Thanks for writing this. It feels like the implicit messaging, ideas, and infrastructure of the EA community have historically been targeted towards people in their 20s (i.e., people who can focus primarily on maximizing their impact). A lot of the EA writing (and EAs) I first encountered pushed for a level of commitment to EA that made more sense for people who had few competing obligations (like kids or aging parents). This resonated with me a decade ago—it made EA feel like an urgent mission—but today feels more unrealistic, and sometimes even alienating.
Given that the average age of the EA community is increasing, I wonder if it’d be good to rethink this messaging/set of ideas/infrastructure; to create a gentler, less hardheaded EA—one that takes more seriously the non-EA commitments we take on as we age, and provides us with a framework for reconciling them with our commitment to EA. (I get the sense that some orgs—like OP, which seems to employ older EAs on average—do a great job of this through, e.g., their generous parental leave policies, but I’d like to see the implicit philosophy connoted by these policies become part of EA’s explicit belief system and messaging to a greater extent.)
I do think the messaging is a little gentler than it used to be, such as the 80k content and a few forum posts emphasising that there are a lot of reasons to make life choices besides impact, and that that is ok. This is hard in general with written content aimed at a broad audience because some people probably need to hear the message to sacrifice a little more, and some a little less.
I summarised Elliot’s post in my mind as a form of reflecting on how a decision affects you over differing time horizons, as well as the second-order consequences of a decision. I would add to his bullet list of reasons to return home if you plan on having kids: going home for kids retains more of your discretionary time.
Having kids is a transformative experience and as such by its very nature you can’t fully predict how you’ll come out the other side of it. Elliot’s post does a good job of stepping that out for us, and lilly’s comments ask some valuable questions about messaging: appealing to older folks that are not EA-aware could be better reached. I resonate with both paragraphs of lilly’s comment. At the time of my reply I can see three detractors from lilly’s comments—I’d like to have read their responses here why they disagreed.
Thanks for writing this. It feels like the implicit messaging, ideas, and infrastructure of the EA community have historically been targeted towards people in their 20s (i.e., people who can focus primarily on maximizing their impact). A lot of the EA writing (and EAs) I first encountered pushed for a level of commitment to EA that made more sense for people who had few competing obligations (like kids or aging parents). This resonated with me a decade ago—it made EA feel like an urgent mission—but today feels more unrealistic, and sometimes even alienating.
Given that the average age of the EA community is increasing, I wonder if it’d be good to rethink this messaging/set of ideas/infrastructure; to create a gentler, less hardheaded EA—one that takes more seriously the non-EA commitments we take on as we age, and provides us with a framework for reconciling them with our commitment to EA. (I get the sense that some orgs—like OP, which seems to employ older EAs on average—do a great job of this through, e.g., their generous parental leave policies, but I’d like to see the implicit philosophy connoted by these policies become part of EA’s explicit belief system and messaging to a greater extent.)
I do think the messaging is a little gentler than it used to be, such as the 80k content and a few forum posts emphasising that there are a lot of reasons to make life choices besides impact, and that that is ok. This is hard in general with written content aimed at a broad audience because some people probably need to hear the message to sacrifice a little more, and some a little less.
I summarised Elliot’s post in my mind as a form of reflecting on how a decision affects you over differing time horizons, as well as the second-order consequences of a decision. I would add to his bullet list of reasons to return home if you plan on having kids: going home for kids retains more of your discretionary time.
Having kids is a transformative experience and as such by its very nature you can’t fully predict how you’ll come out the other side of it. Elliot’s post does a good job of stepping that out for us, and lilly’s comments ask some valuable questions about messaging: appealing to older folks that are not EA-aware could be better reached. I resonate with both paragraphs of lilly’s comment. At the time of my reply I can see three detractors from lilly’s comments—I’d like to have read their responses here why they disagreed.