This is a great question that definitely sent me down abit of a rabbit hole and possibly diverts a little from my role at The Life You Can Save. I have personally been involved in the EA community to varying degrees since stumbling into an operations role at The Future of Humanity Institute back in 2016 before really having a good idea of what Effective Altruism was. As I am sure you can imagine, this led to an interesting couple of months while I got up to speed. Generally speaking, I have moved away from referring to myself and others as “Effective Altruists” as I much prefer the approach outlined by Helen Toner back in 2014 where she describes Effective Altruism not as an ideology but as the question of “How can I do the most good with the resources available to me?” I, personally, share Helen’s concern, at the time, that presenting Effective Altruism as an identity leads to questions of who fits in and what standard of behavior one needs to maintain to meet the bar. On tendency, I refer to myself as interested in Effective Altruism or sometimes as a member of the Effective Altruism community. Throughout my involvement but particularly recently when I founded WANBAM (the Women and Non-Binary Altruism Mentorship), I have updated that that seeing EA as an identity is really susceptible to invoking a hefty dose of imposter syndrome even in cases where it is obvious that the person is adding a huge amount of value to the EA communty/ its core focus area. I personally know a number of people who share this sentiment and might not identify as Effective Altruists (the noun) for these reasons. As such, I would be slightly reluctant to straw man “a typical EA.” The closest I would be prepared to go is to say that at the root of Effective Altruism is a commitment to doing what you reasonably can to make the world a better place and prioritizing a commitment to being guided in this pursuit not by assumptions of what seems best but through utilizing evidence and a depth of rigor I have never encountered before in comparable communities. These characteristics are shared by my team who while incredibly ideologically and demographically diverse, all share these foundational commitments.
Most of the people on The Life You Can Save’s team have significant experience in the for-profit sector, which I think is relatively rare in the EA community. Charlie Bresler, our Executive Director, used to be the President of the Men’s Wearhouse. And before I served as COO for an extended period, I spent ~10 years in the finance sector at Bridgewater Associates. So I think those experiences helped shape The Life You Can Save’s culture. For instance, I think due to the diversity of the backgrounds of our team members, we may engage with a significantly more diverse range of stakeholders on a day-to-day basis than many “typical” organizations in this field. The advantage of this is that it provides us with a variation and depth of expertise to draw upon when we are making strategic decisions about our organization’s mission and approach.
Additionally, our team is also, generally speaking, older than most of the EA community. I’m not sure I can point to specific things that causes us to know about, unless I go with a tongue-in-cheek answer like “what the 1980s were like”.
What are some things that everyone at TLYCS knows that typical EAs might not?
This is a great question that definitely sent me down abit of a rabbit hole and possibly diverts a little from my role at The Life You Can Save. I have personally been involved in the EA community to varying degrees since stumbling into an operations role at The Future of Humanity Institute back in 2016 before really having a good idea of what Effective Altruism was. As I am sure you can imagine, this led to an interesting couple of months while I got up to speed. Generally speaking, I have moved away from referring to myself and others as “Effective Altruists” as I much prefer the approach outlined by Helen Toner back in 2014 where she describes Effective Altruism not as an ideology but as the question of “How can I do the most good with the resources available to me?” I, personally, share Helen’s concern, at the time, that presenting Effective Altruism as an identity leads to questions of who fits in and what standard of behavior one needs to maintain to meet the bar. On tendency, I refer to myself as interested in Effective Altruism or sometimes as a member of the Effective Altruism community. Throughout my involvement but particularly recently when I founded WANBAM (the Women and Non-Binary Altruism Mentorship), I have updated that that seeing EA as an identity is really susceptible to invoking a hefty dose of imposter syndrome even in cases where it is obvious that the person is adding a huge amount of value to the EA communty/ its core focus area. I personally know a number of people who share this sentiment and might not identify as Effective Altruists (the noun) for these reasons. As such, I would be slightly reluctant to straw man “a typical EA.” The closest I would be prepared to go is to say that at the root of Effective Altruism is a commitment to doing what you reasonably can to make the world a better place and prioritizing a commitment to being guided in this pursuit not by assumptions of what seems best but through utilizing evidence and a depth of rigor I have never encountered before in comparable communities. These characteristics are shared by my team who while incredibly ideologically and demographically diverse, all share these foundational commitments.
Most of the people on The Life You Can Save’s team have significant experience in the for-profit sector, which I think is relatively rare in the EA community. Charlie Bresler, our Executive Director, used to be the President of the Men’s Wearhouse. And before I served as COO for an extended period, I spent ~10 years in the finance sector at Bridgewater Associates. So I think those experiences helped shape The Life You Can Save’s culture. For instance, I think due to the diversity of the backgrounds of our team members, we may engage with a significantly more diverse range of stakeholders on a day-to-day basis than many “typical” organizations in this field. The advantage of this is that it provides us with a variation and depth of expertise to draw upon when we are making strategic decisions about our organization’s mission and approach.
Additionally, our team is also, generally speaking, older than most of the EA community. I’m not sure I can point to specific things that causes us to know about, unless I go with a tongue-in-cheek answer like “what the 1980s were like”.