Thanks for writing this. I just wanted to quickly respond with some thoughts from my phone.
I currently like the norm of not publicly affiliating with EA but its something Iâve changed my mind about a few times.
Some reasons
I think EA succeeds when it is no longer a movement and simply a general held value system (i.e., that itâs good to do good and try to be effective and to have a wide moral circle). I think that many of our insights and practices are valuable and underused. I think we disseminate these most effectively when they are unbranded.
This is why: Any group identity creates a brand and opportunities for attacking the brand of that group and doing damage by association.
Additionally, if you present as being in a group then you are either classed as ingroup or outgroup. Which group your in overwhelmingly affects peopleâs receptiveness to you and your goals. For many people EA presents as a threatening outgroup which makes them feel judgement and pressure.
Many people who might be receptive to the idea of counterfactural or cost effectiveness related reasoning if it has a neutral source but unreceptive to it if they believe it comes from effective altruism.
I think most people care about progress on salient issues not effective altruism in the abstract. People are much more likely to be interested in philosophy which helps them to achieve a goal of reducing animal suffering or mental health issues or AI risks than figuring out how to be more effective at doing good.
What I think we should do
I think we should say things like I have been influenced by effective altruism, or reading doing good better really changed my mind about X but I think we should avoid presenting as EAs.
This seems consistent with my other behaviour. I donât call myself a feminist, consequentialist, animal welfare activist or longtermist etc, but these are all ideas/âvalues which influenced me a lot.
I previously discussed the idea of fractional movement building and I think that that is still probably the best approach for EA to have more impact via influence on others. Basically you work on a thing that you think is important (e.g., a cause area) and allocate some fraction of your time to try to help other people to work on that thing or other things which are EA aligned.
So rather than being an EA affiliated movement builder you might be researcher trying to understand how to have some type of positive impact (e.g. reducing risks from AI) and navigating the world with that as your superficial identity. You can still organise events and provide support with that identity and personal brand and there no brand risk or association to worry about. You can mention your EA interest where relevant and useful.
And to be clear I think that people who are clearly ea-affiliated are doing good work and mostly arenât at any risk of major career damage etc. I just think that we might be able to achieve more if we worked in ways that they pattern matched better to more widely accepted and unbranded routes to impact (e.g., researcher or entrepreneur etc) than to activist/âmovement building type groups which are more associated with bad actors (e.g. cults and scams)
Of course these are not strong beliefs and I could easily change them as I have before.
Thank you very much for taking the time to write this.
I generally donât feel disagreement with what you say, I donât think itâs completely opposed to what Iâm advocating for. I feel that thereâs a huge deal of interpretation around the words used, here âaffiliationâ (and as mentioned at the beginning of the post, not âidentityâ).
I do think more people âaffiliatingâ will make EA less of an ingroup /â outgroup, and more of a philosophy (a âgeneral held value systemâ as you say in the beginning) people adhere to to some extent, esp if framed as âthis is a community that inspires me, those are ideas that are influencing my actionsâ.
Thanks for writing this. I just wanted to quickly respond with some thoughts from my phone.
I currently like the norm of not publicly affiliating with EA but its something Iâve changed my mind about a few times.
Some reasons
I think EA succeeds when it is no longer a movement and simply a general held value system (i.e., that itâs good to do good and try to be effective and to have a wide moral circle). I think that many of our insights and practices are valuable and underused. I think we disseminate these most effectively when they are unbranded.
This is why: Any group identity creates a brand and opportunities for attacking the brand of that group and doing damage by association.
Additionally, if you present as being in a group then you are either classed as ingroup or outgroup. Which group your in overwhelmingly affects peopleâs receptiveness to you and your goals. For many people EA presents as a threatening outgroup which makes them feel judgement and pressure.
Many people who might be receptive to the idea of counterfactural or cost effectiveness related reasoning if it has a neutral source but unreceptive to it if they believe it comes from effective altruism.
I think most people care about progress on salient issues not effective altruism in the abstract. People are much more likely to be interested in philosophy which helps them to achieve a goal of reducing animal suffering or mental health issues or AI risks than figuring out how to be more effective at doing good.
What I think we should do
I think we should say things like I have been influenced by effective altruism, or reading doing good better really changed my mind about X but I think we should avoid presenting as EAs.
This seems consistent with my other behaviour. I donât call myself a feminist, consequentialist, animal welfare activist or longtermist etc, but these are all ideas/âvalues which influenced me a lot.
I previously discussed the idea of fractional movement building and I think that that is still probably the best approach for EA to have more impact via influence on others. Basically you work on a thing that you think is important (e.g., a cause area) and allocate some fraction of your time to try to help other people to work on that thing or other things which are EA aligned.
So rather than being an EA affiliated movement builder you might be researcher trying to understand how to have some type of positive impact (e.g. reducing risks from AI) and navigating the world with that as your superficial identity. You can still organise events and provide support with that identity and personal brand and there no brand risk or association to worry about. You can mention your EA interest where relevant and useful.
And to be clear I think that people who are clearly ea-affiliated are doing good work and mostly arenât at any risk of major career damage etc. I just think that we might be able to achieve more if we worked in ways that they pattern matched better to more widely accepted and unbranded routes to impact (e.g., researcher or entrepreneur etc) than to activist/âmovement building type groups which are more associated with bad actors (e.g. cults and scams)
Of course these are not strong beliefs and I could easily change them as I have before.
Thank you very much for taking the time to write this.
I generally donât feel disagreement with what you say, I donât think itâs completely opposed to what Iâm advocating for. I feel that thereâs a huge deal of interpretation around the words used, here âaffiliationâ (and as mentioned at the beginning of the post, not âidentityâ).
I do think more people âaffiliatingâ will make EA less of an ingroup /â outgroup, and more of a philosophy (a âgeneral held value systemâ as you say in the beginning) people adhere to to some extent, esp if framed as âthis is a community that inspires me, those are ideas that are influencing my actionsâ.