Thanks for writing this article. You make a number of good points, however I don’t think you quite grapple with the strongest arguments against this.
The more you prioritise near-termist causes the more you’ll be tempted to grow the movement to maximise the donations to charity, whilst the more you prioritise long-termism, the more you‘ll prioritise high-skilled recruitment for specific skills we need (Actually, even near-termists may want to prioritise niche outreach as donations are heavy tailed too)
We face a dilemma—if everything counts as EA, then EA will lose its distinctiveness—but at the same time we don’t want to come off as narrow minded. I think part of the solution is acknowledging there are ways of doing altruism effectively outside of Effective Altruism. Then it makes sense for us to decide that we don’t need to do everything (this originally said ‘anything’ as a typo)
I really wish it weren’t the case, but broadening the movement too much would reduce the nuance in discussions by default.
I think it makes sense for Giving What We Can to focus on mass outreach and Effective Altruism to remain narrower rather than to do everything under the same banner as an event for everyone is an event for no-one.
I disagree that there is a meaningful trade-off here, and would love to more narrowly pinpoint what we’re predicting differently. As I said in the post, I don’t think that EAs will suddenly stop talking about prioritization and needs, and I don’t think that this is negative sum—I think it’s far more likely that a more accepting EA movement makes it easier to recruit high-skilled workers, not harder.
I agree that we need to “acknowledg[e] there are ways of doing altruism effectively outside of Effective Altruism,” or as I put it in the post, “Not everything needs to be EA.” But for exactly that reason, I strongly disagree that “it makes sense for us to decide that we don’t need to do anything”—at the very least, as you just said, we need to acknowledge it. And as I argued, we need to do more, and accept that people might want to do different things, and still be happy to ally with them, and congratulate them for doing good things, instead of criticizing them.
I don’t think that EA would be horribly hurt by reducing nuance by a few percent, at least not the way it is hurt by actively sabotaging itself by rejecting and too-often insulting people who would be allies.
First, I don’t think that you can be exclusive and demeaning and still have an EA movement. Second, an event open to everyone is, to potentially overextend your analogy, a large event. We don’t need everything under the same banner, but I think that stealing the EA banner to mean something narrow is a disservice to the movement. Yes, we can absolutely have various narrower banners—we already do for Alternative protein, Wild animal suffering, Biorisk, AI safety, Global health, etc. Shifting the movement overall to be narrow, instead of being the far more general applying consequentialist thinking to giving, isn’t helpful.
Sorry, I don’t have time to respond to all your points, but I agree that the EA movement can’t be demeaning. That isn’t the same though as optimising for a certain audience.
(Fixed typo: wrote demanding instead of demeaning).
Thanks for writing this article. You make a number of good points, however I don’t think you quite grapple with the strongest arguments against this.
The more you prioritise near-termist causes the more you’ll be tempted to grow the movement to maximise the donations to charity, whilst the more you prioritise long-termism, the more you‘ll prioritise high-skilled recruitment for specific skills we need (Actually, even near-termists may want to prioritise niche outreach as donations are heavy tailed too)
We face a dilemma—if everything counts as EA, then EA will lose its distinctiveness—but at the same time we don’t want to come off as narrow minded. I think part of the solution is acknowledging there are ways of doing altruism effectively outside of Effective Altruism. Then it makes sense for us to decide that we don’t need to do everything (this originally said ‘anything’ as a typo)
I really wish it weren’t the case, but broadening the movement too much would reduce the nuance in discussions by default.
I think it makes sense for Giving What We Can to focus on mass outreach and Effective Altruism to remain narrower rather than to do everything under the same banner as an event for everyone is an event for no-one.
I disagree that there is a meaningful trade-off here, and would love to more narrowly pinpoint what we’re predicting differently. As I said in the post, I don’t think that EAs will suddenly stop talking about prioritization and needs, and I don’t think that this is negative sum—I think it’s far more likely that a more accepting EA movement makes it easier to recruit high-skilled workers, not harder.
I agree that we need to “acknowledg[e] there are ways of doing altruism effectively outside of Effective Altruism,” or as I put it in the post, “Not everything needs to be EA.” But for exactly that reason, I strongly disagree that “it makes sense for us to decide that we don’t need to do anything”—at the very least, as you just said, we need to acknowledge it. And as I argued, we need to do more, and accept that people might want to do different things, and still be happy to ally with them, and congratulate them for doing good things, instead of criticizing them.
I don’t think that EA would be horribly hurt by reducing nuance by a few percent, at least not the way it is hurt by actively sabotaging itself by rejecting and too-often insulting people who would be allies.
First, I don’t think that you can be exclusive and demeaning and still have an EA movement. Second, an event open to everyone is, to potentially overextend your analogy, a large event. We don’t need everything under the same banner, but I think that stealing the EA banner to mean something narrow is a disservice to the movement. Yes, we can absolutely have various narrower banners—we already do for Alternative protein, Wild animal suffering, Biorisk, AI safety, Global health, etc. Shifting the movement overall to be narrow, instead of being the far more general applying consequentialist thinking to giving, isn’t helpful.
Sorry, I don’t have time to respond to all your points, but I agree that the EA movement can’t be demeaning. That isn’t the same though as optimising for a certain audience.
(Fixed typo: wrote demanding instead of demeaning).