Firstly, I should point out that there is an understanding of the power of both stories and emotions in EA alreadyâsee here for an example.
Secondly, I think youâre associating optimisation with a set of concepts (spreadsheets, data-oriented decision-making, technology) rather than the actual meaning of it, which is to maximise what we can do with our resources. If you associate optimisation with these concepts, itâs possible to follow it off a cliff. When people refer to the term âoveroptimisingâ, this is what I think they meanâapplying optimisation-as-concept to the point where it actually becomes less optimal overall. Maximising our resources does mean taking into account the importance of human connection and acting accordinglyâapplying technology and outcome-oriented thinking as much as we can to make things better, but no further. If you âoptimiseâ to the point of turning people away or quitting the movement in disillusionment, thatâs not optimising. The goal is not the process.
Thirdly, you mention the following:
Many altruistic organizations âfall back into modeling the oppressive tendencies against which we claim to be pushingâŠ. Many align with the capitalistic belief that constant growth and critical mass is the only way to create changeâ (2017). A major flaw of Effective Altruism lies in its lack of reimagination, its focus on reducing suffering within the capitalist system as it exists rather than conceptualizing a new system in which oppression is reduced and eventually eliminated.
Thereâs quite a few unspoken assumptions in these sentencesâassumptions that are quite common among progressive circles, but assumptions not everyone in EA shares. Primarily, you assume that EAâs focus is on âreducing suffering within the capitalist systemâ. This is not how I personally view EAâs mission, and Iâm not alone in this. I view EAâs mission as reducing suffering and helping people, period, regardless of what caused their problem in the first place. For instance, I donât see malaria and schistosomiasis (worms) as âsuffering within the capitalist systemâ, but rather suffering caused by nature. Itâs possible that colonialism exacerbated this through keeping Africa poor and unable to fight off these things that Western countries have essentially eliminated, but it is important to understand that this is not a necessary precondition for us to oppose it. I would still support malaria prevention even if it was proven that capitalism/âcolonialism had absolutely nothing to do with the proliferation of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. Something doesnât have to be labelled as oppression for it to be worth fixing.
Now that weâve established this, that means that calling something capitalistic does not automatically make it bad in the eyes of effective altruism. It is not a failure of imagination that causes many EAâs to oppose creating a new system than capitalismâit is a legitimate difference in viewing the world. EA is not ethically homogenousâfor every point I make Iâm sure you can find people who identify as EA and disagree with me. That said, there is definitely an existing viewpoint similar to what I have described, and I believe enough EAâs are within this cluster that they must be taken into account.
Finally, you mention several problems you see within EA, but I donât see concrete ideas for fixing them. You mention fixes on the conceptual level, like âWe must recognize that people hold value simply by existing, that time is a tool with which to cultivate meaningful social change rather than a good to be commodified.â, butâhow exactly do you propose people do that? Letâs say Iâm a community builder who is convinced by your message. What can I do, this week, to begin moving in that direction? What might I be doing thatâs currently harmful, and what can I replace it with?
To summarise:
- Optimisation means âdoing the most goodâ, not âApplying techniques generally associated with optimisationâ. We should be careful not to confuse the goal from the process, since as you have noticed, excessive application of the process can move us further from the goal.
- Many in EA do not view the world primarily in terms of oppressor and oppressed. Many, like myself, view the world primarily as âHumanity versus sufferingâ where suffering often comes from the way nature and the universe happened to be laid out. Social structures didnât cause malaria, or aging, or cholera. You donât have to agree with, or even engage with, this viewpoint to be in EA. But if you wish to change the minds of people in EA with this viewpoint, it would help to understand this viewpoint deeply.
- Concrete steps to help fix a problem that youâve identified will make for more valuable feedback.
As someone who intuitively relates to Maya & can understand where theyâre coming from, I really enjoyed your comment. In particular, I thought your point on âmaximising our resources does mean taking into account the importance of human connection and acting accordinglyâ was eloquently articulated.
I will note, however, that this frame isnât wholly satisfactory to me as it can lead me to view self-care etc. only as instrumental to the goal of optimizing for impact. While this is somewhat addressed by the postAiming for the minimum of self-care is dangerous, this outcome-focused frame (e.g., âself-care is necessary to sustainably make impactâ) still leads me to feel like I have no value outside of the impact I can have and ties my self-worth too much to consequences.
But I know this isnât a problem for everyoneâmaybe this is just because I donât identify as a consequentialist, or because of my mental health issues! Regardless, I appreciated your thorough response to this post.
While the point I was making was about authenticity rather than self-care, (âthe importance of human connectionâ being about 1:1âČs with potential EAâs, rather than all human connection in oneâs life) I think your frame could apply to both.
Itâs definitely true that self-care is necessary for sustainable impact. However, given the question of âIn the least convenient possible world, if you actually could maximise your overall lifetime impact by throwing self-care under the bus, should you?â I notice that I am still reluctant to do this or recommend it to anyone else, and that applies to authenticity too. I donât think we should expect anyone to sacrifice their own happiness or their own morality, even if doing so actually would maximise impact.*
It would be wrong to say we should never sacrifice. Some of us sacrifice money, some of us sacrifice time, some of us sacrifice the causes that intuitively feel dear to us in favor of ones that are further away in space or time and donât feel as compelling. But there are definitely things I would never ask anyone to sacrifice, and happiness/âmorals are two of them.
Part of the reason is consequential. The more demanding EA as a group is, the less people we attract and the greater the risk of burnout we already have. But even in the least convenient possible world where this wasnât a problem, I think that if I had the ability to mandate what people in EA should sacrifice, I would still say âSacrifice what you can without meaningfully impacting your quality of lifeâ. If someone wants to sacrifice more I wouldnât stop them, but I wouldnât ask it of them.
And if the amount someone can sacrifice without meaningfully impacting their quality of life is next-to-nothing, I would tell them to focus on taking care of themselves and building themselves up. Not because it would lead to maximum impact later, even though it probably would. But because itâs the right thing to do.
*I could imagine ridiculous scenarios like âDo something you find morally wrong or the entire planet blows upâ where this no longer applies, but here Iâm referring mostly to the real tradeoffs we face every day.
I agree. The EA community does need to be better at supporting people as people.
I think your post could include more of the community health work that is being done. While itâs by no means near completionâyouâre touching on topics that a lot of people (especially those not fitting the dominant EA profile) feel andare working on. Itâs hard to measure improvements in culture and community, but I hope you would agree that itâs a work in progress and more focused on now than ever before. The diversity and inclusion tag on the Forum is one place to look for such examples.
I would push back on your point about feelings. You say âfeelings lie to us, sure, but they also tell us the truth. While we should learn to recognize that our feelings can (and do) deceive us, we should also realize that we feel for a reason. Humans are not computers for a reason. If compassion is the casualty of effectiveness then we are sacrificing the very thing that makes us who we are as humansâ.
I donât believe that being in EA means you canât have feelings and compassion. I think itâs the oppositeâmany people seek out EA because they are so driven by their feelings to help, and helping more with the same amount of resources is one of the most compassionate, feeling-driven things you can do. I agree that amongst all the fellowships and readings and focus on doing, the empathy and feelings can get a bit verbally lostâbut I think itâs still an unspoken sentiment and driver among most EAs.
Iâd be curious what the next steps are? Have there been things in your community building and outreach that you think we should focus more attention on? These reflections are good to noteâbut we should also use them to improve the community.
I appreciate your willingness to put this aspect of your lived experience into writing and share it. I hear thatâs its not inclusive of every angle or experienceâand think the forum can be a really helpful place to find people going through similar experiences. Mostly commenting to support the processing, naming, and sharing of the vast, deep, and sometimes confuddling experience that is community building in a goal-oriented, highly calculating community that is very much in the thick of teenage growing pains.
Firstly, I should point out that there is an understanding of the power of both stories and emotions in EA alreadyâsee here for an example.
Secondly, I think youâre associating optimisation with a set of concepts (spreadsheets, data-oriented decision-making, technology) rather than the actual meaning of it, which is to maximise what we can do with our resources. If you associate optimisation with these concepts, itâs possible to follow it off a cliff. When people refer to the term âoveroptimisingâ, this is what I think they meanâapplying optimisation-as-concept to the point where it actually becomes less optimal overall. Maximising our resources does mean taking into account the importance of human connection and acting accordinglyâapplying technology and outcome-oriented thinking as much as we can to make things better, but no further. If you âoptimiseâ to the point of turning people away or quitting the movement in disillusionment, thatâs not optimising. The goal is not the process.
Thirdly, you mention the following:
Many altruistic organizations âfall back into modeling the oppressive tendencies against which we claim to be pushingâŠ. Many align with the capitalistic belief that constant growth and critical mass is the only way to create changeâ (2017). A major flaw of Effective Altruism lies in its lack of reimagination, its focus on reducing suffering within the capitalist system as it exists rather than conceptualizing a new system in which oppression is reduced and eventually eliminated.
Thereâs quite a few unspoken assumptions in these sentencesâassumptions that are quite common among progressive circles, but assumptions not everyone in EA shares. Primarily, you assume that EAâs focus is on âreducing suffering within the capitalist systemâ. This is not how I personally view EAâs mission, and Iâm not alone in this. I view EAâs mission as reducing suffering and helping people, period, regardless of what caused their problem in the first place. For instance, I donât see malaria and schistosomiasis (worms) as âsuffering within the capitalist systemâ, but rather suffering caused by nature. Itâs possible that colonialism exacerbated this through keeping Africa poor and unable to fight off these things that Western countries have essentially eliminated, but it is important to understand that this is not a necessary precondition for us to oppose it. I would still support malaria prevention even if it was proven that capitalism/âcolonialism had absolutely nothing to do with the proliferation of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. Something doesnât have to be labelled as oppression for it to be worth fixing.
Now that weâve established this, that means that calling something capitalistic does not automatically make it bad in the eyes of effective altruism. It is not a failure of imagination that causes many EAâs to oppose creating a new system than capitalismâit is a legitimate difference in viewing the world. EA is not ethically homogenousâfor every point I make Iâm sure you can find people who identify as EA and disagree with me. That said, there is definitely an existing viewpoint similar to what I have described, and I believe enough EAâs are within this cluster that they must be taken into account.
Finally, you mention several problems you see within EA, but I donât see concrete ideas for fixing them. You mention fixes on the conceptual level, like âWe must recognize that people hold value simply by existing, that time is a tool with which to cultivate meaningful social change rather than a good to be commodified.â, butâhow exactly do you propose people do that? Letâs say Iâm a community builder who is convinced by your message. What can I do, this week, to begin moving in that direction? What might I be doing thatâs currently harmful, and what can I replace it with?
To summarise:
- Optimisation means âdoing the most goodâ, not âApplying techniques generally associated with optimisationâ. We should be careful not to confuse the goal from the process, since as you have noticed, excessive application of the process can move us further from the goal.
- Many in EA do not view the world primarily in terms of oppressor and oppressed. Many, like myself, view the world primarily as âHumanity versus sufferingâ where suffering often comes from the way nature and the universe happened to be laid out. Social structures didnât cause malaria, or aging, or cholera. You donât have to agree with, or even engage with, this viewpoint to be in EA. But if you wish to change the minds of people in EA with this viewpoint, it would help to understand this viewpoint deeply.
- Concrete steps to help fix a problem that youâve identified will make for more valuable feedback.
As someone who intuitively relates to Maya & can understand where theyâre coming from, I really enjoyed your comment. In particular, I thought your point on âmaximising our resources does mean taking into account the importance of human connection and acting accordinglyâ was eloquently articulated.
I will note, however, that this frame isnât wholly satisfactory to me as it can lead me to view self-care etc. only as instrumental to the goal of optimizing for impact. While this is somewhat addressed by the post Aiming for the minimum of self-care is dangerous, this outcome-focused frame (e.g., âself-care is necessary to sustainably make impactâ) still leads me to feel like I have no value outside of the impact I can have and ties my self-worth too much to consequences.
But I know this isnât a problem for everyoneâmaybe this is just because I donât identify as a consequentialist, or because of my mental health issues! Regardless, I appreciated your thorough response to this post.
While the point I was making was about authenticity rather than self-care, (âthe importance of human connectionâ being about 1:1âČs with potential EAâs, rather than all human connection in oneâs life) I think your frame could apply to both.
Itâs definitely true that self-care is necessary for sustainable impact. However, given the question of âIn the least convenient possible world, if you actually could maximise your overall lifetime impact by throwing self-care under the bus, should you?â I notice that I am still reluctant to do this or recommend it to anyone else, and that applies to authenticity too. I donât think we should expect anyone to sacrifice their own happiness or their own morality, even if doing so actually would maximise impact.*
It would be wrong to say we should never sacrifice. Some of us sacrifice money, some of us sacrifice time, some of us sacrifice the causes that intuitively feel dear to us in favor of ones that are further away in space or time and donât feel as compelling. But there are definitely things I would never ask anyone to sacrifice, and happiness/âmorals are two of them.
Part of the reason is consequential. The more demanding EA as a group is, the less people we attract and the greater the risk of burnout we already have. But even in the least convenient possible world where this wasnât a problem, I think that if I had the ability to mandate what people in EA should sacrifice, I would still say âSacrifice what you can without meaningfully impacting your quality of lifeâ. If someone wants to sacrifice more I wouldnât stop them, but I wouldnât ask it of them.
And if the amount someone can sacrifice without meaningfully impacting their quality of life is next-to-nothing, I would tell them to focus on taking care of themselves and building themselves up. Not because it would lead to maximum impact later, even though it probably would. But because itâs the right thing to do.
*I could imagine ridiculous scenarios like âDo something you find morally wrong or the entire planet blows upâ where this no longer applies, but here Iâm referring mostly to the real tradeoffs we face every day.
I agree. The EA community does need to be better at supporting people as people.
I think your post could include more of the community health work that is being done. While itâs by no means near completionâyouâre touching on topics that a lot of people (especially those not fitting the dominant EA profile) feel and are working on. Itâs hard to measure improvements in culture and community, but I hope you would agree that itâs a work in progress and more focused on now than ever before. The diversity and inclusion tag on the Forum is one place to look for such examples.
I would push back on your point about feelings. You say âfeelings lie to us, sure, but they also tell us the truth. While we should learn to recognize that our feelings can (and do) deceive us, we should also realize that we feel for a reason. Humans are not computers for a reason. If compassion is the casualty of effectiveness then we are sacrificing the very thing that makes us who we are as humansâ.
I donât believe that being in EA means you canât have feelings and compassion. I think itâs the oppositeâmany people seek out EA because they are so driven by their feelings to help, and helping more with the same amount of resources is one of the most compassionate, feeling-driven things you can do. I agree that amongst all the fellowships and readings and focus on doing, the empathy and feelings can get a bit verbally lostâbut I think itâs still an unspoken sentiment and driver among most EAs.
Iâd be curious what the next steps are? Have there been things in your community building and outreach that you think we should focus more attention on? These reflections are good to noteâbut we should also use them to improve the community.
I whole-heartedly agree! I have been trying to write a post on the same topic for a while nowâwould love to connect!
I appreciate your willingness to put this aspect of your lived experience into writing and share it. I hear thatâs its not inclusive of every angle or experienceâand think the forum can be a really helpful place to find people going through similar experiences. Mostly commenting to support the processing, naming, and sharing of the vast, deep, and sometimes confuddling experience that is community building in a goal-oriented, highly calculating community that is very much in the thick of teenage growing pains.