But I see people using that as an excuse to not identify as… anything. As in, they avoid affiliating themselves with any social movements, sports teams, schools, nation-states, professions, etc.
It can be annoying and confusing when you ask someone “are you an EA?” or “are you a Christian?” or “are you British?” and they won’t give you a straight answer. It’s partly annoying because I’m very rationally trying to make some shortcut assumptions about them (if they’re an EA, they’ve probably heard of malaria) and they’re preventing me from doing that.
But I also sometimes get the sense that they’re trying to protect themselves by not affiliating with a movement, and I find that a bit annoying. I feel like they’re a free rider.
What are they trying to protect themselves from? Effectively they’re protecting their reputation. This could be from an existing negative legacy of the group. eg If they don’t identify as British (even though they’re a British citizen) maybe they can dodge questions about the ongoing negative effects of the British empire. They could also be hedging against future negative reputation eg If I call myself an EA but then someone attempts a military coup in the name of EA, I would look bad. By avoiding declaring yourself a group member, you can sometimes avoid your reputation sinking when your chosen group makes bad choices.
Unfortunately, that means that those of us with our reputations on the line are the ones who have the most skin in the game to keep people from doing stupid unilateralist things that make everyone in the community look bad.
I would prefer it if people would take that big scary step of saying they’re an EA or Christian or Brit or whatever, and then put in the work to improve your community’s reputation. Obviously open to hearing reasons why people shouldn’t identify as members of groups, though.
My perspective (which may not differ too much from yours—just thinking out loud, Shortform-style):
I try to avoid using “effective altruist” as a noun for what I think of as “members of the EA community” or “people interested in effective giving/work”, because I want the movement to feel very open to people who aren’t ready to label themselves in that way.*
For example:
I like thinking of EA Global as “a conference for people who share a small set of common principles and do a wide variety of different things that they believe to be aligned with those principles”, rather than “a conference for people who think of themselves as effective altruists”. If you come to our conference regularly, I default to seeing you as a member of our community unless you tell me otherwise, but I don’t default to seeing you as an “effective altruist”.
If you have strong and well-researched views on global health and development, I’d love to have you at my EA meetup even if you’re not very interested in the EA movement.
I support anyone who wants to identify themselves as an effective altruist, and I’m comfortable referring to myself as such, but I don’t feel any desire to push people toward adopting that term if their inclination is to answer “are you an EA?” by talking about their values and goals, rather than their group affiliation.
*There’s also the tricky bit where calling oneself “effective” could be taken to indicate that you’re relatively confident that you’re having a lot of impact compared to your available resources, which many people in the community aren’t, especially if they focus on more exploratory work/cause areas.
I don’t think having people label themselves with a noun—“Christian”, “dancer”, “student”—necessarily makes other people uncomfortable associating with them. I don’t think it’s wrong for people who aren’t Christians to attend church, but I also don’t think nobody referring to themselves as Christians would be a useful way to make people more comfortable at church. If you’re worried about people being uncomfortable at EAG, I think the name “EA” is the least likely to be causing the problem.
I don’t think there’s anything necessary or inevitable about it! My sentiments reflect things I’ve seen other people say (e.g. “I don’t know if I count as an ‘effective altruist’, I’m new here/don’t have belief X”), but how people feel about this and other identity questions is (of course) all over the map. And as I said, I have no problem with anyone referring to themselves as an effective altruist—I just don’t have a problem with the opposite, either.
To use the church analogy: If some people at a church call themselves “Christians”, others “Southern Baptists”, others “religious seekers”, others “spiritual”, and still others “agnostic/uncertain”, I wouldn’t expect that to make things less comfortable for newcomers. (Though attending Unitarian church as a kid might have left me biased in this area!)
I agree that there are many reasons someone might feel uncomfortable at a conference or community event, and I think we both see the particular question of when to use “effective altruist” is just one tiny facet of community cohesion.
In some cases, I think people feel that they have a nuanced position that isn’t captured by broad labels. I think that reasoning can go to far, however: if that argument is pushed far enough, no one will count as a socialist, postmodernist, effective altruist, etc. And as you imply, these kinds of broad categories are useful, even while in some respects imperfect.
Yep, makes sense to me! It’s difficult for me to identify with a particular denomination of Christianity because I grew up at a non-denominational church and since then I’ve attended 3 different denominations. So I definitely get the struggle to identify yourself when none of the usual labels quite fit! But I don’t have to be a complete mystery—at least I can still say I’m “Christian” or “Protestant”
Unfortunately, that means that those of us with our reputations on the line are the ones who have the most skin in the game to keep people from doing stupid unilateralist things that make everyone in the community look bad.
Surely if someone doesn’t identify as an EA, their actions incur less reputational risk for the movement?
There are some pretty good reasons to keep your identity small. http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
But I see people using that as an excuse to not identify as… anything. As in, they avoid affiliating themselves with any social movements, sports teams, schools, nation-states, professions, etc.
It can be annoying and confusing when you ask someone “are you an EA?” or “are you a Christian?” or “are you British?” and they won’t give you a straight answer. It’s partly annoying because I’m very rationally trying to make some shortcut assumptions about them (if they’re an EA, they’ve probably heard of malaria) and they’re preventing me from doing that.
But I also sometimes get the sense that they’re trying to protect themselves by not affiliating with a movement, and I find that a bit annoying. I feel like they’re a free rider.
What are they trying to protect themselves from? Effectively they’re protecting their reputation. This could be from an existing negative legacy of the group. eg If they don’t identify as British (even though they’re a British citizen) maybe they can dodge questions about the ongoing negative effects of the British empire. They could also be hedging against future negative reputation eg If I call myself an EA but then someone attempts a military coup in the name of EA, I would look bad. By avoiding declaring yourself a group member, you can sometimes avoid your reputation sinking when your chosen group makes bad choices.
Unfortunately, that means that those of us with our reputations on the line are the ones who have the most skin in the game to keep people from doing stupid unilateralist things that make everyone in the community look bad.
I would prefer it if people would take that big scary step of saying they’re an EA or Christian or Brit or whatever, and then put in the work to improve your community’s reputation. Obviously open to hearing reasons why people shouldn’t identify as members of groups, though.
My perspective (which may not differ too much from yours—just thinking out loud, Shortform-style):
I try to avoid using “effective altruist” as a noun for what I think of as “members of the EA community” or “people interested in effective giving/work”, because I want the movement to feel very open to people who aren’t ready to label themselves in that way.*
For example:
I like thinking of EA Global as “a conference for people who share a small set of common principles and do a wide variety of different things that they believe to be aligned with those principles”, rather than “a conference for people who think of themselves as effective altruists”. If you come to our conference regularly, I default to seeing you as a member of our community unless you tell me otherwise, but I don’t default to seeing you as an “effective altruist”.
If you have strong and well-researched views on global health and development, I’d love to have you at my EA meetup even if you’re not very interested in the EA movement.
I support anyone who wants to identify themselves as an effective altruist, and I’m comfortable referring to myself as such, but I don’t feel any desire to push people toward adopting that term if their inclination is to answer “are you an EA?” by talking about their values and goals, rather than their group affiliation.
*There’s also the tricky bit where calling oneself “effective” could be taken to indicate that you’re relatively confident that you’re having a lot of impact compared to your available resources, which many people in the community aren’t, especially if they focus on more exploratory work/cause areas.
I don’t think having people label themselves with a noun—“Christian”, “dancer”, “student”—necessarily makes other people uncomfortable associating with them. I don’t think it’s wrong for people who aren’t Christians to attend church, but I also don’t think nobody referring to themselves as Christians would be a useful way to make people more comfortable at church. If you’re worried about people being uncomfortable at EAG, I think the name “EA” is the least likely to be causing the problem.
I don’t think there’s anything necessary or inevitable about it! My sentiments reflect things I’ve seen other people say (e.g. “I don’t know if I count as an ‘effective altruist’, I’m new here/don’t have belief X”), but how people feel about this and other identity questions is (of course) all over the map. And as I said, I have no problem with anyone referring to themselves as an effective altruist—I just don’t have a problem with the opposite, either.
To use the church analogy: If some people at a church call themselves “Christians”, others “Southern Baptists”, others “religious seekers”, others “spiritual”, and still others “agnostic/uncertain”, I wouldn’t expect that to make things less comfortable for newcomers. (Though attending Unitarian church as a kid might have left me biased in this area!)
I agree that there are many reasons someone might feel uncomfortable at a conference or community event, and I think we both see the particular question of when to use “effective altruist” is just one tiny facet of community cohesion.
In some cases, I think people feel that they have a nuanced position that isn’t captured by broad labels. I think that reasoning can go to far, however: if that argument is pushed far enough, no one will count as a socialist, postmodernist, effective altruist, etc. And as you imply, these kinds of broad categories are useful, even while in some respects imperfect.
Yep, makes sense to me! It’s difficult for me to identify with a particular denomination of Christianity because I grew up at a non-denominational church and since then I’ve attended 3 different denominations. So I definitely get the struggle to identify yourself when none of the usual labels quite fit! But I don’t have to be a complete mystery—at least I can still say I’m “Christian” or “Protestant”
Surely if someone doesn’t identify as an EA, their actions incur less reputational risk for the movement?
Yeah that’s probably true—I guess it goes both ways.