Rutger Bregman isn’t on the Forum, but sent me this message and gave me permission to share:
Great piece! I strongly agree with your point about PR. EA should just be EA, like the Quakers just had to be Quakers and Peter Singer should just be Peter Singer.
Of course EA had to learn big lessons from the FTX saga. But those were moral and practical lessons so that the movement could be proud of itself again. Not PR-lessons. The best people are drawn to EA not because it’s the coolest thing on campus, but because it’s a magnet for the most morally serious + the smartest people.
As you know, I think EA is at it’s best when it’s really effective altruism (“I deeply care about all the bad stuff in the world, desperately want to make it difference, so I gotta think really fcking hard about how I can make the biggest possible difference”) and not altruistic rationalism (“I’m super smart, and I might as well do a lot of good with it”).
This ideal version EA won’t appeal to all super talented people of course, but that’s fine. Other people can build other movements for that. (It’s what we’re trying to do at The School for Moral Ambition..)
Rutger Bregman isn’t on the Forum, but sent me this message and gave me permission to share: