I think some of the gain from using language that appeals to this flavor of left wing students/activists …
… will come at the cost of turning off people who find this stuff (woolly language, emotion and enecdotr over logic, blaming/shaming people born into the dominant group, criticising ‘white saviours’ etc.) repugnant.
The people turned off by this stuff may not speak up about it, because it makes them a target. But I suspect that many people are indeed in this category. And the fact that EA doesn’t doing this stuff/doesn’t speak this language … is a hidden strength and an appealing feature we should not lightly discard.
Ya maybe if your fellows span a broad political spectrum, then you risk alienating some and you have to prioritize. But the way these conversations actually go in my experience is that one fellow raises an objection, eg “I don’t trust charities to have the best interests of the people they serve at heart.” And then it falls to the facilitator to respond to this objection, eg “yes, PlayPumps illustrates this exact problem, and EA is interested in improving these standards so charities are actually accountable to the people they serve,” etc.
My sense is that the other fellows during this interaction will listen respectfully, but they will understand that the interaction is a response to one person’s idiosyncratic qualms, and that the facilitator is tailoring their response to that person’s perspective. The interaction is circumscribed by that context, and the other fellows don’t come away with the impression that EA only cares about accountability. In other words, the burden of representation is suspended somewhat in these interactions.
If we were writing an Intro to EA Guide, for example, I think we would have to be much more careful about the political bent of our language because the genre would be different.
That makes sense in that context. Still I think that generally bringing in people to EA under the pretence that it is substantially lefty in these ways and accommodating to this style of discourse could have possibly negative consequences. If these people join and use this language in explaining EA to others it might end up turning others off.
I think some of the gain from using language that appeals to this flavor of left wing students/activists … … will come at the cost of turning off people who find this stuff (woolly language, emotion and enecdotr over logic, blaming/shaming people born into the dominant group, criticising ‘white saviours’ etc.) repugnant.
The people turned off by this stuff may not speak up about it, because it makes them a target. But I suspect that many people are indeed in this category. And the fact that EA doesn’t doing this stuff/doesn’t speak this language … is a hidden strength and an appealing feature we should not lightly discard.
Ya maybe if your fellows span a broad political spectrum, then you risk alienating some and you have to prioritize. But the way these conversations actually go in my experience is that one fellow raises an objection, eg “I don’t trust charities to have the best interests of the people they serve at heart.” And then it falls to the facilitator to respond to this objection, eg “yes, PlayPumps illustrates this exact problem, and EA is interested in improving these standards so charities are actually accountable to the people they serve,” etc.
My sense is that the other fellows during this interaction will listen respectfully, but they will understand that the interaction is a response to one person’s idiosyncratic qualms, and that the facilitator is tailoring their response to that person’s perspective. The interaction is circumscribed by that context, and the other fellows don’t come away with the impression that EA only cares about accountability. In other words, the burden of representation is suspended somewhat in these interactions.
If we were writing an Intro to EA Guide, for example, I think we would have to be much more careful about the political bent of our language because the genre would be different.
That makes sense in that context. Still I think that generally bringing in people to EA under the pretence that it is substantially lefty in these ways and accommodating to this style of discourse could have possibly negative consequences. If these people join and use this language in explaining EA to others it might end up turning others off.