The EA community could be extraordinarily valuable in the future
The term ‘Effective Altruism’ has only existed for around four years and was popularized two and a half years ago. In a short time, the EA community has accomplished a tremendous amount of good. So far we’ve built a community of thousands, donated millions of dollars to effective charities saving thousands of lives, pledged billions of dollars in future support and have attracted some of the mostinfluentialpeopleintheworld.
If we project into the future this trend may continue or even accelerate. We may develop more insights into how to do good in the world and we may attract increasingly more influential people.
If this claim were false, a plausible reason would be that the beneficiaries of the movement are different from the people in the movement. Traditionally, social movements include people who directly benefit if the movement succeeds. This is true of the civil rights movement, feminism, the disability rights movement, Marxism and many others. The EA movement currently benefits the poorest people in the world, non-human animals and future people. It could be that a social movement that is not focused on benefiting those in the movement cannot succeed.
Another reason this claim could be false (which seems more worrisome to me):
Most of the effective altruism movement’s success to date has involved helping people already inspired to do good effectively to do it somewhat better, especially by providing a community for them. On Facebook, polls have shown most current EAs immediately latched onto the idea, sought it out on their own, and/or were already working to do the most good.
We have a fairly limited track record of convincing people to do EA things when they weren’t otherwise going to do anything close. It’s possible that EA just is a very hard thing to get many more people involved with beyond the low-hanging fruit we’ve already captured or would capture without additional resources put into outreach.
I’m also pretty sceptical about our ability to expand beyond our ‘core constituency’ of people who were basically on board in advance. But it’s worth noting that that constituency would be many times larger than what we currently have; looking at differences in participation between relatively similar countries (e.g. England versus France) or very similar universities (e.g. Cambridge versus Imperial) really highlights this.
While it’s likely true that many people are currently beyond convincing, a movement has to start somewhere if it’s ever going to become mainstream. This was true for the abolition of slavery early in the 19th century, women’s suffrage in the early 20th century and to some extent gay marriage in the recent past.
One reasonable explanation for this is that older people are much more difficult to convince than those who are still in their formative years. So while there will be many > 30 who will be drawn immediately to the movement, it is likely that broader success will be slower. It’s also unlikely that it will simply happen, but with perseverance from those within the movement, outreach focused in the right areas, and the passage of time, Effect Altruism will hopefully some day become a social norm.
This seems plausible. Josh Jacobson has been saying a similar thing under the header of crossing the chasm. It could be that EA will only be able to attract a small group of early adopters and won’t be able to grow to the scale we need to be highly effective.
To be clear, my point is more with regard for the need to spread our message in a way that allows for sustainable growth, v. in a way that most appeals to current EAs. It says nothing about the potential for growth for EA, which I do believe is profound, but rather about our ability to capture it (and long-term dangers of our current communications being non-optimized).
The term ‘Effective Altruism’ has only existed for around four years and was popularized two and a half years ago. In a short time, the EA community has accomplished a tremendous amount of good. So far we’ve built a community of thousands, donated millions of dollars to effective charities saving thousands of lives, pledged billions of dollars in future support and have attracted some of the most influential people in the world.
If we project into the future this trend may continue or even accelerate. We may develop more insights into how to do good in the world and we may attract increasingly more influential people.
If this claim were false, a plausible reason would be that the beneficiaries of the movement are different from the people in the movement. Traditionally, social movements include people who directly benefit if the movement succeeds. This is true of the civil rights movement, feminism, the disability rights movement, Marxism and many others. The EA movement currently benefits the poorest people in the world, non-human animals and future people. It could be that a social movement that is not focused on benefiting those in the movement cannot succeed.
Another reason this claim could be false (which seems more worrisome to me):
Most of the effective altruism movement’s success to date has involved helping people already inspired to do good effectively to do it somewhat better, especially by providing a community for them. On Facebook, polls have shown most current EAs immediately latched onto the idea, sought it out on their own, and/or were already working to do the most good.
We have a fairly limited track record of convincing people to do EA things when they weren’t otherwise going to do anything close. It’s possible that EA just is a very hard thing to get many more people involved with beyond the low-hanging fruit we’ve already captured or would capture without additional resources put into outreach.
I’m also pretty sceptical about our ability to expand beyond our ‘core constituency’ of people who were basically on board in advance. But it’s worth noting that that constituency would be many times larger than what we currently have; looking at differences in participation between relatively similar countries (e.g. England versus France) or very similar universities (e.g. Cambridge versus Imperial) really highlights this.
While it’s likely true that many people are currently beyond convincing, a movement has to start somewhere if it’s ever going to become mainstream. This was true for the abolition of slavery early in the 19th century, women’s suffrage in the early 20th century and to some extent gay marriage in the recent past. One reasonable explanation for this is that older people are much more difficult to convince than those who are still in their formative years. So while there will be many > 30 who will be drawn immediately to the movement, it is likely that broader success will be slower. It’s also unlikely that it will simply happen, but with perseverance from those within the movement, outreach focused in the right areas, and the passage of time, Effect Altruism will hopefully some day become a social norm.
This seems plausible. Josh Jacobson has been saying a similar thing under the header of crossing the chasm. It could be that EA will only be able to attract a small group of early adopters and won’t be able to grow to the scale we need to be highly effective.
To be clear, my point is more with regard for the need to spread our message in a way that allows for sustainable growth, v. in a way that most appeals to current EAs. It says nothing about the potential for growth for EA, which I do believe is profound, but rather about our ability to capture it (and long-term dangers of our current communications being non-optimized).