And this is a bit of a side-note, but this part made me feel more hopeful about the future of EA than I have in a long time[1], so thank you—and Open Phil—for that, too:
This is why I will always be grateful to Open Philanthropy for setting up a norm to fund groups that don’t spend a significant amount of energy on infighting, but rather on campaigning. The approach elevated people who are cooperative and try to help others, as well as established an incentive to be such a person.
Of course criticism and disagreements are crucial, so is whistleblowing, but it has to be approached with humility, openness, and compassion which was too often absent.
I feel a bit mean implying that EAs are becoming too mean without any concrete suggestions for improvement, so here are some things I think forum posters could consider to be more collaborative. But ultimately I think infighting is just a deeply ingrained human tendency and institutional incentives will achieve a lot more than individual attempts to be our better selves.
Thank you so much for your work and for this post—I’m always a fan of the attitude “The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better.”
And this is a bit of a side-note, but this part made me feel more hopeful about the future of EA than I have in a long time[1], so thank you—and Open Phil—for that, too:
I feel a bit mean implying that EAs are becoming too mean without any concrete suggestions for improvement, so here are some things I think forum posters could consider to be more collaborative. But ultimately I think infighting is just a deeply ingrained human tendency and institutional incentives will achieve a lot more than individual attempts to be our better selves.
Thank you, Ubuntu. I love that post by Max Roser.