This is all really interesting, and thank you all for chiming in. Liam, I’m curious—do you adopt EA tools within a Catholic moral framework, or do you practice Catholicism while adopting a different moral framework? I figure your participation in EA is some sort of anecdata.
The answer to your question is basically what I phrased as a hypothetical before:
participation in the EA movement as one way to bring oneself closer to God through the theological virtue of charity.
I was involved in EA at university for 2 years before coming to believe Catholicism is true, and it didn’t seem like Church dogma conflicted with my pro-EA intuitions at all, so I’ve just stayed with it. It helped that I wasn’t ever an EA for rigidly consequentialist reasons; I just wanted to help people and EA’s analytical approach was a natural fit for my existing interests (e.g. LW-style rationality).
I’m not sure my case (becoming both EA and Catholic due to LW-style reasoning) is broadly applicable; I think EA would be better served sticking to traditional recruiting channels rather than trying to extend outreach to religious people qua religious people. Moreover, I feel that it’s very very important for EA to defend the value of taking ideas seriously, which would rule out a lot of the proposed religious outreach strategies you see (such as this post from Ozy).
This is all really interesting, and thank you all for chiming in. Liam, I’m curious—do you adopt EA tools within a Catholic moral framework, or do you practice Catholicism while adopting a different moral framework? I figure your participation in EA is some sort of anecdata.
The answer to your question is basically what I phrased as a hypothetical before:
I was involved in EA at university for 2 years before coming to believe Catholicism is true, and it didn’t seem like Church dogma conflicted with my pro-EA intuitions at all, so I’ve just stayed with it. It helped that I wasn’t ever an EA for rigidly consequentialist reasons; I just wanted to help people and EA’s analytical approach was a natural fit for my existing interests (e.g. LW-style rationality).
I’m not sure my case (becoming both EA and Catholic due to LW-style reasoning) is broadly applicable; I think EA would be better served sticking to traditional recruiting channels rather than trying to extend outreach to religious people qua religious people. Moreover, I feel that it’s very very important for EA to defend the value of taking ideas seriously, which would rule out a lot of the proposed religious outreach strategies you see (such as this post from Ozy).