tl;dr Long-time EAs can make life more comfortable for themselves by making everyone jump through more hoops to call themselves EAs, and that’s not something we want!
Big companies sometimes beg governments to add new regulations that will cost them millions of dollars to comply with. They’ll send expensive lobbyists to Washington and basically say, “Please give us more paperwork! Please make us hire more compliance officers!”
Wtf? Why??
If a sector is full of rules and regulations that cost millions of dollars and lots of legal headaches to comply with, all the scrappy little bootstrapped companies will go out of business, no one new will be able to start up, and the big companies won’t have to compete with anyone. So even though the regulations might be costly for them, the regulations still ultimately get them what they want.
I think a lot of social groups work the same way, including EA. People with a lot of existing social status in EA are like the big companies. Their lifestyles could be threatened by all the new people getting involved in EA. So one natural response is to make more rules. Things like:
You’re not really an EA unless you live frugally so you can donate a lot
I don’t think we should weigh people’s opinions too heavily unless they actually understand Bayesian reasoning
Real EAs are vegan
A lot of the times, when people suggest these new rules, they and their friends wouldn’t have to change anything about their lifestyles, but it means a group of new people wouldn’t really count as EAs. But sometimes they’ll actually suggest something that would require them to change—something like “I’m not a vegetarian but I think EAs should be vegetarian”. My theory is, in the same way as these big companies would rather pay large costs than deal with so many competitors, maybe there’s a part of us that would too.
I don’t think this explains everything that’s going on when people make these kinds of suggestions—for alternative hypotheses, search “costly signal” on the EA Forum—but it’s a theory that makes just enough sense that whenever I suggest a new rule for EAs, I try to pause and ask myself why.
Fwiw, I’m active in the broader EA community for a couple years now (mostly in Germany & online) and your examples felt fairly foreign to me, and like I’d cringe if I heard somebody say them.
Same, I have never heard any of these. Perhaps some people are saying these things, but I’d be very surprised to, say, hear anything like this being shared in the EA leaders Slack (not that I’m in it but as someone who has spoken to many EA leaders, they are all chill)
EAs tend to speak in really nuanced ways, so the furthest I’ve heard someone go is saying things like “I’ve found Bayesian reasoning to be an irreplaceable tool and want us to help new EAs learn it and be aware of the value themselves” or “Eating vegan has been shown to increase compassion for animals, and I also think it is important to behave in compassionate ways regardless of impact calculations”. The frugal thing.… I can’t even reword that because I haven’t heard EAs speak that way ever, except from one student organizer who got the idea I think from his own head connecting the dots in the way that made sense to him (he was kind of on his own, not in a hub, and he was organizing before CEA’s UGAP program provided better mentorship to student organizers. I think now that he has graduated and gotten a real job he has gotten over this as he sees how complicated it is to navigate life when being abnormally frugal).
I have this inkling that maybe if people are saying such “rules”, it might be more of a self-soothing technique for some EAs that have struggled to get recognition and the jobs they want in EA? Gatekeeping/no-true-scottsman type stuff? IDK just a vibe, trying to get status where they can maybe. Or maybe they are just dealing with a lot of unexamined distrust toward people different from themselves, as neurodivergents, nerds, and activists tend to do IME?
Same, been active since 2016 and these seem odd to me. I would say anyone who’s really interested in the question of how to help others effectively using reason and evidence is an EA.
I have occasionally heard people say things like this, but more often I’ve heard things that sound like this is the underlying assumption. I agree that it would be super cringe for someone to actually come out and say one of those statements!
Putting them in double quotes makes it look like they are meant to be direct quotations. Could you give some examples of things people have actually said that you are trying to refer to here? These specific examples sound sufficiently different from how people typically talk that I’m not sure what actual phenomena you’re trying to pick out.
I saw a job application ask whether the applicant is vegan as a proxy for how EA they were, even though the job wasn’t substantively related to veganism.
And I’ve seen people effectively argue “how will we know who the EAs are if not everyone donates 10%?” which could be explained as just wanting to see a costly signal or as wanting to retain their own position of superiority or a bit of both.
(Good call on the quotationn marks, I’ve removed them)
Thanks for the examples. Asking about being a vegan on a job ad does seem a bit obnoxious (unless the job was like vegan advocacy or something).
Kirsten—I think these are legitimate concerns, and it’s good to be aware that ‘incumbent EAs’ might—at least in principle—have certain vested interests in promoting and enforcing certain social norms that can be exclusionary.
Your examples—frugality, veganism, Bayesianism—seem relevant in some EA circles (but maybe not in others).
I think the more common (unwittingly) exclusionary tactics tend to be more verbal than lifesstyle-based—especially insofar as EA as a global movement is largely on online community (centered around EA Forum), even if local EA groups are also important. I can imagine that lifestyle-signaling (e.g. eating vegan, talking in Rationality-dialect) might matter more in the local EA groups and EA conferences. But in EA Forum, I think the most exclusionary tactics involve how we use English language in ways that can be alienating to people whose first language isn’t English, who aren’t familiar with Anglo-American idioms, euphemisms, and pop culture, and who aren’t familiar with certain sets of technical jargon (e.g. from Rationalism, moral philosophy, AI alignment research, etc).
However, I don’t think the ‘EA insiders’ or incumbents are using these verbal styles in an intentionally exclusive way (analogous to the way that big business lobbies for heavier regulatory burdens that smaller start-up companies can’t comply with). Rather, I think there’s in-group status signaling that leads to these verbal styles (e.g. showing off one’s knowledge of certain technical terms, or using Anglo-American idioms to signal cultural coolness and informality), plus, there’s a lack of awareness on the part of native English speakers that a lot of our writing can be baffling to people who learned English as a second language.
I agree with this.
It feels like it’s harder to remove norms in place than create them and that those creating them can’t feel all the little harms of those they apply to. Like we might all say that EA is about doing the most good, but then there is veganism, huel, a certain conversation style, modes of dress and all of a sudden there is quite a lot of work for new members.
Somewhat tricky here is that not all of this stuff is deliberate. Sometimes people just want to be like one another.
Thanks for writing.
Andy particularly toxic norms you don’t like?
Two additional thoughts since posting:
I think the specifics of what I’ve written here can be collapsed into the general point “rules have both costs and benefits; make sure you take the time to pay attention to both”. This just gives a certain type of benefit people can pay attention to.
As per Stefan’s post, people are much more incentivised to be strategically kind (and perhaps by extension strategically inclusive?) than the opposite. Adding new rules won’t necessarily make you seem more likeable! https://stefanfschubert.com/blog/2023/4/19/strategic-disagreeableness-is-uncommon