Thanks for mentioning that you run EA Melbourne—I think this difference in perspective is what’s driving our -ism/-ist disagreement that I talk about in my earlier comment. I’ve never been to an EA meetup group (I moved away from Brisbane earlier in February, missing out by about half a year on the new group that’s just starting there...), and I’d wondered what EA “looked like” in these contexts. If a lot of it is just meeting up every few weeks for a chat about EA-ish topics, then I agree that “effective altruist” is a dubious term if applied to everyone there.
Is it the core idea though? None of the introductions I linked to above mention anything about what one “should” do.
Perhaps a different phrasing would be a little better, but however it’s worded, moral beliefs and/or moral reasoning motivated most of what I see in the EA movement today—totally fundamental to everything, even if it’s not always explicitly stated. Certainly what keeps me sending out donations every month or so is the internal conviction that it’s the right thing to do.
Maybe this is another difference of perspective thing? Like if many of the EA people you see are more passive consumers of EA material, instead of structuring their lives/finances around it, then the fundamental moral motivation of introductions to EA seems absent? I don’t know.
Certainly I find the idea of this (persuade others to do good with their resources) being a core motivating philosophy of my life very off-putting.
I see the core motivating philosophy of my life as trying to do good with my resources. Some no doubt see persuading others as an important part of their resources (I mostly fail at it), but to me EA most fundamentally is about maximising one’s own impact, in whichever ways one can.
Thanks for mentioning that you run EA Melbourne—I think this difference in perspective is what’s driving our -ism/-ist disagreement that I talk about in my earlier comment. I’ve never been to an EA meetup group (I moved away from Brisbane earlier in February, missing out by about half a year on the new group that’s just starting there...), and I’d wondered what EA “looked like” in these contexts. If a lot of it is just meeting up every few weeks for a chat about EA-ish topics, then I agree that “effective altruist” is a dubious term if applied to everyone there.
Perhaps a different phrasing would be a little better, but however it’s worded, moral beliefs and/or moral reasoning motivated most of what I see in the EA movement today—totally fundamental to everything, even if it’s not always explicitly stated. Certainly what keeps me sending out donations every month or so is the internal conviction that it’s the right thing to do.
Maybe this is another difference of perspective thing? Like if many of the EA people you see are more passive consumers of EA material, instead of structuring their lives/finances around it, then the fundamental moral motivation of introductions to EA seems absent? I don’t know.
I see the core motivating philosophy of my life as trying to do good with my resources. Some no doubt see persuading others as an important part of their resources (I mostly fail at it), but to me EA most fundamentally is about maximising one’s own impact, in whichever ways one can.