One way I could see EA failing to win over broad parts of the public, or otherwise not having significant impact, is something I’m going to call media lock-in.
What is media lock-in? A phenomenon where the mainstream media finds a sticky but unflattering meme of your social movement, and repeats it frequently in articles or communications about your cause. This can work to quickly turn-off people who might otherwise be interested in your issue, stunting your growth and long-term potential.
Examples of this outside of EA? Extinction Rebellion early-on got labelled as white and middle-class, and the media hammered this point home so much (1, 2, 3), it was almost as widely known as XR itself.
What could be the “white and middle-class” critique of EA? Well, besides it already being called white and middle class [1]- it’s probably something about the association of EA with elitism (1,2,3). This seems like something that has largely avoided the recent media push for WWOTF, which is certainly an impressive feat already, but still a potential cause for concern going forward.
How do we avoid this? Not sure, but I can imagine the CEA/WWOTF comms team are already thinking about this!
Some examples of things I’ve seen work well in practice is going very hard, early-on, about what you expect the most common critiques of your movement to be. For example, The Sunrise Movement did a pretty amazing job of mobilising outside of “the usual suspects” e.g. non-white and non-middle class people into the climate movement in the US—what previous environmental groups didn’t do very well.
I think this was largely down to them pro-actively communicating, and having in all their core communications, that they were building a multi-racial and cross-class movement (1, 2, 3). This seemed to work quite well, despite the original founding team being majority white.
What’s the equivalent of this for EA? Well, it might be really pushing the idea that EA isn’t about solidifying entrenched power/wealth, or making people richer, but actually about helping beings who can’t otherwise help themselves. Really centring examples of people giving away a lot (a la GWWC), or otherwise being very selfless, might help to steer away from the elitist frame. There’s plenty more that could be done I’m sure, but outside the scope of this Shortform post!
Also interestingly, it seems that a lot of the backlash for XR came from other climate or progressive organisations, which was then amplified by less-friendly media. There might be a similar dynamic at play here, where EA is criticised by other people who are generally aiming at doing good, but these criticisms are amplified by less well-meaning actors. This makes me somewhat concerned about certain public criticisms (e.g. about diversity) but obviously they also play an important role in movement health.
One way I could see EA failing to win over broad parts of the public, or otherwise not having significant impact, is something I’m going to call media lock-in.
What is media lock-in? A phenomenon where the mainstream media finds a sticky but unflattering meme of your social movement, and repeats it frequently in articles or communications about your cause. This can work to quickly turn-off people who might otherwise be interested in your issue, stunting your growth and long-term potential.
Examples of this outside of EA? Extinction Rebellion early-on got labelled as white and middle-class, and the media hammered this point home so much (1, 2, 3), it was almost as widely known as XR itself.
What could be the “white and middle-class” critique of EA? Well, besides it already being called white and middle class [1]- it’s probably something about the association of EA with elitism (1,2,3). This seems like something that has largely avoided the recent media push for WWOTF, which is certainly an impressive feat already, but still a potential cause for concern going forward.
How do we avoid this? Not sure, but I can imagine the CEA/WWOTF comms team are already thinking about this!
Some examples of things I’ve seen work well in practice is going very hard, early-on, about what you expect the most common critiques of your movement to be. For example, The Sunrise Movement did a pretty amazing job of mobilising outside of “the usual suspects” e.g. non-white and non-middle class people into the climate movement in the US—what previous environmental groups didn’t do very well.
I think this was largely down to them pro-actively communicating, and having in all their core communications, that they were building a multi-racial and cross-class movement (1, 2, 3). This seemed to work quite well, despite the original founding team being majority white.
What’s the equivalent of this for EA? Well, it might be really pushing the idea that EA isn’t about solidifying entrenched power/wealth, or making people richer, but actually about helping beings who can’t otherwise help themselves. Really centring examples of people giving away a lot (a la GWWC), or otherwise being very selfless, might help to steer away from the elitist frame. There’s plenty more that could be done I’m sure, but outside the scope of this Shortform post!
Also interestingly, it seems that a lot of the backlash for XR came from other climate or progressive organisations, which was then amplified by less-friendly media. There might be a similar dynamic at play here, where EA is criticised by other people who are generally aiming at doing good, but these criticisms are amplified by less well-meaning actors. This makes me somewhat concerned about certain public criticisms (e.g. about diversity) but obviously they also play an important role in movement health.
“Effective altruism has so far been a rather homogenous movement of middle-class white men fighting poverty through largely conventional means”—link