I’d be curious to learn a little more about this. Do you have any vague impressions about leftist perceptions of EA as conservative? Would these be perspectives like the following? (none of the following are real quotes, nor are things I believe; they are my simplistic minimum viable attempt to have a placeholder for leftist perceptions of EA as conservative)
EAs think it is okay to eat meat if you don’t cause any pain to the animal (such as dumpster diving or eating roadkill), and eating meat is inherently a conservative-coded thing.
EAs don’t focus on identity politics as much as I think is appropriate, and thus they are conservative.
EAs allow people to speak even if they disagree with the perspectives, and any good liberal would protest and de-platform a speaker with contrary opinions.
EAs like Peter Singer, who I interpret as saying we should kill disabled people because their lives are worth less
EAs are associated with Bay Area progressive tech culture, which is often conservative and regressive.
I think other than the meat one, your along the lines of how some people are thinking, albeit described in a very polemical and pejorative way, that probably isn’t particularly fair. But also, a lot of these people see any obviously and transparently “elite” group* as dodgy, not to mention that EAs tend to think like economists and don’t want to abolish capitalism which to makes them “neoliberal” to a lot of leftists (not unfairly I don’t think, though whether “neoliberalism” in this weak sense is obviously bad and evil is another matter). And as Titotal as already mentioned there are people kicking around the general EA scene with views on race that are to the right of what is acceptable even in some mainstream conservative contexts.
More generally, if you see the left/right division as about whether we want to keep or get rid of current hierarchies, EAs are associated with things the top of current hierarchies-like big tech firms and Oxford University-and don’t seem very ashamed about it. And then when we actually think about improving the world “how do we get rid of current hierarchies” isn’t usually our starting question. Also, for the sort of leftists who try and explain disagreement with leftism in terms of false consciousness, there seems to be a constant temptation to see anything that isn’t explicitly about getting rid of current unjust hierarchies as a ploy to distract people from current unjust hierarchies, especially if it has billionaire backing. (Of course, many things other than EA receive money from >3 billionaires, but are not perceived as “billionaire” backed to the same degree.)
*that isn’t humanities profs, but I would argue they aren’t really “elite” in the same way as some EA leaders-Holden Karnofsky is married to the President of Anthropic after all, which is a hell of a lot more elite than “went to a fancy grad school, but now teaches history at mid-ranking state uni
EA doesn’t have much of a political lens. If you are person who believes the problems EA is trying to solve are inherently political problems, then the technocratic/economist lens of EA is probably just not very moving to you. I think that is more to the heart of the question.
For example: political movements can and do radically change the world (for better and worse), which isn’t captured in metrics like neglectedness and tractability. Participation in a isn’t easily measurable. Specific examples might be:
Climate change: important to but not prioritised by EA as seen as a saturated market. How do you measure the cost-benefit of something like attending a climate protest march?
Government: 80k recommends government careers as potential hugely impactful but as far as I’m aware doesn’t talk about political careers the same way, although politics sets government policy and budget. When EA does talk about political careers it is more again the low-hanging fruit view (eg run for local office) rather than “participate in a movement and help it maybe reach critical mass” view.
Wealth redistribution: prioritise charitable giving with the Give Directly model as a baseline, but don’t talk about tax policy.
I’d be curious to learn a little more about this. Do you have any vague impressions about leftist perceptions of EA as conservative? Would these be perspectives like the following? (none of the following are real quotes, nor are things I believe; they are my simplistic minimum viable attempt to have a placeholder for leftist perceptions of EA as conservative)
I think other than the meat one, your along the lines of how some people are thinking, albeit described in a very polemical and pejorative way, that probably isn’t particularly fair. But also, a lot of these people see any obviously and transparently “elite” group* as dodgy, not to mention that EAs tend to think like economists and don’t want to abolish capitalism which to makes them “neoliberal” to a lot of leftists (not unfairly I don’t think, though whether “neoliberalism” in this weak sense is obviously bad and evil is another matter). And as Titotal as already mentioned there are people kicking around the general EA scene with views on race that are to the right of what is acceptable even in some mainstream conservative contexts.
More generally, if you see the left/right division as about whether we want to keep or get rid of current hierarchies, EAs are associated with things the top of current hierarchies-like big tech firms and Oxford University-and don’t seem very ashamed about it. And then when we actually think about improving the world “how do we get rid of current hierarchies” isn’t usually our starting question. Also, for the sort of leftists who try and explain disagreement with leftism in terms of false consciousness, there seems to be a constant temptation to see anything that isn’t explicitly about getting rid of current unjust hierarchies as a ploy to distract people from current unjust hierarchies, especially if it has billionaire backing. (Of course, many things other than EA receive money from >3 billionaires, but are not perceived as “billionaire” backed to the same degree.)
*that isn’t humanities profs, but I would argue they aren’t really “elite” in the same way as some EA leaders-Holden Karnofsky is married to the President of Anthropic after all, which is a hell of a lot more elite than “went to a fancy grad school, but now teaches history at mid-ranking state uni
EA doesn’t have much of a political lens. If you are person who believes the problems EA is trying to solve are inherently political problems, then the technocratic/economist lens of EA is probably just not very moving to you. I think that is more to the heart of the question.
For example: political movements can and do radically change the world (for better and worse), which isn’t captured in metrics like neglectedness and tractability. Participation in a isn’t easily measurable. Specific examples might be:
Climate change: important to but not prioritised by EA as seen as a saturated market. How do you measure the cost-benefit of something like attending a climate protest march?
Government: 80k recommends government careers as potential hugely impactful but as far as I’m aware doesn’t talk about political careers the same way, although politics sets government policy and budget. When EA does talk about political careers it is more again the low-hanging fruit view (eg run for local office) rather than “participate in a movement and help it maybe reach critical mass” view.
Wealth redistribution: prioritise charitable giving with the Give Directly model as a baseline, but don’t talk about tax policy.