Pronatalist.org is not an EA group. It’s great that EA considerations have started entering the public consciousness and I would love if every charity was expected to answer “why is this the most effective thing you could be doing?”, but that doesn’t mean that any group claiming their mission is really important is part of EA. It’s very difficult to argue a rigorous case that promoting pronatalist sentiment is an effective use of money or time, and so far they haven’t.
Rather than ask how we can build more (and better) groups, ask whether we should.
Pronatalist.org is not an EA group. … It’s very difficult to argue a rigorous case that promoting pronatalist sentiment is an effective use of money or time, and so far they haven’t.
I don’t think that’s enough to consider an org an EA org. Specifically, if that was all it took for an org to be considered an EA org, I’d worry about how it could be abused by anyone who wanted to get an EA stamp of approval (which might have been what happened here – note that post is the founders’ only post on the forum).
Maybe I’m being too nitpicky, but I think “EA org” is usually used in a stronger sense than “EA group”? I interpret the latter as more like “a group of EAs”, at which point I think we’re arguing whether pronatalist.org folks count as EAs?
I agree it’s not a good post, and the negative reception in comments and voting reflects that. On the other hand, it’s not clear to me that to be considered an EA you need to be doing work other EAs think highly of, as opposed to be trying your best to do EA?
Pronatalist.org is not an EA group. It’s great that EA considerations have started entering the public consciousness and I would love if every charity was expected to answer “why is this the most effective thing you could be doing?”, but that doesn’t mean that any group claiming their mission is really important is part of EA. It’s very difficult to argue a rigorous case that promoting pronatalist sentiment is an effective use of money or time, and so far they haven’t.
Rather than ask how we can build more (and better) groups, ask whether we should.
The founders did write a detailed (and poorly received) post arguing for considering demographic collapse as a high-priority cause area.
I don’t think that’s enough to consider an org an EA org. Specifically, if that was all it took for an org to be considered an EA org, I’d worry about how it could be abused by anyone who wanted to get an EA stamp of approval (which might have been what happened here – note that post is the founders’ only post on the forum).
Maybe I’m being too nitpicky, but I think “EA org” is usually used in a stronger sense than “EA group”? I interpret the latter as more like “a group of EAs”, at which point I think we’re arguing whether pronatalist.org folks count as EAs?
That’s fair. I also don’t think simply putting a post on the forum is in itself enough to constitute a group being an EA group.
It’s not, I just seem a lot of association especially in negative news about them and they keep talking about longtermism
This a very long and inconsistent post with wayyy tooo much self promotion
I agree it’s not a good post, and the negative reception in comments and voting reflects that. On the other hand, it’s not clear to me that to be considered an EA you need to be doing work other EAs think highly of, as opposed to be trying your best to do EA?