I’m becoming concerned that the title “EA-aligned organisation” is doing more harm than good. Obviously it’s pointing at something real and you can expect your colleagues to be familiar with certain concepts, but there’s no barrier to calling yourself an EA-aligned organisation, and in my view some are low or even negative impact. The fact that people can say “I do ops at an EA org” and be warmly greeted as high status even if they could do much more good outside EA rubs me the wrong way. If people talked about working at a “high-impact organisation” instead, that would push community incentives in a good way I think.
I have exactly the opposite intuition (which is why I’ve been using the term “EA-aligned organization” throughout my writing for CEA and probably making it more popular in the process).
“EA-aligned organization” isn’t supposed to mean “high-impact organization”. It’s supposed to mean “organization which has some connection to the EA community through its staff, or being connected to EA funding networks, etc.”
This is a useful concept because it’s legible in a way impact often isn’t. It’s easy to tell whether an org has a grant from EA Funds/Open Phil, and while this doesn’t guarantee their impact, it does stand in for “some people at the community vouch for their doing interesting work related to EA goals”.
I really don’t like the term “high-impact organization” because it does the same sneaky work as “effective altruist” (another term I dislike). You’re defining yourself as being “good” without anyone getting a chance to push back, and in many cases, there’s no obvious way to check whether you’re telling the truth.
Consider questions like these:
Is Amazon a high-impact organization? (80K lists jobs at Amazon on their job board, so… maybe? I guess certain jobs at Amazon are “high-impact”, but which ones? Only the ones 80K posts?)
Is MIRI a high-impact organization? (God knows how much digital ink has been spilled on this one)
It seems like there’s an important difference between MIRI and SCI on the one hand, Amazon and Sunrise on the other. The first two have a long history of getting support, funding, and interest from people in the EA movement; they’ve given talks at EA Global. This doesn’t necessarily make them most impactful than Amazon and Sunrise, but it does mean that working at one of those orgs puts you in the category of “working at an org endorsed by a bunch of people with common EA values”.
*****
The fact that people can say “I do ops at an EA org” and be warmly greeted as high status even if they could do much more good outside EA rubs me the wrong way.
I hope this doesn’t happen very often; I’d prefer that we greet everyone with equal warmth and sincere interest in their work, as long as the work is interesting. Working at an EA-aligned org really shouldn’t add much signaling info to the fact that someone has chosen to come to your EA meetup or whatever.
That said, I sympathize with theoretical objections like “how am I supposed to know whether someone would do more good in some other job?” and “I’m genuinely more interested in hearing about someone’s work helping to run [insert org] than I would if they worked in finance or something, because I’m familiar with that org and I think it does cool stuff”.
Terms that seem to have some of the good properties of “EA-aligned” without running into the “assuming your own virtue” problem:
“Longtermist” (obviously not synonymous with “EA-aligned”, but it accurately describes a subset of orgs within the movement)
“Impact-driven” or something like that (indicating a focus on impact without insisting that the focus has led to more impact)
“High-potential” or “promising” (indicating that they’re pursuing a cause area that looks good by standard EA lights, without trying to assume success — still a bit self-promotional, though)
Actually referring to the literal work being done, e.g. “Malaria prevention org”, “Alternative protein company”
...but when you get at the question of what links together orgs that work on malaria, alternative proteins, and longtermist research, I think “EA-aligned” is a more accurate and helpful descriptor than “high-impact”.
Oh, I would have thought it’s the other way around—sometimes people don’t want to be known as EA-aligned because that can have negative connotations (being too focused on numbers, being judgmental of “what’s worthy”, slightly cult-like etc). I think “high-impact organisation” may be a good idea as well.
I’m becoming concerned that the title “EA-aligned organisation” is doing more harm than good. Obviously it’s pointing at something real and you can expect your colleagues to be familiar with certain concepts, but there’s no barrier to calling yourself an EA-aligned organisation, and in my view some are low or even negative impact. The fact that people can say “I do ops at an EA org” and be warmly greeted as high status even if they could do much more good outside EA rubs me the wrong way. If people talked about working at a “high-impact organisation” instead, that would push community incentives in a good way I think.
I have exactly the opposite intuition (which is why I’ve been using the term “EA-aligned organization” throughout my writing for CEA and probably making it more popular in the process).
“EA-aligned organization” isn’t supposed to mean “high-impact organization”. It’s supposed to mean “organization which has some connection to the EA community through its staff, or being connected to EA funding networks, etc.”
This is a useful concept because it’s legible in a way impact often isn’t. It’s easy to tell whether an org has a grant from EA Funds/Open Phil, and while this doesn’t guarantee their impact, it does stand in for “some people at the community vouch for their doing interesting work related to EA goals”.
I really don’t like the term “high-impact organization” because it does the same sneaky work as “effective altruist” (another term I dislike). You’re defining yourself as being “good” without anyone getting a chance to push back, and in many cases, there’s no obvious way to check whether you’re telling the truth.
Consider questions like these:
Is Amazon a high-impact organization? (80K lists jobs at Amazon on their job board, so… maybe? I guess certain jobs at Amazon are “high-impact”, but which ones? Only the ones 80K posts?)
Is MIRI a high-impact organization? (God knows how much digital ink has been spilled on this one)
Is SCI a high-impact organization?
Is the Sunrise Movement a high-impact organization?
It seems like there’s an important difference between MIRI and SCI on the one hand, Amazon and Sunrise on the other. The first two have a long history of getting support, funding, and interest from people in the EA movement; they’ve given talks at EA Global. This doesn’t necessarily make them most impactful than Amazon and Sunrise, but it does mean that working at one of those orgs puts you in the category of “working at an org endorsed by a bunch of people with common EA values”.
*****
I hope this doesn’t happen very often; I’d prefer that we greet everyone with equal warmth and sincere interest in their work, as long as the work is interesting. Working at an EA-aligned org really shouldn’t add much signaling info to the fact that someone has chosen to come to your EA meetup or whatever.
That said, I sympathize with theoretical objections like “how am I supposed to know whether someone would do more good in some other job?” and “I’m genuinely more interested in hearing about someone’s work helping to run [insert org] than I would if they worked in finance or something, because I’m familiar with that org and I think it does cool stuff”.
Terms that seem to have some of the good properties of “EA-aligned” without running into the “assuming your own virtue” problem:
“Longtermist” (obviously not synonymous with “EA-aligned”, but it accurately describes a subset of orgs within the movement)
“Impact-driven” or something like that (indicating a focus on impact without insisting that the focus has led to more impact)
“High-potential” or “promising” (indicating that they’re pursuing a cause area that looks good by standard EA lights, without trying to assume success — still a bit self-promotional, though)
Actually referring to the literal work being done, e.g. “Malaria prevention org”, “Alternative protein company”
...but when you get at the question of what links together orgs that work on malaria, alternative proteins, and longtermist research, I think “EA-aligned” is a more accurate and helpful descriptor than “high-impact”.
Oh, I would have thought it’s the other way around—sometimes people don’t want to be known as EA-aligned because that can have negative connotations (being too focused on numbers, being judgmental of “what’s worthy”, slightly cult-like etc). I think “high-impact organisation” may be a good idea as well.