EA is an offshoot of the rationalist movement! The whole point of EA’s existence is to try to have better conversations, not to accept that most conversations suck and speak in vibes!
I also don’t think it’s true that conservatives don’t draw the distinction between foreign aid and USAID. Spend five minutes listening to any conservative talk about the decision to shut down USAID. They’re not talking about foreign aid being bad in general. They are talking about things USAID has done that do not look like what people expect foreign aid to look like. They seem to enjoy harking on the claim that USAID was buying condoms for Gaza. Now, whether or not that claim is true, and whether or not you think it is good to give Gazans condoms, you have to admit that condoms are not what anybody thinks of when they think of foreign aid.
Unfair: he/she did not propose speaking in vibes ourselves he/she merely argued that this is how many other people will process things.
Condoms are a classic public health measure because they prevent STDs, apart from the benefits of giving people control over their fertility.
Obviously rationalists have contributed a lot to EA, and of the early adopters probably started with views closest to where the big orgs are now (i.e. AI risk as the number one problem). But there have always been non-rationalist EAs. When I first took the GWWC pledge in 2012, I was only vaguely aware that rationalism/LW existed. As far as I can tell none of Toby Ord, Will MacAskill, Holden Karnofsky or Elie Hassenfeld identified as rationalists when EA was first being set up, and they seem the best candidates for “founders of EA”, especially Toby (since he was working on GWWC before he met Will if I recall what I’ve read about the history correctly.) Not that there weren’t strong connections to the rationalist community right from the beginning-Bostrom was always a big influence and he had known Eliezer Yudkowksy for years before even the embyronic period of EA. But it’s definitely wrong in my view to see EA as just an offshoot of rationalism. (I am a bit biased about this I admit, because I am an Oxford philosophy PhD, and although I wasn’t involved, I was in grad school when a lot of the EA stuff was starting up.)
EA is an offshoot of the rationalist movement! The whole point of EA’s existence is to try to have better conversations, not to accept that most conversations suck and speak in vibes!
I also don’t think it’s true that conservatives don’t draw the distinction between foreign aid and USAID. Spend five minutes listening to any conservative talk about the decision to shut down USAID. They’re not talking about foreign aid being bad in general. They are talking about things USAID has done that do not look like what people expect foreign aid to look like. They seem to enjoy harking on the claim that USAID was buying condoms for Gaza. Now, whether or not that claim is true, and whether or not you think it is good to give Gazans condoms, you have to admit that condoms are not what anybody thinks of when they think of foreign aid.
Unfair: he/she did not propose speaking in vibes ourselves he/she merely argued that this is how many other people will process things.
Condoms are a classic public health measure because they prevent STDs, apart from the benefits of giving people control over their fertility.
Obviously rationalists have contributed a lot to EA, and of the early adopters probably started with views closest to where the big orgs are now (i.e. AI risk as the number one problem). But there have always been non-rationalist EAs. When I first took the GWWC pledge in 2012, I was only vaguely aware that rationalism/LW existed. As far as I can tell none of Toby Ord, Will MacAskill, Holden Karnofsky or Elie Hassenfeld identified as rationalists when EA was first being set up, and they seem the best candidates for “founders of EA”, especially Toby (since he was working on GWWC before he met Will if I recall what I’ve read about the history correctly.) Not that there weren’t strong connections to the rationalist community right from the beginning-Bostrom was always a big influence and he had known Eliezer Yudkowksy for years before even the embyronic period of EA. But it’s definitely wrong in my view to see EA as just an offshoot of rationalism. (I am a bit biased about this I admit, because I am an Oxford philosophy PhD, and although I wasn’t involved, I was in grad school when a lot of the EA stuff was starting up.)