If a community claims to be altruistic, it’s reasonable for an outsider to seek evidence: acts of community altruism that can’t be equally well explained by selfish impulses, like financial reward or desire for praise. In practice, that seems to require that community members make visible acts of personal sacrifice for altruistic ends. To some degree, EA’s credibility as a moral movement (that moral people want to be a part of) depends on such sacrifices. GWWC pledges help; as this post points out, big spending probably doesn’t.
One shift that might help is thinking more carefully about who EA promotes as admirable, model, celebrity EAs. Communities are defined in important ways by their heroes and most prominent figures, who not only shape behaviour internally, but represent the community externally. Communities also have control over who these representatives are, to some degree: someone makes a choice over who will be the keynote speaker at EA conferences, for instance.
EA seems to allocate a lot of its prestige and attention to those it views as having exceptional intellectual or epistemic powers. When we select EA role models and representatives, we seem to optimise for demonstrated intellectual productivity. But our selections are not necessarily the people who have made the greatest personal altruistic sacrifices. Often, they’re researchers who live in relative luxury—even if they’ve taken a GWWC pledge. Perhaps we should be more conscious to elevate the EA profile of people like those in MacFarquhar’s Strangers Drowning : people who have made exceptional sacrifices to make the world better, rather than people who have been most successful at producing EA-relevant intellectual output. Maybe the keynote speaker at the next EA conference should be someone who once undertook an effective hunger strike, say. (Maybe even regardless of whether they have heard of EA, or consider themselves EA.)
There’s an obvious reason to instead continue EA’s current role model selection strategy: having a talk from a really clever researcher is helpful for internal community epistemics. We want to grant speaking platforms to those who might be able to offer the most valuable information or best thought-through view. And it’s valuable for the external reputation of our community epistemics to have such people be the face of EA. We also don’t want to promote the idea that the size of one’s sacrifice is what ultimately matters.
But there are internal and external reasons to choose a role model based on the degree of inspiring altruistic sacrifice that person has made, too. Just as Will MacAskill can make me a little more informed, or guide my thinking in a slightly better direction, an inspiring story of personal sacrifice can make me a little more dedicated, a little more willing to work hard and sacrifice to make the world better. And externally, such a role model signals community focus on altruistic commitment.
My low-confidence guess is that the optimum allocation of prestige still gives most EA attention and admiration to those with greatest demonstrated intellectual or epistemic power—but not all. Those who’ve demonstrated acts of moral sacrifice should be held up as exemplars too, especially in external-facing contexts.
This is a very interesting point that, for me, reinforces the importance of keeping effective giving prominent in EA. It is both a good thing, and also a defence against accusations of self-serving wastefulness, if a lot of people in the community are voluntarily sacrificing some portion of their income (with the usual caveats about ’if you have actual disposable income).
GWWC, OFTW etc. may be doing EA an increasing favour by enlisting a decent proportion of the community to be altruistic.
It’s also noticeable that giving seems to be least popular with longtermists, who also seem to be doing the most lavish spending.
Many people prominent in EA still donate very large percentages, Julia Wise (featured in Strangers Drowning)/​Jeff Kaufman 50%, Will MacAskill at least 50%, probably the same for Peter Singer and Toby Ord.
If a community claims to be altruistic, it’s reasonable for an outsider to seek evidence: acts of community altruism that can’t be equally well explained by selfish impulses, like financial reward or desire for praise. In practice, that seems to require that community members make visible acts of personal sacrifice for altruistic ends. To some degree, EA’s credibility as a moral movement (that moral people want to be a part of) depends on such sacrifices. GWWC pledges help; as this post points out, big spending probably doesn’t.
One shift that might help is thinking more carefully about who EA promotes as admirable, model, celebrity EAs. Communities are defined in important ways by their heroes and most prominent figures, who not only shape behaviour internally, but represent the community externally. Communities also have control over who these representatives are, to some degree: someone makes a choice over who will be the keynote speaker at EA conferences, for instance.
EA seems to allocate a lot of its prestige and attention to those it views as having exceptional intellectual or epistemic powers. When we select EA role models and representatives, we seem to optimise for demonstrated intellectual productivity. But our selections are not necessarily the people who have made the greatest personal altruistic sacrifices. Often, they’re researchers who live in relative luxury—even if they’ve taken a GWWC pledge. Perhaps we should be more conscious to elevate the EA profile of people like those in MacFarquhar’s Strangers Drowning : people who have made exceptional sacrifices to make the world better, rather than people who have been most successful at producing EA-relevant intellectual output. Maybe the keynote speaker at the next EA conference should be someone who once undertook an effective hunger strike, say. (Maybe even regardless of whether they have heard of EA, or consider themselves EA.)
There’s an obvious reason to instead continue EA’s current role model selection strategy: having a talk from a really clever researcher is helpful for internal community epistemics. We want to grant speaking platforms to those who might be able to offer the most valuable information or best thought-through view. And it’s valuable for the external reputation of our community epistemics to have such people be the face of EA. We also don’t want to promote the idea that the size of one’s sacrifice is what ultimately matters.
But there are internal and external reasons to choose a role model based on the degree of inspiring altruistic sacrifice that person has made, too. Just as Will MacAskill can make me a little more informed, or guide my thinking in a slightly better direction, an inspiring story of personal sacrifice can make me a little more dedicated, a little more willing to work hard and sacrifice to make the world better. And externally, such a role model signals community focus on altruistic commitment.
My low-confidence guess is that the optimum allocation of prestige still gives most EA attention and admiration to those with greatest demonstrated intellectual or epistemic power—but not all. Those who’ve demonstrated acts of moral sacrifice should be held up as exemplars too, especially in external-facing contexts.
This is a very interesting point that, for me, reinforces the importance of keeping effective giving prominent in EA. It is both a good thing, and also a defence against accusations of self-serving wastefulness, if a lot of people in the community are voluntarily sacrificing some portion of their income (with the usual caveats about ’if you have actual disposable income).
GWWC, OFTW etc. may be doing EA an increasing favour by enlisting a decent proportion of the community to be altruistic.
It’s also noticeable that giving seems to be least popular with longtermists, who also seem to be doing the most lavish spending.
Many people prominent in EA still donate very large percentages, Julia Wise (featured in Strangers Drowning)/​Jeff Kaufman 50%, Will MacAskill at least 50%, probably the same for Peter Singer and Toby Ord.