I think I did a poor job of distinguishing what I call “institutional EA” (or “EA community building”) from EA (or “EA as an idea”). But basically, there’s a difference between the idea of attempting to do good using evidence (or whatever your definition of EA might be) and particular efforts to expand the circle of people who identify as/affiliate with effective altruists. The former is what I’m calling EA/idea of EA and the latter is community building.
As might be obvious from this description, there are many possible ways to do EA community building, which might have better or worse effects (and one could think that community building efforts on average will have positive or negative effects). My claim is that it is plausible that the set of EA community building efforts conducted to date plausibly may have had net negative effects.
I think I did a poor job of distinguishing what I call “institutional EA” (or “EA community building”) from EA (or “EA as an idea”). But basically, there’s a difference between the idea of attempting to do good using evidence (or whatever your definition of EA might be) and particular efforts to expand the circle of people who identify as/affiliate with effective altruists. The former is what I’m calling EA/idea of EA and the latter is community building.
As might be obvious from this description, there are many possible ways to do EA community building, which might have better or worse effects (and one could think that community building efforts on average will have positive or negative effects). My claim is that it is plausible that the set of EA community building efforts conducted to date plausibly may have had net negative effects.