Agreed wholeheartedly, and thank you for this kind, insightful writeup! I’m a new EA and not highly engaged (it’s hard to be when you live in a rural area), but I’ve been around EA-adjacent ideas since finding them through LessWrong and other forums ~12 years ago. Back then I was a student, and still quite skeptical of utlitarianism and consequentialism in ethics (which I now affirm). I accepted most EA ideas but didn’t feel like I could join the community if I couldn’t accept its main philosophical basis.
Seeing the impacts EA projects have in the real world, and that they are backed up by a rational community that comes with actual moral force and is willing to respectfully challenge its own to live better, more effective lives, are what encouraged me to finally take that plunge, commit to effective altruism as a life path, and start getting involved in the EA community. And I made this decision a few days after the OpenAI news came out!
All communities, to some extent, have bad actors in them—it’s just a fact of human existence, unfortunately. The fact that the EA community is actually willing to take concrete action on our bad actors, removing them from the community and limiting the damage they can do, is a refreshing change from other communities in which I have been involved.
The FTX scandal was horrible for its victims, and immoral period, but it is not effective altruism. Just because someone is involved in the EA community, and identifies as EA, doesn’t mean they do effective altruism. I want to be someone who does EA, lives the principles and ideas, works to make the world a better place both now and in the future. For me, identifying as EA issecondary to that.
Here’s wishing you all the best on the road ahead. This community is what we make it, and we need to keep working to build on the good community that is already here. We shouldn’t let our harshest critics discourage us from our moral duties and hopeful visions.
The FTX scandal was horrible for its victims, and immoral period, but it is not effective altruism. Just because someone is involved in the EA community, and identifies as EA, doesn’t mean they do effective altruism.
That’s true, but in totaling up the benefits and costs of EA, we have to consider it. I think the test is roughly whether the wrongdoer was success in using EA to facilitate their bad deeds, or was materially motivated by their exposure to EA. I think the answer for FTX was yes—SBF obtained early funding from EA-aligned sources, as well as attracting critical early recruits (some of them turning into co-conspirators) and gaining valuable PR benefits from his association with EA. (One could argue that he was also motivated by EA, but I’m not confident that I believe that.)
In the same way, I would weigh mistreatment of children facilitated by association with the Catholic Church or Scouting in assessing those movements, even those child abuse is not the practice of Catholicism or of Scouting. In contrast, I wouldn’t generally view the unfacilitated/unmotivated acts—good or bad—of effective altruists, Catholics, or Scout volunteers in assessing the movements to which they belong.
Agreed wholeheartedly, and thank you for this kind, insightful writeup! I’m a new EA and not highly engaged (it’s hard to be when you live in a rural area), but I’ve been around EA-adjacent ideas since finding them through LessWrong and other forums ~12 years ago. Back then I was a student, and still quite skeptical of utlitarianism and consequentialism in ethics (which I now affirm). I accepted most EA ideas but didn’t feel like I could join the community if I couldn’t accept its main philosophical basis.
Seeing the impacts EA projects have in the real world, and that they are backed up by a rational community that comes with actual moral force and is willing to respectfully challenge its own to live better, more effective lives, are what encouraged me to finally take that plunge, commit to effective altruism as a life path, and start getting involved in the EA community. And I made this decision a few days after the OpenAI news came out!
All communities, to some extent, have bad actors in them—it’s just a fact of human existence, unfortunately. The fact that the EA community is actually willing to take concrete action on our bad actors, removing them from the community and limiting the damage they can do, is a refreshing change from other communities in which I have been involved.
The FTX scandal was horrible for its victims, and immoral period, but it is not effective altruism. Just because someone is involved in the EA community, and identifies as EA, doesn’t mean they do effective altruism. I want to be someone who does EA, lives the principles and ideas, works to make the world a better place both now and in the future. For me, identifying as EA is secondary to that.
Here’s wishing you all the best on the road ahead. This community is what we make it, and we need to keep working to build on the good community that is already here. We shouldn’t let our harshest critics discourage us from our moral duties and hopeful visions.
That’s true, but in totaling up the benefits and costs of EA, we have to consider it. I think the test is roughly whether the wrongdoer was success in using EA to facilitate their bad deeds, or was materially motivated by their exposure to EA. I think the answer for FTX was yes—SBF obtained early funding from EA-aligned sources, as well as attracting critical early recruits (some of them turning into co-conspirators) and gaining valuable PR benefits from his association with EA. (One could argue that he was also motivated by EA, but I’m not confident that I believe that.)
In the same way, I would weigh mistreatment of children facilitated by association with the Catholic Church or Scouting in assessing those movements, even those child abuse is not the practice of Catholicism or of Scouting. In contrast, I wouldn’t generally view the unfacilitated/unmotivated acts—good or bad—of effective altruists, Catholics, or Scout volunteers in assessing the movements to which they belong.