I think you’ve entirely misidentified the point. OP is not tired of community-building, but of the way that EA elevates certain people and the problems left in its wake. “Cult of personality” as it’s commonly known. EA might have less problems with optics if it wasn’t for people elevating people like Bostrom and SBF to these ridiculous heights. Community-building is probably fine, damage control is what sucks.
Phrases like “EA elevates people” are becoming common, but it is very unclear what it means. Nick Bostrom created groundbreaking philosophical ideas. Will MacAskill has written extremely popular books and built communities and movements. Sam Bankman Fried became the richest man under 30 in a matter of months. All of these people have influenced and inspired many EAs because of their actions.
Under any reasonable sense of the word, people are elevating themselves. I think EA is incredibly free from ‘cult of personality’ problems—in fact it’s amazing how quickly people will turn against popular EAs. But in any group, some people are going to get status for doing their work well.
Does Bostrom actually have a cult of personality/is elevated to ridiculous heights?
He doesn’t have a Twitter account (or any other social media presence as far as I’m aware), doesn’t participate on EA (or EA adjacent) forums, doesn’t blog frequently and doesn’t do media tours to promote himself.
Is this necessarily an EA optics problem?
The Times article on the controversy mentions “Oxford don”, in the headline, and there was no mention of “effective altruism” in the body of the article.
I expect the mainstream zeitgeist on this article to be more about Bostrom’s Oxford connection than his effective altruism connection.
My understanding is that it’s not that she never wants to do damage control and crisis management—but that she is tired of constantly having to do it and the fact that it crowds out the other aspects of EA and Community-Building
I think you’ve entirely misidentified the point. OP is not tired of community-building, but of the way that EA elevates certain people and the problems left in its wake. “Cult of personality” as it’s commonly known. EA might have less problems with optics if it wasn’t for people elevating people like Bostrom and SBF to these ridiculous heights. Community-building is probably fine, damage control is what sucks.
Phrases like “EA elevates people” are becoming common, but it is very unclear what it means. Nick Bostrom created groundbreaking philosophical ideas. Will MacAskill has written extremely popular books and built communities and movements. Sam Bankman Fried became the richest man under 30 in a matter of months. All of these people have influenced and inspired many EAs because of their actions.
Under any reasonable sense of the word, people are elevating themselves. I think EA is incredibly free from ‘cult of personality’ problems—in fact it’s amazing how quickly people will turn against popular EAs. But in any group, some people are going to get status for doing their work well.
Does Bostrom actually have a cult of personality/is elevated to ridiculous heights?
He doesn’t have a Twitter account (or any other social media presence as far as I’m aware), doesn’t participate on EA (or EA adjacent) forums, doesn’t blog frequently and doesn’t do media tours to promote himself.
Is this necessarily an EA optics problem?
The Times article on the controversy mentions “Oxford don”, in the headline, and there was no mention of “effective altruism” in the body of the article.
I expect the mainstream zeitgeist on this article to be more about Bostrom’s Oxford connection than his effective altruism connection.
I’m unconvinced that:
EA has a Bostrom specific optics problem
Bostrom has a cult of personality within EA
Thanks for explaining, retracted
Retracted even the heart
Surely the heart is still endorsed by the author!
It became a broken heart after retraction! 💔
Surely, damage control and crisis management is part of community building work?
My understanding is that it’s not that she never wants to do damage control and crisis management—but that she is tired of constantly having to do it and the fact that it crowds out the other aspects of EA and Community-Building