What I mean is that they have control over most of the things that get to define what EA means and what it contains. Eg: who attends and speaks at EAG, what content is on effectivealtruism.com, moderation policies on the forum.
The problem isn’t branding or communication, CEA objectively have a large amount of power over the movement. I accept that “leader” might not be the correct choice of words, and that they’re not exclusive in this role (as you observe, Open Phil similarly have a lot of power).
I’m also unconvinced that democratising is the way forward. But I think CEA either needs to take steps in this direction or stop making statements such as “we do not think of ourselves as having or wanting control over the EA community”.
Hi Joshua, I think you’re pointing at something important about CEA representing EA through programs like EAG and the Forum, and I want to acknowledge that that is something we do and that it’s a responsibility we take seriously. (I work in the Exec Office at CEA.)
These two posts give more detail about our approach:
My view is that our approach is consistent with not having or wanting control over the community, or being its de facto leader. Quite possibly you already agree with this based on your most recent comment above, but I wanted to share these resources in case you or other readers were not aware of them.
Thank you for those links. The decisions explained in the moderation and content curation policies are, in my view, extremely important and determine where a lot of EA discourse is. This happens either directly (eg: EAG speaking slots) or indirectly (eg: who gets filtered out when following EA intro materials). I do not think taking those decisions is compatiable with the idea that “we [CEA] do not think of ourselves as having or wanting control over the EA community”.
I appreciate the transparency of those policies being written down. However, they are still policies that are largely dictated to the community (eg: relying on experts determined by CEA more heavily than EA surveys).
What I mean is that they have control over most of the things that get to define what EA means and what it contains. Eg: who attends and speaks at EAG, what content is on effectivealtruism.com, moderation policies on the forum.
The problem isn’t branding or communication, CEA objectively have a large amount of power over the movement. I accept that “leader” might not be the correct choice of words, and that they’re not exclusive in this role (as you observe, Open Phil similarly have a lot of power).
I’m also unconvinced that democratising is the way forward. But I think CEA either needs to take steps in this direction or stop making statements such as “we do not think of ourselves as having or wanting control over the EA community”.
Hi Joshua, I think you’re pointing at something important about CEA representing EA through programs like EAG and the Forum, and I want to acknowledge that that is something we do and that it’s a responsibility we take seriously. (I work in the Exec Office at CEA.)
These two posts give more detail about our approach:
Core EA Principles
Moderation and Content Curation
My view is that our approach is consistent with not having or wanting control over the community, or being its de facto leader. Quite possibly you already agree with this based on your most recent comment above, but I wanted to share these resources in case you or other readers were not aware of them.
Thank you for those links. The decisions explained in the moderation and content curation policies are, in my view, extremely important and determine where a lot of EA discourse is. This happens either directly (eg: EAG speaking slots) or indirectly (eg: who gets filtered out when following EA intro materials). I do not think taking those decisions is compatiable with the idea that “we [CEA] do not think of ourselves as having or wanting control over the EA community”.
I appreciate the transparency of those policies being written down. However, they are still policies that are largely dictated to the community (eg: relying on experts determined by CEA more heavily than EA surveys).