Some other failure modes of EA aesthetics is the issue of keeping EA’s identity small, and aesthetic lack prevents the failure mode of going to political stuff immediately, which has been a downfall for many organizations. EA thankfully is mostly apolitical right now, and going for more developed aesthetics threatens that apoliticality, which is necessary if you want to be normatively and empirically uncertain. It’s similar in nature to this comment in your previous post here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JQyacxvzoH3Eo4GPo/guided-by-the-beauty-of-one-s-philosophies-why-aesthetics#comments (Sorry for not pointing to it exactly.)
This failure mode is so serious and so common such that any efforts that effect that apoliticality need to be very scrutinized first, since there’s a whole lot of downside risk, and not too much upside to stronger aesthetics. That means EA shouldn’t fund aesthetics right now.
This is a good point. I don’t think it necessarily conflicts with my suggestions, which are more about allowing people and organizations within the EA ecosystem to spend a small part of their time and resources on exploring various aesthetics, rather than picking an aesthetic identity and sticking to it.
I also think that aesthetics can absolutely be apolitical (I assume you mean the term in a stricter sense like “mapping to current areas of political disagreement in society,” since in a broad sense EA is about allocating common resources and therefore inherently political). But yes, the failure mode you describe seems real and should be kept in mind.
Some other failure modes of EA aesthetics is the issue of keeping EA’s identity small, and aesthetic lack prevents the failure mode of going to political stuff immediately, which has been a downfall for many organizations. EA thankfully is mostly apolitical right now, and going for more developed aesthetics threatens that apoliticality, which is necessary if you want to be normatively and empirically uncertain. It’s similar in nature to this comment in your previous post here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JQyacxvzoH3Eo4GPo/guided-by-the-beauty-of-one-s-philosophies-why-aesthetics#comments (Sorry for not pointing to it exactly.)
This failure mode is so serious and so common such that any efforts that effect that apoliticality need to be very scrutinized first, since there’s a whole lot of downside risk, and not too much upside to stronger aesthetics. That means EA shouldn’t fund aesthetics right now.
This is a good point. I don’t think it necessarily conflicts with my suggestions, which are more about allowing people and organizations within the EA ecosystem to spend a small part of their time and resources on exploring various aesthetics, rather than picking an aesthetic identity and sticking to it.
I also think that aesthetics can absolutely be apolitical (I assume you mean the term in a stricter sense like “mapping to current areas of political disagreement in society,” since in a broad sense EA is about allocating common resources and therefore inherently political). But yes, the failure mode you describe seems real and should be kept in mind.