Bibliography of EA writings about fields and movements of interest to EA
Latest update: 22 April 2024
Years ago, I compiled a list of writings by members of the EA community focused on fields and movements of interest to EA. The list seems to have spread organically and every couple of months someone messages me with comments or questions about it. Although the list is probably incomplete, it seems sufficiently comprehensive to justify publication on the EA Forum. Please let me know, by contacting me or leaving a comment, if you notice any omissions.
An Appendix to the post highlights some fields and movements that might be useful to investigate but have so far received little or no EA attention.
The list
American geriatrics
Muehlhauser (2017) Some case studies in early field growth
Animal rights movement
Clifton (2016) Lessons from the history of animal rights
Muehlhauser (2017) Some case studies in early field growth
Anti-abortion movement
Anti-death-penalty movement
Anti-nuclear movement
Antislavery movement
Animal Charity Evaluators (2018) The British antislavery movement and the abolition of the slave trade in 1807
Anthis & Anthis (2017) Social movement lessons from the British antislavery movement
Mauricio (2020) What helped the voiceless? Historical case studies
Behavioral economics
Stafforini (2018) Behavioral economics
Bioethics
Muehlhauser (2017) Some case studies in early field growth
Children’s rights
Animal Charity Evaluators (2018) Children’s rights
Christianity
Vallinder (2018) The rise of early Christianity
Confucianism
Vallinder (2018) Confucius vs Mozi
Conservative legal movement
Muehlhauser (2017) Some case studies in early field growth
Cryonics
Muehlhauser (2017) Some case studies in early field growth
Effective philanthropy
Cold Button Issues (2022) Before there was effective altruism, there was effective philanthropy
Environmentalism
Animal Charity Evaluators (2018) Environmentalism
Carlsmith (2018) What can the existential risk community learn from environmentalism?
Mauricio (2020) What helped the voiceless? Historical case studies
Muehlhauser (2017) Some case studies in early field growth
Evidence-based medicine
Hadshar (2018) Evidence-based medicine
Fabianism
Alexander (2018) Book review: History of the Fabian Society
Fair trade
Harris (2021) Social movement lessons from the fair trade movement
Fat acceptance movement
Lueke (2018) Fat activism
General semantics
Sempere (2019) Why do social movements fail: Two concrete examples
Marriage equality
Mohism
Vallinder (2018) Confucius vs Mozi
Molecular nanotechnology
Muehlhauser (2017) Some case studies in early field growth
Neoliberalism
Muehlhauser (2017) Some case studies in early field growth
Vaughan (2016) What the EA community can learn from the rise of the neoliberals
New atheism
Alexander (2017) How did new atheism fail so miserably?
Prisoner human rights movement
Rationalist movement
Scientific charity movement
Kaufman (2016) Scientific charity movement
Spanish Enlightenment
Sempere (2019) Why do social movements fail: Two concrete examples
Appendix
Some fields and movements EAs may want to study more:
Open science (esp. open access and open source)
See also this list by Luke Muehlhauser.
- ^
See this comment by Tyner for an explanation of why this movement may be worth studying.
- ^
See this post by wesg for some background.
- PhD on Moral Progress—Bibliography Review by (10 Dec 2023 10:06 UTC; 122 points)
- What domains do you wish some EA was an expert in? by (28 Aug 2022 16:30 UTC; 96 points)
- Some research ideas on the history of social movements by (1 Mar 2022 8:52 UTC; 45 points)
- A selection of some writings and considerations on the cause of artificial sentience by (10 Aug 2023 18:23 UTC; 43 points)
- EA Updates for March 2022 by (25 Feb 2022 15:42 UTC; 27 points)
Summary: My experience of hundreds of hours of research has taught me that it can’t be overstated how much EA has underestimated the value of information to learn on the subject of socialism. A piecemeal review of only one kind of socialism would be misrepresent and limit how much EA can learn. The only adequate representation would be a review of how liberalism, socialism and utilitarianism have all fundamentally shaped each other over 200 years. It may be that can only be achieved through something like a book-length work a researcher receives funding to work on full-time (or maybe part-time).
I volunteered a couple years ago to take a dive into socialism in relation to EA. I didn’t specify how deep a dive it would be because I didn’t know how deep I’d have to go. It was the deepest dive I’ve ever taken.
I’ve learned much but I haven’t published much in the ways of summaries of what I’ve learned. Why I haven’t is because it has been too hard to prioritize what information would be most valuable for the EA community to learn from.
I’ve thought about doing an AMA. Yet I haven’t because I’ve felt it’d be almost futile. I expect most others in EA don’t understand the relevant subject matter well enough to know the right questions to ask to get the most value out of the information. Even for those who do, I’m not confident I’ll know how to answer their questions in a way that adequately transmits the full value of the information.
The most relevant lesson I’ve learned about socialism in relation to EA is the whole community has underestimated how much there is to learn. I anticipated what I’d learn worth presenting to the EA community could be summarized in only one or a few articles on the EA Forum, like those written on neoliberalism, or the couple shallow overviews there have been of Marxism as the primary approach in history to what’s called ‘scientific socialism.’
Writing a comprehensive review of only one kind of socialism in a piecemeal way would be of limited value because it would not show the far greater value of a whole body of knowledge. To cover as broad a topic as broad as the relationship between EA and “capitalism” or “socialism” would fit better in a book. Why is that liberalism and socialism, the two predominant modern ideologies, and utilitarianism, the main precursor to EA in history, have all dynamically shaped each other for 200 years.
The social, intellectual and political history that shaped EA can’t be understood without understanding that set of relationships. It has all reframed my own understanding of EA as much if not more than anything else I’ve ever learned. It’s to the point that an adequate review may only be feasible by funding someone to do the research.
This sounds interesting, though I feel slightly confused. I can see why socialism would be a useful thing to know about, but not why it’s so much more interesting and useful than, e.g., neoliberalism. I’d also be pretty interested to hear more about how it relates to EA’s historical and cultural influences. I guess you’re right that I don’t even know what the right questions to ask about this are.
If this work is as important as you say here then it seems like a lot of value is being left on the table. Seems like it would be really helpful if you could write out a few bullet points of what needs to be done to get to that stage and how others might be able to help, then reach out to EA Funds or someone else with a proposal.
A mistake EA as a community made, and, again, this includes me, is to consider these ideologies and the movements they’ve inspired in mostly contemporary terms. Never mind socialism, beyond only neo-liberalism, liberalism itself in relation to EA could be the subject of its own book-length work. Here are some examples of what I mean for all of this:
John Stuart Mill is one of the fathers of utilitarianism. Along with early modern economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo, he is also one of the fathers of liberalism. That’s what most in EA already know. Here is what they probably wouldn’t know and I didn’t either. While each of those intellectuals initially favoured capitalism, during their lifetimes they concluded as capitalism developed that its (presumably) inexorable tendency to concentrate wealth would generate monopolies destructive to a sufficiently free and utility-maximizing market economy. That’s why they embraced what’s called ‘liberal socialism,’ a market economy that mostly formed of small-to-medium-sized firms owned by individual owner-operators or collectively by workers.
Beyond the many scientists of the Manhattan Project and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to follow doing their utmost to minimize the chance of nuclear war, the Cold War also shaped the politics of efforts to reduce other global catastrophic risks. That included the following generations of scientists likely preventing the deaths of tens of millions by facilitating states on both sides of the Iron Curtain, be it developing a smallpox vaccine, or ratifying the 1987 Montreal Accord
Navigating the tensions between two systems like capitalism and socialism, or liberalism and Marxism, has been a necessary task to maximize marginal utility continuously undertaken by the movements that have most inspired EA for almost 200 years. That history is the history of how politics has shaped EA.
I can figure out the steps others can take to help once I know what else to do first. I’m not confident what those steps might be but I’m not sure what you mean by what “needs to get done.” If you can clarify what you mean, that may help me know what the next step is.
Also, if you mean that I personally submit a proposal for a research grant to the EA Funds or whatever, me doing this myself would work. There are more fitting candidates than me I can ask if they’d be willing. I could also collaborate with them.
Cool list! I wrote a few other social movement case studies not on this list when I was working at Sentience Institute.
(I think they’re more relevant to the farmed animal movement than to the effective altruism community but if this was an intentional rather than accidental exclusion, I would be interested to hear reasons why SI’s anti-slavery and Fair Trade case studies merit inclusion here but the others don’t.)
Anti abortion movement: https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/anti-abortion
Anti death penalty movement: https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/death-penalty
Prisoners rights movement (less relevant, IMO): https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/prisoners-rights
Additionally, you highlighted the anti-nuclear movement as worthy of further study. The focus was on the proliferation of nuclear power, but J (another former SI researcher) wrote a cool case study report which includes some interesting info about the anti-nuclear movement: https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/nuclear-power-clean-meat
Thanks—added.
Re antislavery, there are a few more sources on this by EAAs.
Thanks—added.
I also found Social Movement Lessons from the Fair Trade Movement interesting to read
Thank you—added.
The field of “technological assessment” could also be a good case study.
Thanks. Do you have any recommended readings?
I don’t. Maybe it fizzled too soon for many to write about it..
Amnesty International seems like another case that would be worth understanding better:
cosmopolitan, secular, broad and somewhat abstract principles
strong presence as university groups (at least in Germany)
10 million “supporters” according to the Wikipedia article
sobering reports of “toxic culture” in the main offices (bullying, sexism & racism) despite what I assume to be well-meaning people
There are some movements mentioned above I’ve studied to varying degrees of breadth and depth but informally. I might do some shorter write-ups about parts of those movements informative to EA but don’t cover the complete scope of what the community would want to learn from them. If others in EA have also studied these movements or would be willing to collaborate on researching them, please let me know.
Anti-nuclear movement
Civil Rights Movement
Cognitive Revolution
Socialism (including Marxism, communism and anarchism)
Technocracy movement
Women’s rights movement (mostly in but not exclusively limited to Western countries)
RE: Fat acceptance/size acceptance
Outside of the writings this post links to within this forum, there are a few sources that provide a comprehensive look at the issues surrounding this movement that might be useful to anyone beginning an investigation. I have listed them below with the first entry providing a quick introduction to the issue. For those with more time the remaining sources are books that provide a more in-depth examination of fat acceptance and the influence of the diet industry from varying perspectives.
Michael Orsini and Deborah McPhail “Fat Acceptance As Social Justice” (CMAJ 2021)—a short two page overview of the intersections of the fat acceptance movements with social justice issues
Sabrina Strings, Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia (2019)
Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body is Not An Apology (2nd edition 2021)
Christy Harrison, Anti-Diet (2019)
Alison Rumsey, Unapologetic Eating (2021)
Da’Shaun Harrison, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness (2021)