I canāt speak for the choice of principles themselves, but can give some context on why the change was made in the intro essay (and clarify a mistake I made).
There are different versions of EA principles online. One version was CEAās guiding principles you mention from 2017, and had endorsement from some other organisations. CEA added a new intro essay to effectivealtruism.org in 2022, with a different variation of a list of principles and Ben Todd as a main author: you can read the Forum post announcing the new essay here, and see the archived version here.
After Zachās post outlining the set of principles that are core to CEAās principles-first approach (that had existed for some time and been published on the CEA website, but not on effectivealtruism.org), we updated them in the intro essay for consistency. I also find Zachās footnotehelpful context:
āThis list of principles isnāt totally exhaustive. For example,CEAās website lists a number of āother principles and toolsā below these core four principles and āWhat is Effective Altruism?ā lists principles like ācollaborative spiritā, but many of them seem to be ancillary or downstream of the core principles. There are also other principles likeintegrity that seem both true and extremely important to me, but also seem to be less unique to EA compared to the four core principles (e.g. I think many other communities would also embrace integrity as a principle).ā
I also want to say thanks to you (and @Kestrelšø) for pointing out that collaborative spirit is no longer mentioned, that was actually a mistake! When we updated the principles in the essay we still wanted to reference collaborative spirit, but I left that paragraph out by mistake. Iāve now added it:
āItās often possible to achieve more by working together, and doing this effectively requires high standards of honesty, integrity, and compassion. Effective altruism does not mean supporting āends justify the meansā reasoning, but rather is about being a good citizen, while ambitiously working toward a better world.ā
I think that infighting is a major reason why EA and many similar movements achieve far less than they could. I really like when EA is a place where people with very different beliefs who prioritise very different projects can collaborate productively, and I think itās a major reason for its success. It seems more unique/āspecific than acknodwledging tradeoffs, more important to have explicitly written as a core value to prevent the community from drifting away from it, and a great value proposition.
As James, I also found it weird that what had become a canonical definition of EA was changed without a heads-up to its community.
In any case, thank you so much for all your work, and Iām grateful that thanks to you it survives as a paragraph in the essay.
Itās really important to me, as I can sometimes find that the (non-EA) charity and government world is a bunch of status-based competition over funding pots that encourages flattery and truth distortions and bitterness.
And, ok, EA can be like that as well, but ideally it isnātāideally weād be totally happy for our pet project to get cancelled and the money reallocated to doing a similar thing more efficiently. And also to uphold the people this happens to, recognising their inherent worth as community members and collaborators.
Last week I had a discussion about the core principles with someone at our EA office in Amsterdam. She also liked ācollaborative spiritā. I remembered this discussion and decided to check it again and see that you decided to add this in the intro essay. Thatās great! Shouldnāt it then also be added on the ācore principlesā page? (Or am I overlooking something?)
I canāt speak for the choice of principles themselves, but can give some context on why the change was made in the intro essay (and clarify a mistake I made).
There are different versions of EA principles online. One version was CEAās guiding principles you mention from 2017, and had endorsement from some other organisations. CEA added a new intro essay to effectivealtruism.org in 2022, with a different variation of a list of principles and Ben Todd as a main author: you can read the Forum post announcing the new essay here, and see the archived version here.
After Zachās post outlining the set of principles that are core to CEAās principles-first approach (that had existed for some time and been published on the CEA website, but not on effectivealtruism.org), we updated them in the intro essay for consistency. I also find Zachās footnotehelpful context:
āThis list of principles isnāt totally exhaustive. For example, CEAās website lists a number of āother principles and toolsā below these core four principles and āWhat is Effective Altruism?ā lists principles like ācollaborative spiritā, but many of them seem to be ancillary or downstream of the core principles. There are also other principles like integrity that seem both true and extremely important to me, but also seem to be less unique to EA compared to the four core principles (e.g. I think many other communities would also embrace integrity as a principle).ā
I also want to say thanks to you (and @Kestrelšø) for pointing out that collaborative spirit is no longer mentioned, that was actually a mistake! When we updated the principles in the essay we still wanted to reference collaborative spirit, but I left that paragraph out by mistake. Iāve now added it:
āItās often possible to achieve more by working together, and doing this effectively requires high standards of honesty, integrity, and compassion. Effective altruism does not mean supporting āends justify the meansā reasoning, but rather is about being a good citizen, while ambitiously working toward a better world.ā
Thanks for taking the time to provide this context!
Quick flag that the FAQ right below hasnāt been updated
Not sure how useful this is, and you mentioned you canāt speak for the choice of principles, but sharing on a personal note that the collaborative spirit value was one of the things I appreciated the most about EA when I first came across it.
I think that infighting is a major reason why EA and many similar movements achieve far less than they could. I really like when EA is a place where people with very different beliefs who prioritise very different projects can collaborate productively, and I think itās a major reason for its success. It seems more unique/āspecific than acknodwledging tradeoffs, more important to have explicitly written as a core value to prevent the community from drifting away from it, and a great value proposition.
As James, I also found it weird that what had become a canonical definition of EA was changed without a heads-up to its community.
In any case, thank you so much for all your work, and Iām grateful that thanks to you it survives as a paragraph in the essay.
Thanks for putting it back!
Itās really important to me, as I can sometimes find that the (non-EA) charity and government world is a bunch of status-based competition over funding pots that encourages flattery and truth distortions and bitterness.
And, ok, EA can be like that as well, but ideally it isnātāideally weād be totally happy for our pet project to get cancelled and the money reallocated to doing a similar thing more efficiently. And also to uphold the people this happens to, recognising their inherent worth as community members and collaborators.
Hi @Agnes Stenlund šø ,
Last week I had a discussion about the core principles with someone at our EA office in Amsterdam. She also liked ācollaborative spiritā. I remembered this discussion and decided to check it again and see that you decided to add this in the intro essay. Thatās great! Shouldnāt it then also be added on the ācore principlesā page? (Or am I overlooking something?)