It is not clear to me that EA branding is net positive for the movement overall or if it’s been tarnished beyond repair by various scandals. Like, it might be that people should make a small personal sacrifice to be publicly EA, but it might also be that the pragmatic collective action is to completely rebrand and/or hope that EA provides a positive radical flank effect.
The reputation of EA at least in the news and on Twitter is pretty bad; something like 90% of the news articles mentioning EA are negative. I do not think it inherently compromises integrity to not publicly associate with EA even if you agree with most EA beliefs, because people who read opinion pieces will assume you agree with everything FTX did, or are a Luddite, or have some other strawman beliefs. I don’t know whether EAF readers calling themselves EAs would make others’ beliefs about their moral stances more or less accurate.
I don’t think this is currently true, but if the rate of scandals continues, anyone holding on to the EA label would be suffering from the toxoplasma of rage, where the EA meme survives by sounding slightly good to the ingroup but extremely negative to anyone else. Therefore, as someone who is disillusioned with the EA community but not various principles, I need to see some data before owning any sort of EA affiliation, to know I’m not making some anti-useful sacrifice.
Thanks for sharing! I’m honestly not sure what to answer to this, I feel some of your doubts / points are already addressed in the post. I guess it’s where the crux is, whether you believe increasing diversity of representation would be positive for the movement as a way to show others that EA is not a sticker that absolutely defines the whole set of beliefs/values of a person, or not. Maybe I’ll change my mind in the future about this. But I probably still want to advocate for making the decision to “not affiliate” intentional, when it could just be a non-decision, a default.
It is not clear to me that EA branding is net positive for the movement overall or if it’s been tarnished beyond repair by various scandals. Like, it might be that people should make a small personal sacrifice to be publicly EA, but it might also be that the pragmatic collective action is to completely rebrand and/or hope that EA provides a positive radical flank effect.
The reputation of EA at least in the news and on Twitter is pretty bad; something like 90% of the news articles mentioning EA are negative. I do not think it inherently compromises integrity to not publicly associate with EA even if you agree with most EA beliefs, because people who read opinion pieces will assume you agree with everything FTX did, or are a Luddite, or have some other strawman beliefs. I don’t know whether EAF readers calling themselves EAs would make others’ beliefs about their moral stances more or less accurate.
I don’t think this is currently true, but if the rate of scandals continues, anyone holding on to the EA label would be suffering from the toxoplasma of rage, where the EA meme survives by sounding slightly good to the ingroup but extremely negative to anyone else. Therefore, as someone who is disillusioned with the EA community but not various principles, I need to see some data before owning any sort of EA affiliation, to know I’m not making some anti-useful sacrifice.
Thanks for sharing! I’m honestly not sure what to answer to this, I feel some of your doubts / points are already addressed in the post. I guess it’s where the crux is, whether you believe increasing diversity of representation would be positive for the movement as a way to show others that EA is not a sticker that absolutely defines the whole set of beliefs/values of a person, or not. Maybe I’ll change my mind in the future about this. But I probably still want to advocate for making the decision to “not affiliate” intentional, when it could just be a non-decision, a default.
The Pulse survey has now basically allayed all of my concerns.
Can you elaborate? I’m not sure to get what you mean.