When I wrote this post back in 2014, the effective altruism movement was very different than it is today and I think this post was taken more seriously than I wanted it to be. I think generally speaking at the time, the EA movement was not yet taken seriously and I think it needed to appear a bit more “normal” and appeal more to mainstream sensibilities and get credibility / traction. But now, in 2022, I think the EA movement unequivocally has credibility / traction and the times now call for “keeping EA weird”—the movement has enough sustaining power now that we can afford to be weird and that this weirdness is an asset as it is what puts important but otherwise completely disregarded concepts on the map, such as AI risk, longtermism, invertebrate sentience, and digital sentience. I’m unsure if this post was net positive as a result and I think the concept has been very well refined and improved over the years in the comments.
When I wrote this post back in 2014, the effective altruism movement was very different than it is today and I think this post was taken more seriously than I wanted it to be. I think generally speaking at the time, the EA movement was not yet taken seriously and I think it needed to appear a bit more “normal” and appeal more to mainstream sensibilities and get credibility / traction. But now, in 2022, I think the EA movement unequivocally has credibility / traction and the times now call for “keeping EA weird”—the movement has enough sustaining power now that we can afford to be weird and that this weirdness is an asset as it is what puts important but otherwise completely disregarded concepts on the map, such as AI risk, longtermism, invertebrate sentience, and digital sentience. I’m unsure if this post was net positive as a result and I think the concept has been very well refined and improved over the years in the comments.