I am also quite sad that EA has a less positive reputation than it did/could/‘should’. I think EA ideas and communities being high-status and widely admired would be good for the world. And I think to make that happen it is useful for the the Rutger Bregman’s and Yuval Harari’s of the world to be public about EA-ish things. For ‘normal’ people like us without a lot of name recognition or large online following, my guess is that EA community building is best done just by talking with friends and acquaintances, than by having a quite EA online presence.
So where I have come down so far is to be quite open and forthcoming about my EA-ness in person, and to have some EA markings online (GWWC diamond on LinkedIn etc) but I semi-recently removed my surname from my EAF account. I think this is mainly a tail-risk insurance policy and will probably not be useful/important, but even a ~5% chance of the EA community’s reputation deteriorating further and me wanting to get a non-EA job later means this very weak partial anonymisation is worth it. But I’m not at all sure about that, maybe there are important benefits to having a bio on the EAF about who I am and linking to my LinkedIn profile and so forth (though my guess is most people reading something I write on the Forum would be able to fairly quickly find/infer my surname if they want to).
I was surprised to see you mention at the end you didn’t get a job offer partially because of being publicly EA as this seems to cut against your thesis? I think you are saying that the benefits are just large enough that that cost is bearable. Which makes sense, but not getting a job offer seems like quite a big cost to me, or at least that is something I care a lot about.
Bregman and Harari are exactly examples of tokens, and being open about your EA-ness to friends is detokenizing them I think, so I do agree with you on this being part of the solution.
I don’t think me not having a job offer cuts against my thesis:
It’s not that simple and there’s more to the story
My point is, I was frustrated, but I think being honest about my EA affiliation is not something I would trade against a job—if someone doesn’t want me because of that, I’d probably be better off somewhere else. There will be other impactful opportunities, some of them with a better value-alignment factor.
I can say that also because I was not in a precarious financial situation.
It’s also a point supporting something like “I have experienced this myself and don’t regret it” (it happened 9 months ago and I’m perfectly satisfied of where I am today, despite this happening).
I think many others will make different tradeoffs, and that’s okay. I am merely advocating for shifting the norm and questioning one’s motivations more explicitly, instead of defaulting to this behavior as if it was harmless.
I am also quite sad that EA has a less positive reputation than it did/could/‘should’. I think EA ideas and communities being high-status and widely admired would be good for the world. And I think to make that happen it is useful for the the Rutger Bregman’s and Yuval Harari’s of the world to be public about EA-ish things. For ‘normal’ people like us without a lot of name recognition or large online following, my guess is that EA community building is best done just by talking with friends and acquaintances, than by having a quite EA online presence.
So where I have come down so far is to be quite open and forthcoming about my EA-ness in person, and to have some EA markings online (GWWC diamond on LinkedIn etc) but I semi-recently removed my surname from my EAF account. I think this is mainly a tail-risk insurance policy and will probably not be useful/important, but even a ~5% chance of the EA community’s reputation deteriorating further and me wanting to get a non-EA job later means this very weak partial anonymisation is worth it. But I’m not at all sure about that, maybe there are important benefits to having a bio on the EAF about who I am and linking to my LinkedIn profile and so forth (though my guess is most people reading something I write on the Forum would be able to fairly quickly find/infer my surname if they want to).
I was surprised to see you mention at the end you didn’t get a job offer partially because of being publicly EA as this seems to cut against your thesis? I think you are saying that the benefits are just large enough that that cost is bearable. Which makes sense, but not getting a job offer seems like quite a big cost to me, or at least that is something I care a lot about.
Thanks Oscar for sharing this! A few points:
Bregman and Harari are exactly examples of tokens, and being open about your EA-ness to friends is detokenizing them I think, so I do agree with you on this being part of the solution.
I don’t think me not having a job offer cuts against my thesis:
It’s not that simple and there’s more to the story
My point is, I was frustrated, but I think being honest about my EA affiliation is not something I would trade against a job—if someone doesn’t want me because of that, I’d probably be better off somewhere else. There will be other impactful opportunities, some of them with a better value-alignment factor.
I can say that also because I was not in a precarious financial situation.
It’s also a point supporting something like “I have experienced this myself and don’t regret it” (it happened 9 months ago and I’m perfectly satisfied of where I am today, despite this happening).
I think many others will make different tradeoffs, and that’s okay. I am merely advocating for shifting the norm and questioning one’s motivations more explicitly, instead of defaulting to this behavior as if it was harmless.