Thanks for the response. I didn’t notice this until just now. I believe it’s harder to screw up with brand management than without, so we should try. I think part of the problem could be solved with the EA Advocates project, or something like it, which I wasn’t aware of when I made my original comment. Having advocates which are geographically distributed, and don’t all come from the same culture, e.g., academia, or high-tech industry, may send the signal effective altruism is about whichever individuals are passionate about it, and isn’t just a fancy label for those from one group. I think indicating how effective altruism is a distributed network could help solve coordination problems, because various advocates can act as sounding boards for newcomers, whether on the basis of location or cause of interest.
One reason I distinguished the Bay Area from Oxford is because what reference class for effective altruism promotes is somewhat different. Even more than just “non-profit” in general, the Centre for Effective Altruism is located among what people typically think of “philanthropy”. It’s orientation and association with giving pledges, academia and policy recommendation, all seem to make the leap from default to explicitly effective altruism more intuitive. The CEA, with e.g., The Life You Can Save and Giving What We Can, seems able to create a coherent culture.
The Bay Area is more all over the place. First of all, it doesn’t have “center”. In the United States, effective altruism is primarily associated with Givewell, but its culture is primarily programmed by Leverage Research, and its grass-roots advocates hail from a wider diversity of causes across the Internet, who don’t communicate as much with each other. On one hand, for-profit high-tech social entrepreneurship, or whatever, is seen by some effective altruists in the Bay Area as the way the most good can be achieved. This lean startup culture bleeds into the promise of emerging technologies, and the high-minded vision of e.g., Geoff Anders, or Eliezer Yudkowsky. Then, I can turn around, and the next effective altruist I talk to is in favor of not only a radical cause, but pushes it with radical action, such as Direct Action Everywhere.
If I talk to a student from Harvard, Yale, or Oxbridge, I can trace their effective altruism back to your work, or Peter Singer’s. There isn’t an intuitive prototype for effective altruism in California. It’s more chaotic. I don’t think this is a bad thing in terms of action. I think it would make brand management more difficult. However, I think this eclectic culture could be swamped from the influx of whoever’s exposed to effective altruism by your and Singer’s new books. Overall, I now think brand management will work better if effective altruism is seen as a coherent set of ideas distinct from its related cause areas which are not intuitively related to altruism, like high-tech business, or which are more volatile and controversial, such as radical veganism.
Thanks for the response. I didn’t notice this until just now. I believe it’s harder to screw up with brand management than without, so we should try. I think part of the problem could be solved with the EA Advocates project, or something like it, which I wasn’t aware of when I made my original comment. Having advocates which are geographically distributed, and don’t all come from the same culture, e.g., academia, or high-tech industry, may send the signal effective altruism is about whichever individuals are passionate about it, and isn’t just a fancy label for those from one group. I think indicating how effective altruism is a distributed network could help solve coordination problems, because various advocates can act as sounding boards for newcomers, whether on the basis of location or cause of interest.
One reason I distinguished the Bay Area from Oxford is because what reference class for effective altruism promotes is somewhat different. Even more than just “non-profit” in general, the Centre for Effective Altruism is located among what people typically think of “philanthropy”. It’s orientation and association with giving pledges, academia and policy recommendation, all seem to make the leap from default to explicitly effective altruism more intuitive. The CEA, with e.g., The Life You Can Save and Giving What We Can, seems able to create a coherent culture.
The Bay Area is more all over the place. First of all, it doesn’t have “center”. In the United States, effective altruism is primarily associated with Givewell, but its culture is primarily programmed by Leverage Research, and its grass-roots advocates hail from a wider diversity of causes across the Internet, who don’t communicate as much with each other. On one hand, for-profit high-tech social entrepreneurship, or whatever, is seen by some effective altruists in the Bay Area as the way the most good can be achieved. This lean startup culture bleeds into the promise of emerging technologies, and the high-minded vision of e.g., Geoff Anders, or Eliezer Yudkowsky. Then, I can turn around, and the next effective altruist I talk to is in favor of not only a radical cause, but pushes it with radical action, such as Direct Action Everywhere.
If I talk to a student from Harvard, Yale, or Oxbridge, I can trace their effective altruism back to your work, or Peter Singer’s. There isn’t an intuitive prototype for effective altruism in California. It’s more chaotic. I don’t think this is a bad thing in terms of action. I think it would make brand management more difficult. However, I think this eclectic culture could be swamped from the influx of whoever’s exposed to effective altruism by your and Singer’s new books. Overall, I now think brand management will work better if effective altruism is seen as a coherent set of ideas distinct from its related cause areas which are not intuitively related to altruism, like high-tech business, or which are more volatile and controversial, such as radical veganism.