Thanks for your response. I tend to actually agree with a lot (but not all) of these points, so I totally own that some of this just needs clarification that wouldn’t be the case if I were clearer in my original post.
this means spending more resources on people who are “less elite” and less committed to EA
There’s a difference between actively recruiting from “less elite” sources and being carefully about your shopfronts so that they don’t put-off would-be effective altruists and create enemies of could-be allies. I’m pointing much more to the latter than the former (though I do think there’s value in the former too).
I’m not saying we should shun people for taking a suboptimal action, but we should be transparent about the fact that (a) some altruistic actions aren’t very good and don’t deserve celebration, and (b) some actions are good but only because they’re on the path to an impactful career.
I’m mostly saying we shouldn’t shun people for taking a suboptimal action. But also, be careful about how confident we are about what is suboptimal or not. And use to use positive reinforcement instead of good actions instead of guilting people for not reaching a particular standard. To recognise that we’re all on a journey and the destination isn’t always that clear anyway (Rob Wiblin thought it might not be a good idea for SBF to earn to give and I think that encouraging him to become a grantmaker at Open Philanthropy probably would have been a worse outcome).
Side note: There’s something pretty off-putting about treating the actions of altruistic people as purely a means to getting them into a particular predestined career. I think we lose good people when we treat them this way. We can seem like slimey salespeople.
Communication is hard. There’s a tradeoff between fidelity, brevity, scale, and speed
Again this is where you have different focuses in different places. Our shopfronts (e.g. effectivealtruism.org, fellowships, virtual programs, introductory presentations, personal interactions with community members and group leaders etc) start brief and concise with a clear path to dig deeper.
big-tent approach where we also need high scale
I think this is a central confusion with my post and I own I must not have communicated this well: big tent doesn’t mean actively increasing reach. Big tent means encouraging and showcasing the diversity that exists within the community so that people can see that we’re committed to the question of “how can we do the most good” not a specific set of answers.
someone asks whether volunteering in an animal shelter is “EA”, we should give well-reasoned arguments that there are probably higher-value things to do under almost every scope-sensitive moral view (perhaps starting from first principles if they’re new), not avoid looking dogmatic by telling them something largely false like “Some people might find higher impact at an animal shelter because they have comparative advantage / are much more motivated, and there could also be unknown unknowns that place really high value on the work at animal shelters”.
I agree! The former is a great response, the latter is not. I’d also say something along the lines of “you can have multiple goals and that’s fine” and that if the warm fuzzies is important and motivating for you then that’s great. I wouldn’t encourage someone to say it’s “EA” if it isn’t.
We should probably not come off as exclusionary when talking to new people.
Great! That’s one of my main points.
Taken to the extreme, avoiding the appearance of elitism would hamstring EA by taking away some of the most valuable direct and meta interventions.
I agree! I think we should just be judicious about it and bear in mind both (a) how perception of elitism can hurt us; and (b) when we miss out on great people because of unnecessary elitism that results in us achieving a lot less.
big tent doesn’t mean actively increasing reach. Big tent means encouraging and showcasing the diversity that exists within the community so that people can see that we’re committed to the question of “how can we do the most good” not a specific set of answers.
Thanks for your response. I tend to actually agree with a lot (but not all) of these points, so I totally own that some of this just needs clarification that wouldn’t be the case if I were clearer in my original post.
There’s a difference between actively recruiting from “less elite” sources and being carefully about your shopfronts so that they don’t put-off would-be effective altruists and create enemies of could-be allies. I’m pointing much more to the latter than the former (though I do think there’s value in the former too).
I’m mostly saying we shouldn’t shun people for taking a suboptimal action. But also, be careful about how confident we are about what is suboptimal or not. And use to use positive reinforcement instead of good actions instead of guilting people for not reaching a particular standard. To recognise that we’re all on a journey and the destination isn’t always that clear anyway (Rob Wiblin thought it might not be a good idea for SBF to earn to give and I think that encouraging him to become a grantmaker at Open Philanthropy probably would have been a worse outcome).
Side note: There’s something pretty off-putting about treating the actions of altruistic people as purely a means to getting them into a particular predestined career. I think we lose good people when we treat them this way. We can seem like slimey salespeople.
Again this is where you have different focuses in different places. Our shopfronts (e.g. effectivealtruism.org, fellowships, virtual programs, introductory presentations, personal interactions with community members and group leaders etc) start brief and concise with a clear path to dig deeper.
I think this is a central confusion with my post and I own I must not have communicated this well: big tent doesn’t mean actively increasing reach. Big tent means encouraging and showcasing the diversity that exists within the community so that people can see that we’re committed to the question of “how can we do the most good” not a specific set of answers.
I agree! The former is a great response, the latter is not. I’d also say something along the lines of “you can have multiple goals and that’s fine” and that if the warm fuzzies is important and motivating for you then that’s great. I wouldn’t encourage someone to say it’s “EA” if it isn’t.
Great! That’s one of my main points.
I agree! I think we should just be judicious about it and bear in mind both (a) how perception of elitism can hurt us; and (b) when we miss out on great people because of unnecessary elitism that results in us achieving a lot less.
Thanks, this clears up a lot for me.
Great! I definitely should have defined that up front!