We (the effective altruism community) probably want a community centred around values/principles/axioms rather than conclusions.
This post is a great starting point to value-centric discussions instead of conclusion-centric.
It communicates that asking the question honestly and then acting on its answer is more important than the specific current conclusions
It is very accessible so newcomers can easily understand it (having this be articulated for people new to effective altruism helps make this a central part of the effective altruism movement in the future because some newcomers will make up our future community)
Elaboration on key points
I think this post nudges the culture of the effective altruism movement in a really good direction. I don’t think it necessarily accurately describes what the effective altruism movement is, but more of what it aspires to be. Having this compass on where we want to be helps us nudge the movement towards that.
Why do we want to emphasise values/principles/axioms over conclusions?
The answer to the question “how do we do as much good as possible with our limited resources” (referred to as the EA question for the rest of this review) is an uncertain one: we never have complete information. The answer to the EA question is also a dynamic one: our judgement of the best answer, even if we did have all the information, is likely to be constantly changing with time, as our world changes.
Reasonable conclusions tend to be context-dependent and should change rapidly as we learn new information and our world changes. Principles/values/axioms can and should remain much more stable over time (though they likely should gain nuance with time too, hopefully, as we’ve thought more).
How this post (and posts like it) help
We can’t help but be at least a little bit defined by our current conclusions, but posts like this remind us that we aspire to be about the question, not any specific current answer.
This post’s usefulness for communicating to newcomers what effective altruism is aspiring to be about is helped by it being an exceptionally accessible piece of writing. Someone new to effective altruism can read it without reading much other material and still understand it. This makes it particularly useful because it helps newcomers see effective altruism more like how we want effective altruism to be. This helps us bring in more people interested in effective altruism’s question more than effective altruism’s current conclusions. It also helps new people see effective altruism as more about its question than its current conclusions.
This post certainly helped me to feel like I belonged in the effective altruism community soon after I first came across the movement, while I was still forming my best guesses on the answer to the question “how do I do the most good?”. It helped me feel like I belonged in the community while my guesses were often very different from those I knew in the community. Why? It brought the emphasis back to values that I completely was on board rather than conclusions I wasn’t fully convinced by or didn’t fully understand. For me, posts like this one did not act in a vacuum. Reading this was probably only convincing because I also had great conversations with people in the community that emphasised these points.
If we can make people who are curious about the question “how do we do as much good with our lives” feel more welcome in our community, then we’ll attract more curious, more independent thinkers. In the long run, this will probably create a healthier effective altruism movement (even if there are some costs from a loss in cohesiveness from not all having the same conclusions).
Material like this, along with people in the community demonstrating these ideas in real-time in conversations and their actions, can go a long way to create a movement united by principles instead of one united by (hopefully) transient conclusions.
Some follow-up thoughts
Should we be united around ideas like “AI safety is one of the most important issues of our time” or ideas like “all people (and perhaps more than just people) are worthy of moral consideration”? I suspect we want to have a stronger identity around ideas like the latter than the former.
Given the answer to the EA question is uncertain and dynamically changing, I suspect that we want to be more united by fundamental principles (values/ axioms) like “all people (or all sentient beings) are worthy of moral consideration” rather than conclusions like “AI safety is one of the most important issues of our time”.*
Diversity in conclusions is desirable, as long as we all have clear common ground (that is narrow enough that having a community is still useful). What should that clear and sufficiently narrow common ground be? This is a challenging question, but my guess is that we want to find more principle/value-centric common ground. Posts like this help us map that out right from our first introduction and can help remind us of what we want effective altruism to be many years later.
Note: lots has been written more recently that is related, but because I am short on time and reviews need to be posted by tomorrow, I am posting this review now (but I might come back and add some links I think are particularly relevant).
*This is a fuzzy distinction, “future lives are worthy of moral consideration” might reasonably be classed as a conclusion or a principle. However, I still think it is a meaningful one, despite the existence of edge cases.
Key points
We (the effective altruism community) probably want a community centred around values/principles/axioms rather than conclusions.
This post is a great starting point to value-centric discussions instead of conclusion-centric.
It communicates that asking the question honestly and then acting on its answer is more important than the specific current conclusions
It is very accessible so newcomers can easily understand it (having this be articulated for people new to effective altruism helps make this a central part of the effective altruism movement in the future because some newcomers will make up our future community)
Elaboration on key points
I think this post nudges the culture of the effective altruism movement in a really good direction. I don’t think it necessarily accurately describes what the effective altruism movement is, but more of what it aspires to be. Having this compass on where we want to be helps us nudge the movement towards that.
Why do we want to emphasise values/principles/axioms over conclusions?
The answer to the question “how do we do as much good as possible with our limited resources” (referred to as the EA question for the rest of this review) is an uncertain one: we never have complete information. The answer to the EA question is also a dynamic one: our judgement of the best answer, even if we did have all the information, is likely to be constantly changing with time, as our world changes.
Reasonable conclusions tend to be context-dependent and should change rapidly as we learn new information and our world changes. Principles/values/axioms can and should remain much more stable over time (though they likely should gain nuance with time too, hopefully, as we’ve thought more).
How this post (and posts like it) help
We can’t help but be at least a little bit defined by our current conclusions, but posts like this remind us that we aspire to be about the question, not any specific current answer.
This post’s usefulness for communicating to newcomers what effective altruism is aspiring to be about is helped by it being an exceptionally accessible piece of writing. Someone new to effective altruism can read it without reading much other material and still understand it. This makes it particularly useful because it helps newcomers see effective altruism more like how we want effective altruism to be. This helps us bring in more people interested in effective altruism’s question more than effective altruism’s current conclusions. It also helps new people see effective altruism as more about its question than its current conclusions.
This post certainly helped me to feel like I belonged in the effective altruism community soon after I first came across the movement, while I was still forming my best guesses on the answer to the question “how do I do the most good?”. It helped me feel like I belonged in the community while my guesses were often very different from those I knew in the community. Why? It brought the emphasis back to values that I completely was on board rather than conclusions I wasn’t fully convinced by or didn’t fully understand. For me, posts like this one did not act in a vacuum. Reading this was probably only convincing because I also had great conversations with people in the community that emphasised these points.
If we can make people who are curious about the question “how do we do as much good with our lives” feel more welcome in our community, then we’ll attract more curious, more independent thinkers. In the long run, this will probably create a healthier effective altruism movement (even if there are some costs from a loss in cohesiveness from not all having the same conclusions).
Material like this, along with people in the community demonstrating these ideas in real-time in conversations and their actions, can go a long way to create a movement united by principles instead of one united by (hopefully) transient conclusions.
Some follow-up thoughts
Should we be united around ideas like “AI safety is one of the most important issues of our time” or ideas like “all people (and perhaps more than just people) are worthy of moral consideration”? I suspect we want to have a stronger identity around ideas like the latter than the former.
Given the answer to the EA question is uncertain and dynamically changing, I suspect that we want to be more united by fundamental principles (values/ axioms) like “all people (or all sentient beings) are worthy of moral consideration” rather than conclusions like “AI safety is one of the most important issues of our time”.*
Diversity in conclusions is desirable, as long as we all have clear common ground (that is narrow enough that having a community is still useful). What should that clear and sufficiently narrow common ground be? This is a challenging question, but my guess is that we want to find more principle/value-centric common ground. Posts like this help us map that out right from our first introduction and can help remind us of what we want effective altruism to be many years later.
Note: lots has been written more recently that is related, but because I am short on time and reviews need to be posted by tomorrow, I am posting this review now (but I might come back and add some links I think are particularly relevant).
*This is a fuzzy distinction, “future lives are worthy of moral consideration” might reasonably be classed as a conclusion or a principle. However, I still think it is a meaningful one, despite the existence of edge cases.