Progress studies, rationalists, non-EA utilitarians, Tetlock-style forecasters, transhumanists, consequentialist libertarians/liberals/socialists, the evidence-based medicine/policy movement (some of these overlap partly with EA).
Edit: Also sceptics, humanists. Ryan listed still more groups in this comment in a thread that’s related to this one.
1. Is there an active non-EA utilitarian community?
2. If so, are they at all online or is this a mostly offline community?
I ask because my impression was that all the early online utilitarian forums got swallowed by EA (eg Felicifia, see also this poll of the main utilitarianism FB group)
Based on the PhilPapers Surveys, about a quarter of philosophers accept or lean towards consequentialism, and we certainly don’t have a quarter of philosophers in EA.
We could also find a bunch of authors broadly sympathetic to similar views writing for Utilitas and who aren’t very engaged with EA.
The keynote speakers will be Julia Driver, William MacAskill and Anders Sandberg. Dieter Birnbacher will deliver a public lecture on July 23 (in German, English text will be provided).
I also imagine many people who follow Sam Harris (and Richard Dawkins and maybe others) are utilitarian or close to it, but not particularly engaged with EA. Sam is fairly engaged now, but wasn’t for a long time, I think.
I wouldn’t be surprised if economists were disproportionately likely to be consequentialists, too.
And there are probably many people who, if you explained utilitarianism (and alternatives) to them, would tell you they’re utilitarian or similar, but haven’t thought about it much. I’d expect > 1% of the world population is utilitarian or similar by this standard, although they might reject the demandingness of consequentialism and are likely not thinking systematically about doing good.
Progress studies, rationalists, non-EA utilitarians, Tetlock-style forecasters, transhumanists, consequentialist libertarians/liberals/socialists, the evidence-based medicine/policy movement (some of these overlap partly with EA).
Edit: Also sceptics, humanists. Ryan listed still more groups in this comment in a thread that’s related to this one.
2 questions re non-EA utilitarians:
1. Is there an active non-EA utilitarian community?
2. If so, are they at all online or is this a mostly offline community?
I ask because my impression was that all the early online utilitarian forums got swallowed by EA (eg Felicifia, see also this poll of the main utilitarianism FB group)
I don’t know too well. I guess there are professional philosophers who are utilitarians but not particularly EA.
This seems pretty likely to be true to me, too.
Based on the PhilPapers Surveys, about a quarter of philosophers accept or lean towards consequentialism, and we certainly don’t have a quarter of philosophers in EA.
We could also find a bunch of authors broadly sympathetic to similar views writing for Utilitas and who aren’t very engaged with EA.
EDIT:
There’s also the International Society for Utilitarian Studies (Facebook), and they run conferences (2020 cancelled, 2018, 2000).
At the 2018 conference:
There’s a German Society for Utilitarian Studies.
I also imagine many people who follow Sam Harris (and Richard Dawkins and maybe others) are utilitarian or close to it, but not particularly engaged with EA. Sam is fairly engaged now, but wasn’t for a long time, I think.
I wouldn’t be surprised if economists were disproportionately likely to be consequentialists, too.
And there are probably many people who, if you explained utilitarianism (and alternatives) to them, would tell you they’re utilitarian or similar, but haven’t thought about it much. I’d expect > 1% of the world population is utilitarian or similar by this standard, although they might reject the demandingness of consequentialism and are likely not thinking systematically about doing good.
Nice, and thanks for writing this as a comment rather than an answer. I think others can then take the comment and it into several answers.