I used to work for an organization in EA, and I am still quite active in the community.
1 - I’ve heard people say things like, ‘Sure, we say that effective altruism is about global poverty, but—wink, nod—that’s just what we do to get people in the door so that we can convert them to helping out with AI / animal suffering / (insert weird cause here).’ This disturbs me.
2 - In general, I think that EA should be a principle, not a ‘movement’ or set of organizations. I see no reason that religious charities wouldn’t benefit from exposure to EA principles, for example.
3 - I think that the recent post on ‘Ra’ was in many respects misguided, and that in fact a lack of ‘eliteness’ (or at least some components of it) is one of the main problems with many EA organizations.
There’s a saying, I think from Eliezer, that ‘the important things are accomplished not by those best suited to do them, or by those who ought to be responsible for doing them, but by whoever actually shows up.’ That saying is true, but people seem to use this as an excuse sometimes. There’s not really any reason for EA organizations to be as unprofessional and inefficient as they are. I’m not saying that we should all be nine-to-fivers, but I’d be very excited to see the version of the Centre for Effective Altruism or the Center for Applied Rationality that cared a lot about being an elite team that’s really actually trying to get things done, rather than the version that’s sorta ad-hoc ‘these are the people who showed up.’
4 - Things are currently spread over way too many sources: Facebook, LessWrong, the EA Forum, various personal blogs, etc.
Rob Bensinger replied:
I’d be interested to hear more about examples of things that CEA / CFAR / etc. would do differently if they were ‘an elite team that’s really actually trying to get things done’; some concreteness there might help clarify what the poster has in mind when they say there are good things about Ra that EA would benefit from cultivating.
For people who haven’t read the post, since it keeps coming up in this thread: my impression is that ‘Ra’ is meant to refer to something like ‘impersonal, generic prestige,’ a vague drive toward superficially objective-seeming, respectable-seeming things. Quoting Sarah’s post:
“Ra involves seeing abstract, impersonal institutions as more legitimate than individuals. For instance, I have the intuition that it is gross and degrading to pay an individual person to clean your house, but less so to hire a maid service, and still less so if a building that belongs to an institution hires a janitor. Institutions can have authority and legitimacy in a way that humans cannot; humans who serve institutions serve Ra.
“Seen through Ra-goggles, giving money to some particular man to spend on the causes he thinks best is weird and disturbing; putting money into a foundation, to exist in perpetuity, is respectable and appropriate. The impression that it is run collectively, by ‘the institution’ rather than any individual persons, makes it seem more Ra-like, and therefore more appealing. [...]
“If Horus, the far-sighted, kingly bird, represents “clear brightness” and “being the rightful and just ruler”, then Ra is a sort of fake version of these qualities. Instead of the light that distinguishes, it’s the light too bright to look at. Instead of clear brightness, it’s smooth brightness.
“Instead of objectivity, excellence, justice, all the “daylight” virtues associated with Horus (what you might also call Apollonian virtues), Ra represents something that’s also shiny and authoritative and has the aesthetic of the daylight virtues, but in an unreal form.
“Instead of science, Ra chooses scientism. Instead of systematization and explicit legibility, Ra chooses an impression of abstract generality which, upon inspection, turns out to be zillions of ad hoc special cases. Instead of impartial justice, Ra chooses a policy of signaling propriety and eliteness and lack of conflicts of interest. Instead of excellence pointed at a goal, Ra chooses virtuosity kept as an ornament.
“(Auden’s version of Apollo is probably Ra imitating the Apollonian virtues. The leadership-oriented, sunnily pragmatic, technological approach to intellectual affairs is not always phony — it’s just that it’s the first to be corrupted by phonies.)
“Horus is not Ra. Horus likes organization, clarity, intelligence, money, excellence, and power — and these things are genuinely valuable. If you want to accomplish big goals, it is perfectly rational to seek them, because they’re force multipliers. Pursuit of force multipliers — that is, pursuit of power — is not inherently Ra. There is nothing Ra-like, for instance, about noticing that software is a fully general force multiplier and trying to invest in or make better software. Ra comes in when you start admiring force multipliers for no specific goal, just because they’re shiny.
“Ra is not the disposition to seek power for some goal, but the disposition to approve of power and to divert it into arbitrariness. It is very much NOT Machiavellian; Machiavelli would think it was foolish.”
Nick Tarleton replied:
Huh. I really like and agree with the post about Ra, but also agree that there are things about… being a grown-up organization?… that some EA orgs I’m aware of have been seriously deficient in in the past. I don’t know whether some still are; it seems likely a priori. I can see how a focus on avoiding Ra could cause neglect of those things, but I still think avoiding Ra is critically important, it just needs to be done smarter than that. (Calling the thing ‘eliteness’, or positively associating it with Ra, feels like a serious mistake, though I can’t articulate all of my reasons why, other than that it seems likely to encourage focusing on image over substance. I think calling it ‘grown-upness’ can encourage that as well, and I don’t know of a framing that wouldn’t (this is an easy thing to mistake image for / do fronting about, and focusing on substance over image seems like an irreducible skill / mental posture), but ‘eliteness’ feels particularly bad. ‘Professionalism’ feels in between.)
Anonymous #23 replied:
CEA’s internal structure is very ad-hoc and overly focused on event planning and coordination, at least in my view. It also isn’t clear that what they’re doing is useful. I don’t really see the value add of CEA over what Leverage was doing back when Leverage ran the EA Summit.
Most of the cool stuff coming out of the CEA-sphere seems to be done by volunteers anyway. This is not to denigrate their staff, just to question ‘Where’s the beef?’ when you have 20+ people on the team.
For that matter, why do conversations like these mostly happen on meme groups and private Facebook walls instead of being facilitated or supported by CEA?
Looking at the CFAR website, it seems like they have something like 14-15 employees, contractors, and instructors, of which only 3-4 have research as part of their job? That’s… not a good ratio for an organization with a mission that relies on research, and maybe this explains why there hasn’t been too much cool new content coming out of that sector?
To put things another way, I don’t have a sense of rapid progress being made by these organizations, and I suspect that it could be with the right priorities. MIRI certainly has its foibles, but if you look over there it seems like they’re much more focused/productive, and it’s readily apparent how each of their staffers contributes to the primary objective. Were I to join MIRI, I think I would have a clear sense of, ‘Here I am, part of a crack team working to solve this big problem. Here’s how we’re doing it.’ I don’t get that sense from any other EA organizations.
As for ‘Ra,’ it’s not that I think fake prestige is good; it’s that I think people way overcorrect, shying away from valid prestige in the name of avoiding fake prestige. This might be a reflection of the Bay Area and Oxford ‘intellectual techie’ crowds more than EA in general, but it’s silly any way you slice it.
I want an EA org whose hiring pitch is: ‘We’re the team that is going to solve (insert problem), and if you join us everyone you work with will be smart, dedicated, and hardworking. We don’t pay as much as the private sector, but you’ll do a ton more, with better people, more autonomy, and for a better cause. If that sounds good, we’d love to talk to you.’
This is a fairly ‘Ra’-flavored pitch, and obviously it has to actually be true, but I think a lot of EAs shy away from aiming for this sort of thing, and instead wind up with a style that actually favors ‘scrappiness’ and ‘we’re the ones who showed up.’ I bet my pitch gets better people.
Anonymous #23:
Rob Bensinger replied:
Nick Tarleton replied:
Anonymous #23 replied:
Julia Wise of CEA replied: