Hi Zoe. Iâm glad youâve crossed over from lurking to participating. I gave this post an upvote even though I disagree with a lot of it, even though I wanted to agree. I agree with this part:
the EA community does (subconsciously) enforce quite a bit of uniformity in thoughts and actions â everyone generally agrees on the most important causes and the most effective ways to contribute to these causes
The conformity is way too high, and the level of internal agreement is way too high/âlack of internal disagreement is way too low.
When I was involved in organizing my university EA group, one conversation we had was about the value of art. Someone in our group talked about a novel she had found important and impactful. Can we really say that anti-malarial bednets are more important than art? I think a lot of people in EA feel (and, indeed, in our EA group at the time felt) a temptation to argue back against this point. But thereâs a more intriguing and more expansive conversation to be had if you donât argue back, take a breath, and really consider her point. (For example, have you considered the impact sci-fi has had on real life science and technology? Have the considered the role fiction plays in teaching us moral lessons? Or in understanding emotions and relationships, which are what life is all about?)
I think, in general, itâs way more interesting to have a mix of people with diverse personalities, interests, and points of view, even when that means sometimes entertaining some off-the-wall ideas. (I donât think what that person said about art was off-the-wall at all, but talk to enough random people about EA online or in real life and youâll eventually hear something unexpected.)
This is the part of your post I have the hardest time with:
I wonder if the orange or blue diamonds are sending the right signals (do we have data on how people hear about the pledge vs. their chance of taking it?). The little icon next to user names in social media is giving âcultâ vibes again (think a cross or an astrological sign next to someoneâs user name).
Is the little orange or blue diamond so different from someone having an emoji in their username, or, in real life, wearing a little pink or red ribbon for breast cancer of HIV/âAIDS awareness? I have a hard time relating to your perspective because if on Twitter or wherever I saw someone put a cross or an astrological sign next to their name, I think I would just assume they are religious or really into astrology. I wouldnât find it particularly scary or cult-y.
Personally I wish the EA Forum had more ways to zhuzh up how your username appears on posts and comments. The little diamonds are the only bit of colour we get around here.
Full-on profile pictures embedded in posts and comments might be too distracting, but I donât know⌠coloured usernames? Little badges to represent things like your country, your favourite cause area, or your identity (e.g. LGBT)? I find one advantage of having something like this is not just the zhuzh but also it makes it easier to remember whoâs who rather than having to memorize everyoneâs names. The little blue and orange diamonds already help a bit with this.
[Edit: I decided to zhuzh up my username with emojis because it looks ridiculous but also kinda cute and it really made me laugh. Lol.]
having my name on a public list and being asked to report my donations all the time for the rest of my life would definitely overwhelm me to the point of deterrence
Is this really what Giving What We Can asks you to do these days? I took the 10% pledge back in 2008 or 2009. I have no idea if my name is still on a public list and I donât think I have ever once reported my donations. I can empathize with hating the administration burden part of it because I really struggle with admin tasks of all kinds (I think a lot of people do) and I find a lot of admin stuff miserable and demoralizing.
I guess the point of reporting your donations is so that GWWC can say how much money people are donating as part of this movement, but obviously thatâs of secondary importance (a very, very distant second) to actually donating the money. I always saw the 10% pledge as a personal, spiritual commitment and not a promise I made to anyone else. Nor as something I was obligated to report. Itâs a reminder to myself of what my values are: âhey, remember you said you were going to do this??â
So, if you feel you want to do the pledge but donât want to do the admin, just do the pledge and donât do the admin. :)
In fact, wouldnât it be much easier in general for people to conceptualize and pledge a certain % of their total assets to EA causes upon passing instead of doing it every year?
Would it be? Youâd be asking people to think about dying, which isnât easy. Also, youâd be asking them to write a will, which is a lot of admin!
Also, if the average person who is interested in EA is 38 years old â which is Will MacAskillâs age â and their average life expectancy is 80, doesnât that mean no one would donate anything to charity for, on average, the next 42 years? And wouldnât that be really bad?
I think your idea of donating a percentage of your passive income from capital gains to charity after you retire early is perfectly fine â thatâs just donating a percentage of your income, which is the whole idea in the first place. Maybe youâll want to donate less than 10% and thatâs fine too.
I think everyone should find what works for their particular situation. The 10% pledge is formulated to be something that could apply to the majority of the population in high-income countries, but not something that necessarily makes the most sense for everyone in those countries.
âSound like AIâ⌠When I talk to my EA friends, they donât sound like AI-generated academic papers...
âSounds like AIâ is the wrong way to put this. Posts on the EA Forum donât sound like AI. They have a distinct voice that is different from ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. LLMs have a distinctive bland, annoying, breathless, insubstantial, and absolutely humourless style. The only thing really similar to the EA Forum style and LLM style is the formal tone. Maybe EA Forum posts sound like academic papers, but they donât sound like AI-generated academic papers.
I know because Iâve read a lot of stuff on the EA Forum and a lot of stuff written by AI. I can really tell the difference.
EA is also associated with obscure (to gen pop) concepts like longtermism, accelerationism, micromorts etc. ⌠When I talk to my EA friends⌠our colloquial/â less researched exchanges can feel more convincing than reading way too many stats and big words.
This is more accurate. EA/âthe EA Forum has its own weird subculture and sublanguage and itâs pretty annoying. People use lingo and jargon that isnât useful or clear, and sometimes has never even been defined â I hate the term âtruthseekingâ for this reason, what does it mean? (As far as I know, itâs literally never been defined, anywhere, by anyone. And itâs ambiguous. So, why is that term helpful or necessary?) People assume too much background knowledge and donât explain things in an accessible way, which wouldnât just help newcomers, but would also help everyone.
What you said about casual, informal conversations with your EA friends being more persuasive is an argument in favour of people in EA having more casual, informal conversations on the EA Forum, or on podcasts, or whatever. Before I read your post, I already had the intuition that this would be a good idea.
I want to suggest to everyone the concept of doing public dialogues on the EA Forum, following the model of the Slack chats that FiveThirtyEight used to do on their blog. The FiveThirtyEight staff would pick a topic, chat about it on Slack, and then do some light editing (e.g. to add links/âcitations). Then theyâd publish that on their blog. I think this could work really well for the EA Forum. You could either do the chat in real time (synchronously) or take time doing it (asynchronously). But I think it would be more fun if people didnât spend too much time writing each message, and if they tried to be more casual and informal and conversational than EA Forum posts typically are. I just have a hunch that this would be a good format. (And anyone can message me if they want to try this with me.)
In terms of length, personally, Iâm not as concerned with how long something is as I am with its economy of words. I donât like when things are long and theyâre longer than they could have been. If somethingâs long but itâs still as short as it could have been, thatâs great. (Thatâs why books exist!!) If somethingâs long and I feel like it could have been 20% of its length, thatâs a huge drag. If somethingâs short but it makes a complete point and says everything it really needs to say, thatâs like a delightful piece of candy. I love reading stuff like that. But not everything can be candy. (And if we feel like it should be, maybe we can blame Twitter for conditioning us to want everything to be said in 140-280 characters.)
What makes something feel longer or shorter is also how enjoyable it is to read, so itâs also a matter of craft and style.
Hi Yarrowâthank you for taking the time to reply so thoroughly! I love your new emoji flair.
talk to enough random people about EA online or in real life and youâll eventually hear something unexpected
Yes, I always enjoy talking to people about EA and usually find more diversity in thoughts when people converse in real life than writing online (perhaps this is because of in-group vs. out-group: while most causes have more in-fighting among the in-group, the EA community seems to have dodged this problem at the expense of in-group high conformity, but this constraint can be relaxed when talking to the out-group irl).
Is the little orange or blue diamond so different from someone having an emoji in their username, or, in real life, wearing a little pink or red ribbon for breast cancer of HIV/âAIDS awareness?
I have no issues with people advertising their identity or interest or quirkiness with some kind of flair. I used a cross and astrological signs as an analogy because, like the orange diamond, they convey a sense of superiority like âI will be saved (while non-believers go to hell)â or âIâm in tune with the cosmos (while low-vibration people slave through life)â. I acknowledge these are stereotypes and not everyone uses these symbols with the same judgmental intention.
On the 10% pledge itself, my point is not that no one should donate now, but that the âofficialâ EA pledge has too rigid of a structure. To me, the vibes are similar to most vegan activists telling people âgoing veganâ is the only right way and hating on vegetarians or reducetarians because theyâre not meeting the standard. I think for most causes, two things are true at the same time: (1) people who have hardly thought about it should do way more about it and (2) people who have thought much about it, besides directly addressing the cause, should probably focus on effective outreach to people in (1) but chill on policing others in (2).
âSounds like AIâ is the wrong way to put this.
Youâre right, the point should be more about sounding too formal/âacademic rather than sounding too AI. I often use AI to help me polish my writing, so I tend to associate AI writing with more structure and more serious tone, but this is a usage bias. I think doing public dialogues on the EA Forum is a great idea.
I guess you can put a lot of meaning into a little symbol. I wouldnât interpret a cross or an astrology sign as conveying a sense of superiority, necessarily, I would just think that person is really into being Christian or really into astrology.
If you see someone wearing a red ribbon relating to HIV/âAIDS, I guess you could have the Curb Your Enthusiasm reaction of: âWow, so theyâre trying to act like theyâre so much better than me because they care so much about AIDS? What a jerk!â Or you could just think, âOh, I guess they care about AIDS for some reason.â
Iâve never perceived anyone to be using the little blue and orange diamond icons to signal superiority. I interpret it as something more supportive and positive. Itâs reassuring to see other people do something altruistic so you donât feel crazy for doing it, and making a sacrifice feels more bearable when you see other people doing it too. (Imagine how different it would feel if when you donated blood, you did it completely alone in an empty room vs. seeing lots of other people around who are giving blood at the same time too.)
Iâve never observed anyone trying to police someone over donating 10% of their income, or trying to pressure them to take the pledge, or judging them for not taking it. For all I know, that has happened to somebody somewhere, Iâve just never seen it, personally.
I would say donât worry too much about the 10% income pledge and just focus on whatever amount of donating or way of donating makes sense for you personally.
I would be concerned about people deciding to delay their donating by 40-50 years (or whatever it is), since there are probably huge opportunity costs. I hope that in 40-50 years all the most effective charities are way less cost-effective than the most effective charities today because we will have made so much progress on global poverty, infectious diseases, and other problems. I hope malaria and tuberculosis arenât ongoing concerns in 40-50 years, meaning the Against Malaria Foundation wouldnât even exist anymore â mission accomplished! But you said youâre already donating about 1% of your income every year, so youâre not holding off completely on donating.
Hi Zoe. Iâm glad youâve crossed over from lurking to participating. I gave this post an upvote even though I disagree with a lot of it, even though I wanted to agree. I agree with this part:
The conformity is way too high, and the level of internal agreement is way too high/âlack of internal disagreement is way too low.
When I was involved in organizing my university EA group, one conversation we had was about the value of art. Someone in our group talked about a novel she had found important and impactful. Can we really say that anti-malarial bednets are more important than art? I think a lot of people in EA feel (and, indeed, in our EA group at the time felt) a temptation to argue back against this point. But thereâs a more intriguing and more expansive conversation to be had if you donât argue back, take a breath, and really consider her point. (For example, have you considered the impact sci-fi has had on real life science and technology? Have the considered the role fiction plays in teaching us moral lessons? Or in understanding emotions and relationships, which are what life is all about?)
I think, in general, itâs way more interesting to have a mix of people with diverse personalities, interests, and points of view, even when that means sometimes entertaining some off-the-wall ideas. (I donât think what that person said about art was off-the-wall at all, but talk to enough random people about EA online or in real life and youâll eventually hear something unexpected.)
This is the part of your post I have the hardest time with:
Is the little orange or blue diamond so different from someone having an emoji in their username, or, in real life, wearing a little pink or red ribbon for breast cancer of HIV/âAIDS awareness? I have a hard time relating to your perspective because if on Twitter or wherever I saw someone put a cross or an astrological sign next to their name, I think I would just assume they are religious or really into astrology. I wouldnât find it particularly scary or cult-y.
Personally I wish the EA Forum had more ways to zhuzh up how your username appears on posts and comments. The little diamonds are the only bit of colour we get around here.
Full-on profile pictures embedded in posts and comments might be too distracting, but I donât know⌠coloured usernames? Little badges to represent things like your country, your favourite cause area, or your identity (e.g. LGBT)? I find one advantage of having something like this is not just the zhuzh but also it makes it easier to remember whoâs who rather than having to memorize everyoneâs names. The little blue and orange diamonds already help a bit with this.
[Edit: I decided to zhuzh up my username with emojis because it looks ridiculous but also kinda cute and it really made me laugh. Lol.]
Is this really what Giving What We Can asks you to do these days? I took the 10% pledge back in 2008 or 2009. I have no idea if my name is still on a public list and I donât think I have ever once reported my donations. I can empathize with hating the administration burden part of it because I really struggle with admin tasks of all kinds (I think a lot of people do) and I find a lot of admin stuff miserable and demoralizing.
I guess the point of reporting your donations is so that GWWC can say how much money people are donating as part of this movement, but obviously thatâs of secondary importance (a very, very distant second) to actually donating the money. I always saw the 10% pledge as a personal, spiritual commitment and not a promise I made to anyone else. Nor as something I was obligated to report. Itâs a reminder to myself of what my values are: âhey, remember you said you were going to do this??â
So, if you feel you want to do the pledge but donât want to do the admin, just do the pledge and donât do the admin. :)
Would it be? Youâd be asking people to think about dying, which isnât easy. Also, youâd be asking them to write a will, which is a lot of admin!
Also, if the average person who is interested in EA is 38 years old â which is Will MacAskillâs age â and their average life expectancy is 80, doesnât that mean no one would donate anything to charity for, on average, the next 42 years? And wouldnât that be really bad?
I think your idea of donating a percentage of your passive income from capital gains to charity after you retire early is perfectly fine â thatâs just donating a percentage of your income, which is the whole idea in the first place. Maybe youâll want to donate less than 10% and thatâs fine too.
I think everyone should find what works for their particular situation. The 10% pledge is formulated to be something that could apply to the majority of the population in high-income countries, but not something that necessarily makes the most sense for everyone in those countries.
âSounds like AIâ is the wrong way to put this. Posts on the EA Forum donât sound like AI. They have a distinct voice that is different from ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. LLMs have a distinctive bland, annoying, breathless, insubstantial, and absolutely humourless style. The only thing really similar to the EA Forum style and LLM style is the formal tone. Maybe EA Forum posts sound like academic papers, but they donât sound like AI-generated academic papers.
I know because Iâve read a lot of stuff on the EA Forum and a lot of stuff written by AI. I can really tell the difference.
This is more accurate. EA/âthe EA Forum has its own weird subculture and sublanguage and itâs pretty annoying. People use lingo and jargon that isnât useful or clear, and sometimes has never even been defined â I hate the term âtruthseekingâ for this reason, what does it mean? (As far as I know, itâs literally never been defined, anywhere, by anyone. And itâs ambiguous. So, why is that term helpful or necessary?) People assume too much background knowledge and donât explain things in an accessible way, which wouldnât just help newcomers, but would also help everyone.
What you said about casual, informal conversations with your EA friends being more persuasive is an argument in favour of people in EA having more casual, informal conversations on the EA Forum, or on podcasts, or whatever. Before I read your post, I already had the intuition that this would be a good idea.
I want to suggest to everyone the concept of doing public dialogues on the EA Forum, following the model of the Slack chats that FiveThirtyEight used to do on their blog. The FiveThirtyEight staff would pick a topic, chat about it on Slack, and then do some light editing (e.g. to add links/âcitations). Then theyâd publish that on their blog. I think this could work really well for the EA Forum. You could either do the chat in real time (synchronously) or take time doing it (asynchronously). But I think it would be more fun if people didnât spend too much time writing each message, and if they tried to be more casual and informal and conversational than EA Forum posts typically are. I just have a hunch that this would be a good format. (And anyone can message me if they want to try this with me.)
In terms of length, personally, Iâm not as concerned with how long something is as I am with its economy of words. I donât like when things are long and theyâre longer than they could have been. If somethingâs long but itâs still as short as it could have been, thatâs great. (Thatâs why books exist!!) If somethingâs long and I feel like it could have been 20% of its length, thatâs a huge drag. If somethingâs short but it makes a complete point and says everything it really needs to say, thatâs like a delightful piece of candy. I love reading stuff like that. But not everything can be candy. (And if we feel like it should be, maybe we can blame Twitter for conditioning us to want everything to be said in 140-280 characters.)
What makes something feel longer or shorter is also how enjoyable it is to read, so itâs also a matter of craft and style.
Hi Yarrowâthank you for taking the time to reply so thoroughly! I love your new emoji flair.
Yes, I always enjoy talking to people about EA and usually find more diversity in thoughts when people converse in real life than writing online (perhaps this is because of in-group vs. out-group: while most causes have more in-fighting among the in-group, the EA community seems to have dodged this problem at the expense of in-group high conformity, but this constraint can be relaxed when talking to the out-group irl).
I have no issues with people advertising their identity or interest or quirkiness with some kind of flair. I used a cross and astrological signs as an analogy because, like the orange diamond, they convey a sense of superiority like âI will be saved (while non-believers go to hell)â or âIâm in tune with the cosmos (while low-vibration people slave through life)â. I acknowledge these are stereotypes and not everyone uses these symbols with the same judgmental intention.
On the 10% pledge itself, my point is not that no one should donate now, but that the âofficialâ EA pledge has too rigid of a structure. To me, the vibes are similar to most vegan activists telling people âgoing veganâ is the only right way and hating on vegetarians or reducetarians because theyâre not meeting the standard. I think for most causes, two things are true at the same time: (1) people who have hardly thought about it should do way more about it and (2) people who have thought much about it, besides directly addressing the cause, should probably focus on effective outreach to people in (1) but chill on policing others in (2).
Youâre right, the point should be more about sounding too formal/âacademic rather than sounding too AI. I often use AI to help me polish my writing, so I tend to associate AI writing with more structure and more serious tone, but this is a usage bias. I think doing public dialogues on the EA Forum is a great idea.
I guess you can put a lot of meaning into a little symbol. I wouldnât interpret a cross or an astrology sign as conveying a sense of superiority, necessarily, I would just think that person is really into being Christian or really into astrology.
If you see someone wearing a red ribbon relating to HIV/âAIDS, I guess you could have the Curb Your Enthusiasm reaction of: âWow, so theyâre trying to act like theyâre so much better than me because they care so much about AIDS? What a jerk!â Or you could just think, âOh, I guess they care about AIDS for some reason.â
Iâve never perceived anyone to be using the little blue and orange diamond icons to signal superiority. I interpret it as something more supportive and positive. Itâs reassuring to see other people do something altruistic so you donât feel crazy for doing it, and making a sacrifice feels more bearable when you see other people doing it too. (Imagine how different it would feel if when you donated blood, you did it completely alone in an empty room vs. seeing lots of other people around who are giving blood at the same time too.)
Iâve never observed anyone trying to police someone over donating 10% of their income, or trying to pressure them to take the pledge, or judging them for not taking it. For all I know, that has happened to somebody somewhere, Iâve just never seen it, personally.
I would say donât worry too much about the 10% income pledge and just focus on whatever amount of donating or way of donating makes sense for you personally.
I would be concerned about people deciding to delay their donating by 40-50 years (or whatever it is), since there are probably huge opportunity costs. I hope that in 40-50 years all the most effective charities are way less cost-effective than the most effective charities today because we will have made so much progress on global poverty, infectious diseases, and other problems. I hope malaria and tuberculosis arenât ongoing concerns in 40-50 years, meaning the Against Malaria Foundation wouldnât even exist anymore â mission accomplished! But you said youâre already donating about 1% of your income every year, so youâre not holding off completely on donating.