From what I’ve heard, most of the people would are A first are already involved in causes. Now, unfortunately, there is a sense in which EA unavoidably is threatening, as the logical implication is often is that the work that they have done is less impactful than it could have been and that their current work or things they are working towards are less effective than it could have been. And we can phrase things as nicely as we want, and talk about how you can do EA plus other things and that all charity work is valuable even if it isn’t EA and that there are valuable causes we haven’t discovered yet, ect., but at the end of the day, this is still the logical implication and no matter what we do, this will make people uncomfortable. This effect is especially bad since if everyone adopted EA, it is likely certain organisations would cease to exist.
Further, because we unavoidably threaten current power structures within charity, many people there have written incredibly unfair articles articles criticising EA and misrepresenting us (there has been valid criticism too, but this is a minority). This makes recruiting A people even harder.
I think this is a big deal, unfortunately. I try to talk about EA very carefully when talking to people who’re “A first”, but people can sense any implicit criticism a mile off. It’s really hard to avoid some variant of “So you think I’ve been wasting my time, then?”
Strangely, “E first” people may be easier to reach because they’re less likely to be already invested in something.
From what I’ve heard, most of the people would are A first are already involved in causes. Now, unfortunately, there is a sense in which EA unavoidably is threatening, as the logical implication is often is that the work that they have done is less impactful than it could have been and that their current work or things they are working towards are less effective than it could have been. And we can phrase things as nicely as we want, and talk about how you can do EA plus other things and that all charity work is valuable even if it isn’t EA and that there are valuable causes we haven’t discovered yet, ect., but at the end of the day, this is still the logical implication and no matter what we do, this will make people uncomfortable. This effect is especially bad since if everyone adopted EA, it is likely certain organisations would cease to exist.
Further, because we unavoidably threaten current power structures within charity, many people there have written incredibly unfair articles articles criticising EA and misrepresenting us (there has been valid criticism too, but this is a minority). This makes recruiting A people even harder.
I think this is a big deal, unfortunately. I try to talk about EA very carefully when talking to people who’re “A first”, but people can sense any implicit criticism a mile off. It’s really hard to avoid some variant of “So you think I’ve been wasting my time, then?”
Strangely, “E first” people may be easier to reach because they’re less likely to be already invested in something.