What you write strikes me as true: there does seem to be a tendency for EAs to focus on their particular cause area and to neglect/ignore other areas of ethical behavior. Here is my very rough typology, off the top of my head:
Sometimes these things look bad, but actually make sense. I’ve sure we’ve all heard stories about people who pay someone to clean their house or to wash their dishes, and that looks really weird to me. But if you are actually producing something of great value in the 10 minutes it would take you to wash your dishes, then I can see how it kind of makes sense to pay someone else a modest amount of money to wash your dishes for you. Paying money for a taxi rather than taking the city bus seems wasteful to me, but if you can actually get 30 minutes of work done in the taxi that you wouldn’t be able to do on the bus, then I can understand the logic of it. Team retreats might fall into this category: a dozen people getting together at a tropical Airbnb using donor money is bad optics, but if we measure the gains comes out net positive I don’t really have many complaints about it.
Sometimes there is simply ethical fading in one area because of such a large focus in another area. My best guess is that flights, consumption, and carbon footprint mostly fall into this category. Think of the people work on X-risk who eat dead animals. Or think about me when I didn’t think about my carbon footprint while flying to a new city to meet EA people and talk about impact; I was thinking about networking rather than about climate.
And sometimes people just make silly or bad decisions. Person_A slept with Person_B, even though they work at the same small organization. Was that a great decision? No, they made a mistake. John_Doe_Org_Leader spoke dismissively and unkindly to a volunteer at an event. Not ideal, but a fumble rather than a travesty.
I do think that we should try harder, but at the same time I don’t feel thrilled about asking someone who is dedicating so much energy to dedicate even more.
What you write strikes me as true: there does seem to be a tendency for EAs to focus on their particular cause area and to neglect/ignore other areas of ethical behavior. Here is my very rough typology, off the top of my head:
Sometimes these things look bad, but actually make sense. I’ve sure we’ve all heard stories about people who pay someone to clean their house or to wash their dishes, and that looks really weird to me. But if you are actually producing something of great value in the 10 minutes it would take you to wash your dishes, then I can see how it kind of makes sense to pay someone else a modest amount of money to wash your dishes for you. Paying money for a taxi rather than taking the city bus seems wasteful to me, but if you can actually get 30 minutes of work done in the taxi that you wouldn’t be able to do on the bus, then I can understand the logic of it. Team retreats might fall into this category: a dozen people getting together at a tropical Airbnb using donor money is bad optics, but if we measure the gains comes out net positive I don’t really have many complaints about it.
Sometimes there is simply ethical fading in one area because of such a large focus in another area. My best guess is that flights, consumption, and carbon footprint mostly fall into this category. Think of the people work on X-risk who eat dead animals. Or think about me when I didn’t think about my carbon footprint while flying to a new city to meet EA people and talk about impact; I was thinking about networking rather than about climate.
And sometimes people just make silly or bad decisions. Person_A slept with Person_B, even though they work at the same small organization. Was that a great decision? No, they made a mistake. John_Doe_Org_Leader spoke dismissively and unkindly to a volunteer at an event. Not ideal, but a fumble rather than a travesty.
I do think that we should try harder, but at the same time I don’t feel thrilled about asking someone who is dedicating so much energy to dedicate even more.