We are stronger together, and I hope to demonstrate that each movement contains immense power to help the other.
This is plausible, but not obvious.
My default model is more along the lines of altruistic pluralism. Having a number of altruistic communities, each pursuing its distinct goals, strategies, and objectives with vigor generally strikes me as a good thing. In that universe, we get the benefits of each community not watered down with a bunch of other stuff. Each movement has the ability to adapt to its own niche, wherein it can play to its strengths and is less impeded by the tradeoffs it accepted along the way. Although synergies exist, I submit that there is a considerable risk of creating something like the United Way or altruistic nutraloaf by trying to mix a bunch of different and somewhat inconsistent approaches into a Grand Unified Theory of altruism.
Here, it seems to me that there would be considerable costs to both EA and radical feminism from a synergized approach. On the topic of donor relations, I predict that EA would end up irritating its donors in an attempt to be minimally acceptable to radical feminists, and radical feminism would have to seriously water down its critique of capitalism to make synergy potentially viable. I suspect you’d see more anti-synergies than synergies in other domains as well. For instance, being perceived as sympathetic toward radical feminism is going to hurt ability to influence the current US regime and other regimes on AI safety, while being perceived as sympathetic to EA is likely to hurt radical feminism’s relationship with more naturally allied movements. I’m just not seeing enough benefits to either movement over those available in a more pluralistic structure to overcome the costs.
I agree with a lot of your points here. I think the answer is to have distinct movements which use each other’s tools, and form coalitions. I give a little more detail in my reply to Ozzie’s comment
This is plausible, but not obvious.
My default model is more along the lines of altruistic pluralism. Having a number of altruistic communities, each pursuing its distinct goals, strategies, and objectives with vigor generally strikes me as a good thing. In that universe, we get the benefits of each community not watered down with a bunch of other stuff. Each movement has the ability to adapt to its own niche, wherein it can play to its strengths and is less impeded by the tradeoffs it accepted along the way. Although synergies exist, I submit that there is a considerable risk of creating something like the United Way or altruistic nutraloaf by trying to mix a bunch of different and somewhat inconsistent approaches into a Grand Unified Theory of altruism.
Here, it seems to me that there would be considerable costs to both EA and radical feminism from a synergized approach. On the topic of donor relations, I predict that EA would end up irritating its donors in an attempt to be minimally acceptable to radical feminists, and radical feminism would have to seriously water down its critique of capitalism to make synergy potentially viable. I suspect you’d see more anti-synergies than synergies in other domains as well. For instance, being perceived as sympathetic toward radical feminism is going to hurt ability to influence the current US regime and other regimes on AI safety, while being perceived as sympathetic to EA is likely to hurt radical feminism’s relationship with more naturally allied movements. I’m just not seeing enough benefits to either movement over those available in a more pluralistic structure to overcome the costs.
I agree with a lot of your points here. I think the answer is to have distinct movements which use each other’s tools, and form coalitions. I give a little more detail in my reply to Ozzie’s comment