Lovely post, I really enjoyed reading it. I honestly never really cared for having an EA aesthetic because a) many EAs are minimalistic and as long as the logo on shirts etc. is nice, all is well and b) keep your identity small; as long as the arguments are correct and convince the relevant people, you shouldn’t even need a name like EA stuck to it.
However, I also totally see the value of an aesthetic and things really are more fun when they look nice. I personally am full on board the solarpunk train (as long as it is only non-sentient plants amidst my industrial complexes)
But still, for now, I still feel like the EA identity should be kept as light as possible although I don’t have any good answers for when aesthetics should start to increasingly matter.
That’s a reasonable take. It depends ultimately on what EA tries to be. It could be, for example, a small node of “elite” people which coordinates other organizations that do care more about their aesthetics for their instrumental goals. In that case minimalist aesthetics serve the purpose well. If EA tries to become more mainstream — or even if it becomes mainstream due to some external factor, like the media starting to pay attention — then it’s possible that it would need a more elaborate aesthetic to showcase its values.
I have a similar sense. Very interesting post and food for thought.
But how would better aesthetics lead to positive impact? The mechanism I’m seeing is essentially “compliance” with views commonly held within the effective altruism community, or some other form of persuasion that doesn’t require understanding or agreement. There are exceptions where this would be helpful, but I expect this sort of persuasion to be net negative for effective altruism overall. (Low confidence.) As well as the post JasperGeh links to, here’s a recent one making some relevant points: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xomFCNXwNBeXtLq53/bad-omens-in-current-community-building
Additionally, when I tried the OP’s exercise of closing my eyes and imagining aesthetics for liberalism, I couldn’t think of any. I asked my friend (not involved in EA but very intelligent, well-read, politically involved) to do the same and they couldn’t think of anything either. The movements/ideologies that do have strong aesthetics that jump to mind seem to rely heavily on compliance rather than truth seeking, e.g. religions, communism, fascism.
Lovely post, I really enjoyed reading it. I honestly never really cared for having an EA aesthetic because a) many EAs are minimalistic and as long as the logo on shirts etc. is nice, all is well and b) keep your identity small; as long as the arguments are correct and convince the relevant people, you shouldn’t even need a name like EA stuck to it.
However, I also totally see the value of an aesthetic and things really are more fun when they look nice. I personally am full on board the solarpunk train (as long as it is only non-sentient plants amidst my industrial complexes)
But still, for now, I still feel like the EA identity should be kept as light as possible although I don’t have any good answers for when aesthetics should start to increasingly matter.
That’s a reasonable take. It depends ultimately on what EA tries to be. It could be, for example, a small node of “elite” people which coordinates other organizations that do care more about their aesthetics for their instrumental goals. In that case minimalist aesthetics serve the purpose well. If EA tries to become more mainstream — or even if it becomes mainstream due to some external factor, like the media starting to pay attention — then it’s possible that it would need a more elaborate aesthetic to showcase its values.
I have a similar sense. Very interesting post and food for thought.
But how would better aesthetics lead to positive impact? The mechanism I’m seeing is essentially “compliance” with views commonly held within the effective altruism community, or some other form of persuasion that doesn’t require understanding or agreement. There are exceptions where this would be helpful, but I expect this sort of persuasion to be net negative for effective altruism overall. (Low confidence.) As well as the post JasperGeh links to, here’s a recent one making some relevant points: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xomFCNXwNBeXtLq53/bad-omens-in-current-community-building
Additionally, when I tried the OP’s exercise of closing my eyes and imagining aesthetics for liberalism, I couldn’t think of any. I asked my friend (not involved in EA but very intelligent, well-read, politically involved) to do the same and they couldn’t think of anything either. The movements/ideologies that do have strong aesthetics that jump to mind seem to rely heavily on compliance rather than truth seeking, e.g. religions, communism, fascism.