Dylan Matthews recently wrote an article about his impressions of EA Global. He claims the event gave disproportionate speaker privilege for talks on A.I. risk and safety research, which is contested. I personally agree with Ryan Carey that Mr. Matthews arguments countering concern for A.I. risk are weak. I don’t currently favor A.I. safety research among all causes, but I think better arguments and shortcomings then the ones Matthews puts forth already come from the rest of the community. Matthews’ points that stick for me are ones about the culture of effective altruism. He worries about how elitist, condescending, and dismissive effective altruists are of those prioritizing causes other than the one(s) they themselves prioritize. (In Mr. Matthews’ case, his perception is that A.I. risk and metacharity crowds are the biggest culprits).
As someone involved with effective altruism for three years, came in with no favored cause area and was attracted to the general idea of effective altruism, and has only become more emotionally and intellectually sympathetic to each cause as time goes on, reports lime Matthews’ frustrate me. While I don’t currently definitely favor one cause, I’m sympathetic to cause prioritization and policy reform across all causes, and would choose to put donations into a donor-advised one if I was currently actively donating. I’ve also discussed much with other effective altruists who share my experience of being cause-agnostic.
Watching the livestream of EA Global, speaker Jeff Sebo started by saying how grateful he was to be there and what he noticed was how everyone was so smart, like so much do from everyone it’s overwhelming. Not to say that others elsewhere aren’t as smart, or that smartness is the keystone quality of effective altruists, but that the concentration of so much in one day is awesome. That was my impression at the 2014 EA Summit, which I attended in person. Jeff and I and any other effective altruist gets this impression because large bodies of effective altruists don’t stick to their own cause-oriented tribes like an echo chamber. They talk to everyone about everything. So, here is a declaration for any effective altruist who thinks the persons in their cause are across the board more mature and act patronisingly to we your peers.
All my experience with effective altruism has taught me these aren’t justified attitudes. The densest crowd of nerds you’ll ever meet throws as much scrutiny as they do emotional investment at what they consider the most important intellectual and lifestyle conclusions they ever make. Effective altruists break the mould by being full of passionate intensity while lacking all conviction. They go on to resolve this by being infovores who read 10,000 word Wikipedia articles for fun. We’re all insatiably curious. The guilty pleasure of effective altruism is sometimes learning more than we need to know to save the world at the intersection of practical ethics, normative rationality, and every science is intensely satisfying. Beyond that, every dedicated effective altruist tends brush up on objections to their other and different favored causes on a routine basis. You’d think this would be prone to confirmation bias entrenching people into their current opinions more, and often it is, but iterative debating challenges them on that too so they try checking their biases. This is why some of us practically invented or at least honed the disciplines of evidence-based charity evaluation and cause prioritization. Effective altruists check their answers!
Each effective altruist you meet is Schroedinger’s Brainiac: you cannot justifiably conclude they don’t know what you’re talking about until they ask you to clarify, which they will. I’ve met so many animal rights activists who know about the philosophical arguments for prioritising existential risk reduction. The community is replete with computer programmers who will study philosophy and neuroscience in their spare time to figure out how much moral weight to grant animals vis a vis their own moral principles. Cognitive scientists and development economists and writers among us can follow each other’s arguments without hesitation. Any veteran effective altruist you meet, anyone who has been around for at least a few months, who hasn’t changed their mind on what cause they favor hasn’t done so for lack of trying.
Don’t assume some other effective altruists are naïve, wilfully ignorant, or unprepared to understand at least the surface-level reasoning behind your arguments. Don’t pat anyone on the head. Don’t condescend. Don’t just pay lip service to good faith, intellectual respect, and manners. All the top articles on this forum are about that. Don’t get motivatedly skeptical about someone’s level of commitment just because you can’t relate to their values. And don’t snidely mock anyone behind their backs because you think their beliefs are insane.
It’s not that these are forbidden or taboo behaviors orn attitudes. It’s not matter of political correctness. I’m not telling you to check your prejudice or your privilege. The average effective altruist knows enough about each aspect of the whole framework that convincing them of your perspective will be legitimately more challenging than an already skeptical or doubting layperson. It’s inaccurate to assume other effective altruists aren’t prepared to get deep into exploring both your end their beliefs on social impact and interdisciplinary thinking. Any of us comes of as silly and disrespectful for assuming anything less. So be prepared.
Dylan Matthews recently wrote an article about his impressions of EA Global. He claims the event gave disproportionate speaker privilege for talks on A.I. risk and safety research, which is contested. I personally agree with Ryan Carey that Mr. Matthews arguments countering concern for A.I. risk are weak. I don’t currently favor A.I. safety research among all causes, but I think better arguments and shortcomings then the ones Matthews puts forth already come from the rest of the community. Matthews’ points that stick for me are ones about the culture of effective altruism. He worries about how elitist, condescending, and dismissive effective altruists are of those prioritizing causes other than the one(s) they themselves prioritize. (In Mr. Matthews’ case, his perception is that A.I. risk and metacharity crowds are the biggest culprits).
As someone involved with effective altruism for three years, came in with no favored cause area and was attracted to the general idea of effective altruism, and has only become more emotionally and intellectually sympathetic to each cause as time goes on, reports lime Matthews’ frustrate me. While I don’t currently definitely favor one cause, I’m sympathetic to cause prioritization and policy reform across all causes, and would choose to put donations into a donor-advised one if I was currently actively donating. I’ve also discussed much with other effective altruists who share my experience of being cause-agnostic.
Watching the livestream of EA Global, speaker Jeff Sebo started by saying how grateful he was to be there and what he noticed was how everyone was so smart, like so much do from everyone it’s overwhelming. Not to say that others elsewhere aren’t as smart, or that smartness is the keystone quality of effective altruists, but that the concentration of so much in one day is awesome. That was my impression at the 2014 EA Summit, which I attended in person. Jeff and I and any other effective altruist gets this impression because large bodies of effective altruists don’t stick to their own cause-oriented tribes like an echo chamber. They talk to everyone about everything. So, here is a declaration for any effective altruist who thinks the persons in their cause are across the board more mature and act patronisingly to we your peers.
All my experience with effective altruism has taught me these aren’t justified attitudes. The densest crowd of nerds you’ll ever meet throws as much scrutiny as they do emotional investment at what they consider the most important intellectual and lifestyle conclusions they ever make. Effective altruists break the mould by being full of passionate intensity while lacking all conviction. They go on to resolve this by being infovores who read 10,000 word Wikipedia articles for fun. We’re all insatiably curious. The guilty pleasure of effective altruism is sometimes learning more than we need to know to save the world at the intersection of practical ethics, normative rationality, and every science is intensely satisfying. Beyond that, every dedicated effective altruist tends brush up on objections to their other and different favored causes on a routine basis. You’d think this would be prone to confirmation bias entrenching people into their current opinions more, and often it is, but iterative debating challenges them on that too so they try checking their biases. This is why some of us practically invented or at least honed the disciplines of evidence-based charity evaluation and cause prioritization. Effective altruists check their answers!
Each effective altruist you meet is Schroedinger’s Brainiac: you cannot justifiably conclude they don’t know what you’re talking about until they ask you to clarify, which they will. I’ve met so many animal rights activists who know about the philosophical arguments for prioritising existential risk reduction. The community is replete with computer programmers who will study philosophy and neuroscience in their spare time to figure out how much moral weight to grant animals vis a vis their own moral principles. Cognitive scientists and development economists and writers among us can follow each other’s arguments without hesitation. Any veteran effective altruist you meet, anyone who has been around for at least a few months, who hasn’t changed their mind on what cause they favor hasn’t done so for lack of trying.
Don’t assume some other effective altruists are naïve, wilfully ignorant, or unprepared to understand at least the surface-level reasoning behind your arguments. Don’t pat anyone on the head. Don’t condescend. Don’t just pay lip service to good faith, intellectual respect, and manners. All the top articles on this forum are about that. Don’t get motivatedly skeptical about someone’s level of commitment just because you can’t relate to their values. And don’t snidely mock anyone behind their backs because you think their beliefs are insane.
It’s not that these are forbidden or taboo behaviors orn attitudes. It’s not matter of political correctness. I’m not telling you to check your prejudice or your privilege. The average effective altruist knows enough about each aspect of the whole framework that convincing them of your perspective will be legitimately more challenging than an already skeptical or doubting layperson. It’s inaccurate to assume other effective altruists aren’t prepared to get deep into exploring both your end their beliefs on social impact and interdisciplinary thinking. Any of us comes of as silly and disrespectful for assuming anything less. So be prepared.