This is a question I consider crucial in evaluating the work of organizations, so it’s sort of embarrassing I’ve never really tried to apply it to the community as a whole. Thanks for bringing that to light.
I think one thing uniting all your collapse scenarios is that they’re gradual. I wonder how much damage could be done to EA by a relatively sudden catastrophe, or perhaps a short-ish series of catastrophes. A collapse in community trust could be a big deal: say there was a fraud or embezzlement scandal at CEA, OPP, or GiveWell. I’m not sure that would be catastrophic by itself, but perhaps if several of the organizations were damaged at once it would make people skeptical about the wisdom of reforming around any new centre, which would make it much harder to co-ordinate.
Another thing that I see as a potential risk is high-level institutions having a pattern of low-key misbehaviour that people start to see (wrongly, I hope) as an inevitable consequence of the underlying ideas. Suppose the popular perception starts to be “thinking about effectiveness in charity is all well and good, but it inevitably leads down a road of voluntary extinction / techno-utopianism / eugenics / something else low-status or bad”. Depending on how bad the thing is, smart thoughtful people might start self-selecting out of the movement, and the remainder might mismanage perceptions of them even worse.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “high-level institutions having a pattern of low-key misbehavior”—are you talking about things like dishonesty and poor treatment of community members, or about endorsing ideas that violate most ethical frameworks?
The list of scenarios I originally brainstormed for this post did include some sudden catastrophes, but I ultimately decided to focus on these four. Here are the sudden ones anyway, in short form:
Economic recession: see this post. I think a recession could pose a real risk to the movement’s survival, since people who would have to drastically cut donations for multiple years might undergo value drift and be unlikely to re-prioritize giving in the future. Unfortunately, I’m definitely not qualified to give advice on economics or personal finance.
Scandal: I think EA is multipolar enough that a scandal involving a single org or prominent individual wouldn’t be enough to dissolve the movement, though it could definitely reduce trust, kill off that org, and cause some people to leave the community. We’ve certainly had, and survived, controversies in the past. However, I hadn’t thought about a scandal involving multiple orgs—that sounds much more dangerous, and it might be possible given how much they share information and personnel. I suppose the way to avoid this is for orgs to be as transparent as possible, which fortunately at least some of them are pretty good at.
Viral bad publicity: Of course, only a tiny percentage of content goes viral, so I think it’s very unlikely that a malicious hit piece or an incident with bad optics would become well-known enough to really hurt us. However, it’s much more possible that this could happen in a narrow domain such as a sector of academia. I’m pretty horrified at the thought of what would happen to us if it ever became embarrassing and career-thwarting to admit to being an EA.
Finally, the movement could collapse suddenly because its members all get paperclipped, but I figured I didn’t need to remind anyone of that :(
This is a question I consider crucial in evaluating the work of organizations, so it’s sort of embarrassing I’ve never really tried to apply it to the community as a whole. Thanks for bringing that to light.
I think one thing uniting all your collapse scenarios is that they’re gradual. I wonder how much damage could be done to EA by a relatively sudden catastrophe, or perhaps a short-ish series of catastrophes. A collapse in community trust could be a big deal: say there was a fraud or embezzlement scandal at CEA, OPP, or GiveWell. I’m not sure that would be catastrophic by itself, but perhaps if several of the organizations were damaged at once it would make people skeptical about the wisdom of reforming around any new centre, which would make it much harder to co-ordinate.
Another thing that I see as a potential risk is high-level institutions having a pattern of low-key misbehaviour that people start to see (wrongly, I hope) as an inevitable consequence of the underlying ideas. Suppose the popular perception starts to be “thinking about effectiveness in charity is all well and good, but it inevitably leads down a road of voluntary extinction / techno-utopianism / eugenics / something else low-status or bad”. Depending on how bad the thing is, smart thoughtful people might start self-selecting out of the movement, and the remainder might mismanage perceptions of them even worse.
Hi Ben!
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “high-level institutions having a pattern of low-key misbehavior”—are you talking about things like dishonesty and poor treatment of community members, or about endorsing ideas that violate most ethical frameworks?
The list of scenarios I originally brainstormed for this post did include some sudden catastrophes, but I ultimately decided to focus on these four. Here are the sudden ones anyway, in short form:
Economic recession: see this post. I think a recession could pose a real risk to the movement’s survival, since people who would have to drastically cut donations for multiple years might undergo value drift and be unlikely to re-prioritize giving in the future. Unfortunately, I’m definitely not qualified to give advice on economics or personal finance.
Scandal: I think EA is multipolar enough that a scandal involving a single org or prominent individual wouldn’t be enough to dissolve the movement, though it could definitely reduce trust, kill off that org, and cause some people to leave the community. We’ve certainly had, and survived, controversies in the past. However, I hadn’t thought about a scandal involving multiple orgs—that sounds much more dangerous, and it might be possible given how much they share information and personnel. I suppose the way to avoid this is for orgs to be as transparent as possible, which fortunately at least some of them are pretty good at.
Viral bad publicity: Of course, only a tiny percentage of content goes viral, so I think it’s very unlikely that a malicious hit piece or an incident with bad optics would become well-known enough to really hurt us. However, it’s much more possible that this could happen in a narrow domain such as a sector of academia. I’m pretty horrified at the thought of what would happen to us if it ever became embarrassing and career-thwarting to admit to being an EA.
Finally, the movement could collapse suddenly because its members all get paperclipped, but I figured I didn’t need to remind anyone of that :(