If there was no difference at all between the beliefs/values/behaviours of a the average member of this community, versus the average member of the human species—then there would be no reson for the concept “Effective Altruism” to exist at all.
It would be a terrible thing for our community to directly discriminate against traits which are totally irrelevant to what someone has offer to the EA project (such as race/gender/sexual preference) - and I’ve never heard anyone around here disagree with that.
But when it comes to a traits such as being highly intelligent, not being a political extremist, or having intellectual curiosity about any part of the universe other than our comparitively tiny planet (aka “thinks space is cool”) - having these traits be over-represented in the community is an obviously good thing!
Dear authors, if you think the community at large has the wrong idea about moral philosophy, I think the best response is to present compelling arguments which criticize utilitarianism directly!
If you think the community at large has the wrong economic/political beliefs, please argue against these directly!
Or if you think there is a a particular organisation in the movement is making a particular mistake which they wouldn’t have made had they consulted more domain experts, please lay out a compelling case for this as well!
If there was no difference at all between the beliefs/values/behaviours of a the average member of this community, versus the average member of the human species—then there would be no reson for the concept “Effective Altruism” to exist at all.
It would be a terrible thing for our community to directly discriminate against traits which are totally irrelevant to what someone has offer to the EA project (such as race/gender/sexual preference) - and I’ve never heard anyone around here disagree with that.
But when it comes to a traits such as being highly intelligent, not being a political extremist, or having intellectual curiosity about any part of the universe other than our comparitively tiny planet (aka “thinks space is cool”) - having these traits be over-represented in the community is an obviously good thing!
Dear authors, if you think the community at large has the wrong idea about moral philosophy, I think the best response is to present compelling arguments which criticize utilitarianism directly!
If you think the community at large has the wrong economic/political beliefs, please argue against these directly!
Or if you think there is a a particular organisation in the movement is making a particular mistake which they wouldn’t have made had they consulted more domain experts, please lay out a compelling case for this as well!