Thanks for your feedback! Researching and writing up my posts takes enough time that adding in individual zoom calls on top would be tough—I work full time. Maybe at some point?
I see two strains of EA criticism. The one you point out comes from EA’s ideological opponents. That doesn’t mean they are bad, wrong, or that their lives revolve around some sort of other political activism. It means that they have decided on a different organizing ideology for their worldview that generates conclusions incompatible with EA’s way of looking at a variety of questions.
I don’t think it’s productive to try and persuade this group of people.
By contrast, I think a large number of people who are potential donors exist who can basically get behind EA ideas, but who would raise concerns along the lines that the 2%/8% pledge idea is meant to address. Here, the barrier isn’t an organized ideology incompatible with EA. It’s the way we organize our conversations with the public and the background perceptions that people have of EA before they encounter our people, books, websites and donation platforms, and before they’ve put more than a few seconds of thought into our ideas.
The reason I am carrying out this series of posts is partly because I think my proposal is genuinely useful and something we should be experimenting with. But it’s also because I think EA can benefit from kicking the tires of its central ideas. It helps us maintain a culture of open-mindedness, and it also exposes where an apparent community consensus and cogent framing of an issue in fact needs work. I continue to think this is the case in this area.
Hi mhendric,
Thanks for your feedback! Researching and writing up my posts takes enough time that adding in individual zoom calls on top would be tough—I work full time. Maybe at some point?
I see two strains of EA criticism. The one you point out comes from EA’s ideological opponents. That doesn’t mean they are bad, wrong, or that their lives revolve around some sort of other political activism. It means that they have decided on a different organizing ideology for their worldview that generates conclusions incompatible with EA’s way of looking at a variety of questions.
I don’t think it’s productive to try and persuade this group of people.
By contrast, I think a large number of people who are potential donors exist who can basically get behind EA ideas, but who would raise concerns along the lines that the 2%/8% pledge idea is meant to address. Here, the barrier isn’t an organized ideology incompatible with EA. It’s the way we organize our conversations with the public and the background perceptions that people have of EA before they encounter our people, books, websites and donation platforms, and before they’ve put more than a few seconds of thought into our ideas.
The reason I am carrying out this series of posts is partly because I think my proposal is genuinely useful and something we should be experimenting with. But it’s also because I think EA can benefit from kicking the tires of its central ideas. It helps us maintain a culture of open-mindedness, and it also exposes where an apparent community consensus and cogent framing of an issue in fact needs work. I continue to think this is the case in this area.