Hey Aman, thanks for the post. It does seem a bit outdated that the top picture for altruism is a French painting from hundreds of years ago. EA should hope to change the cultural understanding of doing good from something that’s primarily religious or spiritual, to something that can be much more scientific and well-informed.
I do think some of the accusations of EA being a cult might go a bit deeper. There aren’t many other college clubs that would ask you to donate 10% of your income or determine your career plans based on their principles. One community builder who’d heard similar accusations here traced the concerns to EA’s rapid growth in popularity and a certain “all-or-nothing” attitude in membership. Here’s another person who had some great recommendations for avoiding the accusation. I particularly liked the emphasis on giving object-level arguments rather than appealing to authority figures within EA.
Overall, it seems tough for an ethical framework + social movement to avoid the accusation at times, but hopefully our outreach can be high quality enough to encourage a better perception.
Thanks for the comment! I agree with your points—there are definitely elements of EA, whether they’re core to EA or just cultural norms within the community, that bear stronger resemblances to cult characteristics.
My main point in this post was to explore why someone who hasn’t interacted with EA before (and might not be aware of most of the things you mentioned) might still get a cult impression. I didn’t mean to claim that the Google search results for “altruism” are the most commonreason why people come away with a cult impression. Rather, I think that they might explain a few perplexing cases of cult impressions that occur before people become more familiar with EA. I should have made this distinction clearer, thanks for pointing it out :)
Hey Aman, thanks for the post. It does seem a bit outdated that the top picture for altruism is a French painting from hundreds of years ago. EA should hope to change the cultural understanding of doing good from something that’s primarily religious or spiritual, to something that can be much more scientific and well-informed.
I do think some of the accusations of EA being a cult might go a bit deeper. There aren’t many other college clubs that would ask you to donate 10% of your income or determine your career plans based on their principles. One community builder who’d heard similar accusations here traced the concerns to EA’s rapid growth in popularity and a certain “all-or-nothing” attitude in membership. Here’s another person who had some great recommendations for avoiding the accusation. I particularly liked the emphasis on giving object-level arguments rather than appealing to authority figures within EA.
Overall, it seems tough for an ethical framework + social movement to avoid the accusation at times, but hopefully our outreach can be high quality enough to encourage a better perception.
Thanks for the comment! I agree with your points—there are definitely elements of EA, whether they’re core to EA or just cultural norms within the community, that bear stronger resemblances to cult characteristics.
My main point in this post was to explore why someone who hasn’t interacted with EA before (and might not be aware of most of the things you mentioned) might still get a cult impression. I didn’t mean to claim that the Google search results for “altruism” are the most common reason why people come away with a cult impression. Rather, I think that they might explain a few perplexing cases of cult impressions that occur before people become more familiar with EA. I should have made this distinction clearer, thanks for pointing it out :)