My initial exposure to effective altruism was a more philosophically-oriented forum post on longtermism. At the time, I remembered thinking that (a) the philosophical claims being made don’t seem nearly as exciting or novel as the rhetoric in the article presented them to be, and (b) it came across as techno-futurist gobbledygook. At the time, I thought it was just some dude’s blog post, and didn’t understand that it was a social movement, a community of people trying to do good, somewhere I could go to get advice and support to achieving those goals.
A few years later, unfortunate developments in my church community pushed me to start looking for something else, more ethically serious than the church I had been a part of, and I found GiveWell basically from first principles—I wanted to give my money to somewhere that would use it effectively to mitigate the suffering of real people in dire circumstances. I also, along with a lot of people in the broader tech industry, became much more cognizant of AI developments, so when I returned to this forum a second time, it all made sense, and I could see what I’m missing. The longtermism thing no longer seemed so strange, and I was able to appreciate more the challenge of applying these simply ethical principles to the real world.
If I’m hard on the movement sociologically, its because I think that the communal element is important. I’m a human being. How am I going to maintain resolve to do good, to avoid life style creep, to reduce animal product consumption, etc., if I don’t have other people to show me the way, to encourage me, and to mentor? These ethical principles are largely straightforward, and available to all rational people to embrace. But is there an alternative society of likeminded individuals waiting to embrace everyman?
My initial exposure to effective altruism was a more philosophically-oriented forum post on longtermism. At the time, I remembered thinking that (a) the philosophical claims being made don’t seem nearly as exciting or novel as the rhetoric in the article presented them to be, and (b) it came across as techno-futurist gobbledygook. At the time, I thought it was just some dude’s blog post, and didn’t understand that it was a social movement, a community of people trying to do good, somewhere I could go to get advice and support to achieving those goals.
A few years later, unfortunate developments in my church community pushed me to start looking for something else, more ethically serious than the church I had been a part of, and I found GiveWell basically from first principles—I wanted to give my money to somewhere that would use it effectively to mitigate the suffering of real people in dire circumstances. I also, along with a lot of people in the broader tech industry, became much more cognizant of AI developments, so when I returned to this forum a second time, it all made sense, and I could see what I’m missing. The longtermism thing no longer seemed so strange, and I was able to appreciate more the challenge of applying these simply ethical principles to the real world.
If I’m hard on the movement sociologically, its because I think that the communal element is important. I’m a human being. How am I going to maintain resolve to do good, to avoid life style creep, to reduce animal product consumption, etc., if I don’t have other people to show me the way, to encourage me, and to mentor? These ethical principles are largely straightforward, and available to all rational people to embrace. But is there an alternative society of likeminded individuals waiting to embrace everyman?