The tldr is that the neoliberals managed to change the world to adopt their ideology chiefly through convincing academia. This isn’t just some random hypothesis: they claimed that this was how to do it, *and then they did it*. Academia is mostly influenced through weird things like prestige and respectability, and therefore the success of the EA movement hinges on the impression that it makes, which hinges not on its total output as much as the *average* quality of its organisations. It seems likely that the EA hotel would push this average down.
(one can argue against this, for example by disagreeing that academia sets the overton window, or by arguing that ideology is just as likely to “trickle up” from the masses as it is likely to trickle down, or generally that there are other ways to set the overton window. The neoliberal story is compelling though, and one could claim that the same thing happened with social justice recently)”
Crossposting my comment from Facebook. Full disclosure: I work at the EA Hotel.
“Here’s the article Greg mentions, and I think that it’s the best argument for being lukewarm about the EA Hotel: https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/ea-neoliberal/
The tldr is that the neoliberals managed to change the world to adopt their ideology chiefly through convincing academia. This isn’t just some random hypothesis: they claimed that this was how to do it, *and then they did it*. Academia is mostly influenced through weird things like prestige and respectability, and therefore the success of the EA movement hinges on the impression that it makes, which hinges not on its total output as much as the *average* quality of its organisations. It seems likely that the EA hotel would push this average down.
(one can argue against this, for example by disagreeing that academia sets the overton window, or by arguing that ideology is just as likely to “trickle up” from the masses as it is likely to trickle down, or generally that there are other ways to set the overton window. The neoliberal story is compelling though, and one could claim that the same thing happened with social justice recently)”
I think this concern becomes much less of an issue if the EA Hotel didn’t have “EA” in its name
We could just start calling it the Athena Hotel. That also disambiguates if additional hotels are opened in the future.