” where X creates risks of causing disunity, needs to acknowledge the downsides and explain why the marginal benefit of housing the work at CEA outweighs them.
As far as epistemics, I tend to prefer decentralized epistemic institutions to the extent practicable. Maybe that’s a bias from my professional training (as a lawyer), but in general I’d rather have a robust epistemic marketplace in which almost everyone can promote their ideas without having to compromise on belongingness grounds, rather than setting up CEA (or any similar organization) as promoter of views that do not reflect broad community consensus. EAs, EA-adjacent people, and EA-interested people can evaluate epistemic claims for themselves, and centralizing epistemics creates the usual risks of any system with a single point of failure.