6.) We should think more about existential risks to the EA movement itself. I don’t think enough attention is paid to the fact that EA is a social movement like others and is prone to the same effects that make other movements less effective than they could be, or collapse entirely. I really like what the CEA Community Health team is doing and I think the EA movement may already have had some serious problems without them. I’d like to see more research to notice the skulls of other movements and see what we can do to try to proactively prevent them.
We (Social Change Lab) are considering doing this kind of work so good to hear there’s other interest in it! A dive into common reasons why social movements fail has been on our research questions to consider for a while. We’ve slightly put it off due to difficulty in gathering reliable data / the question being somewhat intractable (e.g. probably many confounding reasons why movements fail so it might be hard to isolate any specific variables) but I would be keen to hear if you had any specific ideas for how this research might be tackled/most useful?
11. …In particular, the 2020 EA Survey showed effective altruism as being 70% male. Secondarily, we risk there being downward spirals where talented women don’t want to join what they perceive to be a male-dominated movement and our critics reject our movement by associating us with an uncharitable “techbro” image. This is difficult to talk about and I’m not exactly sure what should or could be done to work on this issue, but I think it’s important to acknowledge this.
I’ve been thinking about writing something along these lines for a while so glad you did! I totally agree—I think this is a big concern and I’m not sure if anything is being done to address it. Hot take but I wonder if EA distancing itself from social justice rhetoric has let some latent sexism go unchallenged, which probably puts otherwise interested women off. I wonder if men challenging sexist comments/attitudes that often crop up (e.g. some comments in this thread) might help remedy this.
I think slow decline, cultural change, mission creep etc. are harder to control, but I make the claim that the leading causes of sudden death are sex scandals and corruption scandals, which EA has not taken adequate steps to prevent: Chesterton Fences and EA’s X-risks
We (Social Change Lab) are considering doing this kind of work so good to hear there’s other interest in it! A dive into common reasons why social movements fail has been on our research questions to consider for a while. We’ve slightly put it off due to difficulty in gathering reliable data / the question being somewhat intractable (e.g. probably many confounding reasons why movements fail so it might be hard to isolate any specific variables) but I would be keen to hear if you had any specific ideas for how this research might be tackled/most useful?
I’ve been thinking about writing something along these lines for a while so glad you did! I totally agree—I think this is a big concern and I’m not sure if anything is being done to address it. Hot take but I wonder if EA distancing itself from social justice rhetoric has let some latent sexism go unchallenged, which probably puts otherwise interested women off. I wonder if men challenging sexist comments/attitudes that often crop up (e.g. some comments in this thread) might help remedy this.
I think slow decline, cultural change, mission creep etc. are harder to control, but I make the claim that the leading causes of sudden death are sex scandals and corruption scandals, which EA has not taken adequate steps to prevent: Chesterton Fences and EA’s X-risks