I was reading somewhere on this forum recently a post that was about how EA is a set of beliefs and approaches, and shouldn’t aspire to be a group or movement.
I think of EA as a culture. IIUC there was a community called Overcoming Bias which became LessWrong, a community based on a roughly-agreed-upon set of axioms and approaches that led to a set of beliefs and a subculture; EA branched off from this [edit: no, not really, see replies] to form a closely related subculture, which “EA organizations” represent and foster.
It seems to be a “movement” because it is spreading messages and taking action, but I think its “movement-ness” is a natural consequence of its founding principles rather than a defining characteristic. Interestingly, I discovered EA/rationalism somewhat recently, but my beliefs fit into EA and rationalism like a hand in a glove. Personally, I am more attracted to being in an “EA culture” than an “EA movement” because I previously felt sort of like the only one of my kind—a lonely situation!
[Addendum:] I think this post is making a great point, that there is good to be done by, for example,
EAs learning practical lessons from other organizations
EAs promoting straightforward techniques for figuring out how to do good effectively
EAs making specific suggestions about ways to be more effective
But I also think that, if you want to do more than simply donate to effective charities—if you want to participate in EA culture and/or do “EA projects”—there is a lot to learn before you can do so effectively, especially if you aren’t already oriented toward a scientific way of thinking. This learning takes some time and dedication. So it seems that we should expect a cultural divide between EAs (or at least the “core” EAs who use EA approaches/beliefs on a day-to-day basis) and other people (who might still be EAs in the sense of choosing to give to effective charities, but never immerse themselves in the culture.)
[P.S.] Since you mentioned optics, I wonder if this divide might be better framed not as a “cultural” divide, but an “educational” divide. We don’t think of “people with science degrees” as being in a “different culture” than everyone else, and I’m basically saying that the difference between core EAs and altruistic non-EAs is a matter of education.
[On the other hand, in my mind, EA feels tied to rationalism because I learned both together—and rationalism is more than an ordinary education. (The rationalist in me points out that the two could be separated, though.) There are scientists who only act like scientists when they are in the lab, and follow a different culture and a different way of thinking elsewhere; more generally, people can compartmentalize their education so that it doesn’t affect them outside a workplace. Rationalism as promoted by the likes of Yudkowsky explicitly frowns on this and encourages us to follow virtues of rationality throughout our lives. In this way rationalism is a lifestyle, not just an education, and thinking of EA the same way appeals to me.]
A quick note on ‘EA branched off from [LessWrong] to form a closely related subculture’: this is a little inaccurate to my knowledge. In my understanding, EA initially came together from 3 main connected but separate sources: GiveWell, Oxford philosophers like Toby Ord and Will MacAskill and other associated people like Rob Wiblin, Ben Todd etc, and LessWrong. I think these 3 sources all interacted with each other quite early on (pre-2010), but I don’t think it’s accurate to say that EA branched off from LessWrong.
Thanks. Today I saw somebody point to Peter Singer and Toby Ord as the origin of EA, so I Googled around. I found that the term itself was chosen by 80000 hours and GWWC in 2012.
In turn, GWWC was founded by Toby Ord and William MacAskill (both at Oxford), and 80,000 hours was founded by William MacAskill and Benjamin Todd.
(incidentally, though, Eliezer Yudkowsky had used “effective” as an adjective on “altruist” back in 2007 and someone called Anand had made a “EffectiveAltruism” page in 2003 on the SL4 wiki; note that Yudkowsky started SL4 and LessWrong, and with Robin Hanson et al started OvercomingBias.)
I thought surely there was some further connection between EA and LessWrong/rationalism (otherwise where did my belief come from?) so I looked further. This history of LessWrong page lists EA as a “prominent idea” to have grown out of LessWrong but offers no explanation or evidence. LessWrong doesn’t seem to publish the join-date of its members but it seems to report that the earliest posts of “wdmacaskill” and “Benjamin_Todd” are “7y” ago (the “Load More” command has no effect beyond that date), while “Toby_Ord” goes back “10y” (so roughly 2009). From his messages I can see that Toby was also a member of Overcoming Bias. So Toby’s thinking would have been influenced by LessWrong/Yudkowskian rationalism, while for the others the connection isn’t clear.
Thanks for the additional research. I can add a few more things:
‘Carl Shulman’ commented on the GiveWell blog on December 31, 2007, seemingly familiar with GiveWell and having a positive impression of it at the time. This is presumably Carl Shulman (EA forum user Carl_Shulman), longtime EA and member of the rationality community.
Robert Wiblin’s earliest post on Overcoming Bias dates back to June 22, 2012.
The earliest post of LessWrong user ‘jkaufman’ (presumably longtime EA Jeff Kaufman) dates back to 25th September 2011.
There’s some discussion of the history of EA as connected with different communities on this LessWrong comment thread. User ‘thebestwecan’ (addressed as ‘Jacy’ by another comment, so presumably Jacy Reese) stated that the term ‘Effective Altruism’ was used several years in the Felicifia community before CEA adopted the term, but jkaufman’s Google search could only find the term going back to 2012. This comment is also interesting:
This was a pretty surprising sentence. Weren’t LessWrong & GiveWell growing large, important parts of the community before GWWC existed? It wasn’t called “effective altruism” at the time, but it was largely the same ideas and people.′
So apparently Luke Muehlhauser, an important and well connected member of the rationality community, believed that important parts of the EA community came from LW and GW before GWWC existed. This seems to exclude the idea that EA grew primarily out of LW.
Overall it seems to me that my earlier summary of EA growing out of the connected communities of GiveWell, Oxford (GWWC, people like Toby Ord and Will MacAskill etc), and LessWrong is probably correct.
I think of EA as a culture. IIUC there was a community called Overcoming Bias which became LessWrong, a community based on a roughly-agreed-upon set of axioms and approaches that led to a set of beliefs and a subculture; EA branched off from this [edit: no, not really, see replies] to form a closely related subculture, which “EA organizations” represent and foster.
It seems to be a “movement” because it is spreading messages and taking action, but I think its “movement-ness” is a natural consequence of its founding principles rather than a defining characteristic. Interestingly, I discovered EA/rationalism somewhat recently, but my beliefs fit into EA and rationalism like a hand in a glove. Personally, I am more attracted to being in an “EA culture” than an “EA movement” because I previously felt sort of like the only one of my kind—a lonely situation!
[Addendum:] I think this post is making a great point, that there is good to be done by, for example,
EAs learning practical lessons from other organizations
EAs promoting straightforward techniques for figuring out how to do good effectively
EAs making specific suggestions about ways to be more effective
But I also think that, if you want to do more than simply donate to effective charities—if you want to participate in EA culture and/or do “EA projects”—there is a lot to learn before you can do so effectively, especially if you aren’t already oriented toward a scientific way of thinking. This learning takes some time and dedication. So it seems that we should expect a cultural divide between EAs (or at least the “core” EAs who use EA approaches/beliefs on a day-to-day basis) and other people (who might still be EAs in the sense of choosing to give to effective charities, but never immerse themselves in the culture.)
[P.S.] Since you mentioned optics, I wonder if this divide might be better framed not as a “cultural” divide, but an “educational” divide. We don’t think of “people with science degrees” as being in a “different culture” than everyone else, and I’m basically saying that the difference between core EAs and altruistic non-EAs is a matter of education.
[On the other hand, in my mind, EA feels tied to rationalism because I learned both together—and rationalism is more than an ordinary education. (The rationalist in me points out that the two could be separated, though.) There are scientists who only act like scientists when they are in the lab, and follow a different culture and a different way of thinking elsewhere; more generally, people can compartmentalize their education so that it doesn’t affect them outside a workplace. Rationalism as promoted by the likes of Yudkowsky explicitly frowns on this and encourages us to follow virtues of rationality throughout our lives. In this way rationalism is a lifestyle, not just an education, and thinking of EA the same way appeals to me.]
A quick note on ‘EA branched off from [LessWrong] to form a closely related subculture’: this is a little inaccurate to my knowledge. In my understanding, EA initially came together from 3 main connected but separate sources: GiveWell, Oxford philosophers like Toby Ord and Will MacAskill and other associated people like Rob Wiblin, Ben Todd etc, and LessWrong. I think these 3 sources all interacted with each other quite early on (pre-2010), but I don’t think it’s accurate to say that EA branched off from LessWrong.
Thanks. Today I saw somebody point to Peter Singer and Toby Ord as the origin of EA, so I Googled around. I found that the term itself was chosen by 80000 hours and GWWC in 2012.
In turn, GWWC was founded by Toby Ord and William MacAskill (both at Oxford), and 80,000 hours was founded by William MacAskill and Benjamin Todd.
(incidentally, though, Eliezer Yudkowsky had used “effective” as an adjective on “altruist” back in 2007 and someone called Anand had made a “EffectiveAltruism” page in 2003 on the SL4 wiki; note that Yudkowsky started SL4 and LessWrong, and with Robin Hanson et al started OvercomingBias.)
I thought surely there was some further connection between EA and LessWrong/rationalism (otherwise where did my belief come from?) so I looked further. This history of LessWrong page lists EA as a “prominent idea” to have grown out of LessWrong but offers no explanation or evidence. LessWrong doesn’t seem to publish the join-date of its members but it seems to report that the earliest posts of “wdmacaskill” and “Benjamin_Todd” are “7y” ago (the “Load More” command has no effect beyond that date), while “Toby_Ord” goes back “10y” (so roughly 2009). From his messages I can see that Toby was also a member of Overcoming Bias. So Toby’s thinking would have been influenced by LessWrong/Yudkowskian rationalism, while for the others the connection isn’t clear.
Thanks for the additional research. I can add a few more things:
‘Carl Shulman’ commented on the GiveWell blog on December 31, 2007, seemingly familiar with GiveWell and having a positive impression of it at the time. This is presumably Carl Shulman (EA forum user Carl_Shulman), longtime EA and member of the rationality community.
Robert Wiblin’s earliest post on Overcoming Bias dates back to June 22, 2012.
The earliest post of LessWrong user ‘jkaufman’ (presumably longtime EA Jeff Kaufman) dates back to 25th September 2011.
There’s some discussion of the history of EA as connected with different communities on this LessWrong comment thread. User ‘thebestwecan’ (addressed as ‘Jacy’ by another comment, so presumably Jacy Reese) stated that the term ‘Effective Altruism’ was used several years in the Felicifia community before CEA adopted the term, but jkaufman’s Google search could only find the term going back to 2012. This comment is also interesting:
’lukeprog (Luke Muehlhauser) objects to CEA’s claim that EA grew primarily out of Giving What We Can at http://www.effectivealtruism.org/#comments :
So apparently Luke Muehlhauser, an important and well connected member of the rationality community, believed that important parts of the EA community came from LW and GW before GWWC existed. This seems to exclude the idea that EA grew primarily out of LW.
Overall it seems to me that my earlier summary of EA growing out of the connected communities of GiveWell, Oxford (GWWC, people like Toby Ord and Will MacAskill etc), and LessWrong is probably correct.