Thanks for a really interesting post Owen! Movements, religions and groups of people in general seem really prone to schisms, even when they have a pretty well defined view, so it seems like disagreements leading to people falling out could be one of the big risks effective altruism faces, given the diversity of views and the emphasis on finding the very best thing. I like your emphasis on epistemic modesty and creating a collaborative culture. I also like your suggestion of forum posts carefully stating the case for different causes. Hopefully if we succeed in making a collaborative culture, that will help both at avoiding those kinds of posts being felt as an attack, and preventing comments on them from getting too vehement, which will make writers happier to post them.
One thing it might be nice to see more of is people writing about and defending different causes than the ones they usually do. I think most people interested in effective altruism think that there are many causes that are really effective, and focus on a particular one either because it seems probably even more effective than the others, or just because they can’t do everything. It would be really nice for that to be more evident outside of informal discussions, for example in the posts people write. It seems difficult to do that, partly because it might seem obvious, and partly because it’s boring to talk about things that the people in the discussion already agree on. Yet that makes it easy, at least from a distance, to get the impression that people barely agree, and for people to feel confrontational towards each other.
I wonder if it might even be good to avoid too much asking people ‘what cause do you support?’. A question like that feels like it creates an expectation that people pin their colours to a particular mast, which could create a confrontational rather than collaborative atmosphere.
I tend to tell people that I don’t know enough to support a particular cause yet. That seems to work well at avoiding pinning myself down, and it’s true.
One thing it might be nice to see more of is people writing about and defending different causes than the ones they usually do.
Interesting idea. How much detail would you expect such articles to go into? It seems they run the risk of a knee-jerk, this is not what EA is about, downvote.
My reading of Michelle’s point was not that we should be writing about and defending causes that we wouldn’t normally think of as EA (although this could also be beneficial!) - I think she meant, within the space of the causes EAs generally talk about, it would be good if people wrote about and defended causes different to the ones they normally do. So, for example, if a person is known for talking about and defending animal causes, they could spend some time also writing about and defending xrisk or poverty. This would then lessen the impression that many people are “fixed” to one cause, but wouldn’t have the problem you mention. I might be reading this wrong though.
I meant Jess’ reading, sorry I wasn’t clear. I was thinking people would write about / defend causes they thought were very effective, though they weren’t the ones they usually focused on (and perhaps weren’t the one they thought very most effective). I think the knee-jerk would mostly be a problem if people wrote about causes they didn’t actually think were particularly effective, which does seem like it would be problematic.
Thanks for a really interesting post Owen! Movements, religions and groups of people in general seem really prone to schisms, even when they have a pretty well defined view, so it seems like disagreements leading to people falling out could be one of the big risks effective altruism faces, given the diversity of views and the emphasis on finding the very best thing. I like your emphasis on epistemic modesty and creating a collaborative culture. I also like your suggestion of forum posts carefully stating the case for different causes. Hopefully if we succeed in making a collaborative culture, that will help both at avoiding those kinds of posts being felt as an attack, and preventing comments on them from getting too vehement, which will make writers happier to post them.
One thing it might be nice to see more of is people writing about and defending different causes than the ones they usually do. I think most people interested in effective altruism think that there are many causes that are really effective, and focus on a particular one either because it seems probably even more effective than the others, or just because they can’t do everything. It would be really nice for that to be more evident outside of informal discussions, for example in the posts people write. It seems difficult to do that, partly because it might seem obvious, and partly because it’s boring to talk about things that the people in the discussion already agree on. Yet that makes it easy, at least from a distance, to get the impression that people barely agree, and for people to feel confrontational towards each other.
I wonder if it might even be good to avoid too much asking people ‘what cause do you support?’. A question like that feels like it creates an expectation that people pin their colours to a particular mast, which could create a confrontational rather than collaborative atmosphere.
I tend to tell people that I don’t know enough to support a particular cause yet. That seems to work well at avoiding pinning myself down, and it’s true.
Interesting idea. How much detail would you expect such articles to go into? It seems they run the risk of a knee-jerk, this is not what EA is about, downvote.
My reading of Michelle’s point was not that we should be writing about and defending causes that we wouldn’t normally think of as EA (although this could also be beneficial!) - I think she meant, within the space of the causes EAs generally talk about, it would be good if people wrote about and defended causes different to the ones they normally do. So, for example, if a person is known for talking about and defending animal causes, they could spend some time also writing about and defending xrisk or poverty. This would then lessen the impression that many people are “fixed” to one cause, but wouldn’t have the problem you mention. I might be reading this wrong though.
I meant Jess’ reading, sorry I wasn’t clear. I was thinking people would write about / defend causes they thought were very effective, though they weren’t the ones they usually focused on (and perhaps weren’t the one they thought very most effective). I think the knee-jerk would mostly be a problem if people wrote about causes they didn’t actually think were particularly effective, which does seem like it would be problematic.