My guess (I have no hard data) is that many people on the left (or at least many of the minority of people on the left who have heard of EA at all) already (mostly wrongly) perceive EA as āconservativeā or at least (much more fairly) āneoliberalā. It could be that engaging with conservatives more increases that impression, and leads to reduce recruitment amongst left-wingers, without drawing in enough more conservative people to compensate. Iām not saying donāt engage with conservatives, just that there might be unintended consequences.
Iād 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 donāt cause any pain to the animal (such as dumpster diving or eating roadkill), and eating meat is inherently a conservative-coded thing.
EAs donāt 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 isnāt particularly fair. But also, a lot of these people see any obviously and transparently āeliteā group* as dodgy, not to mention that EAs tend to think like economists and donāt want to abolish capitalism which to makes them āneoliberalā to a lot of leftists (not unfairly I donāt think, though whether āneoliberalismā 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/āright 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 donāt seem very ashamed about it. And then when we actually think about improving the world āhow do we get rid of current hierarchiesā isnāt 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 isnāt 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 ābillionaireā backed to the same degree.)
*that isnāt humanities profs, but I would argue they arenāt really āeliteā 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 āwent to a fancy grad school, but now teaches history at mid-ranking state uni
EA doesnāt 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/āeconomist 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 isnāt captured in metrics like neglectedness and tractability. Participation in a isnāt 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 Iām aware doesnāt 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 āparticipate in a movement and help it maybe reach critical massā view.
Wealth redistribution: prioritise charitable giving with the Give Directly model as a baseline, but donāt talk about tax policy.
My guess (I have no hard data) is that many people on the left (or at least many of the minority of people on the left who have heard of EA at all) already (mostly wrongly) perceive EA as āconservativeā or at least (much more fairly) āneoliberalā. It could be that engaging with conservatives more increases that impression, and leads to reduce recruitment amongst left-wingers, without drawing in enough more conservative people to compensate. Iām not saying donāt engage with conservatives, just that there might be unintended consequences.
Iād 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 isnāt particularly fair. But also, a lot of these people see any obviously and transparently āeliteā group* as dodgy, not to mention that EAs tend to think like economists and donāt want to abolish capitalism which to makes them āneoliberalā to a lot of leftists (not unfairly I donāt think, though whether āneoliberalismā 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/āright 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 donāt seem very ashamed about it. And then when we actually think about improving the world āhow do we get rid of current hierarchiesā isnāt 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 isnāt 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 ābillionaireā backed to the same degree.)
*that isnāt humanities profs, but I would argue they arenāt really āeliteā 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 āwent to a fancy grad school, but now teaches history at mid-ranking state uni
EA doesnāt 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/āeconomist 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 isnāt captured in metrics like neglectedness and tractability. Participation in a isnāt 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 Iām aware doesnāt 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 āparticipate in a movement and help it maybe reach critical massā view.
Wealth redistribution: prioritise charitable giving with the Give Directly model as a baseline, but donāt talk about tax policy.