“In my opinion, a new more inclusive organisation with a focus on making a positive impact needs to be created—with a better name.”
This seems right to me, and it should be focused on recruiting in a different part of the population, and having a very different culture than EA. Of course the end goal should still be doing lots of good in the world as efficiently as possible.
At the same time, EA and the EA brand should remain, and without any big cultural changes (ie still mostly utilitarian, nerd, philosophy grad, using explicit EV calculations, and jargon heavy).
We need more than one effectiveness focused altruism brand.
Related: There is EA the actual movement, and EA the philosophy. I wonder how much we are losing out on by not having a clear line between the two. Maybe internally this distinction can be carefully navigated, but to an outsider it is one and the same. I wonder if that might be one of the things that could be improved about EA.
I’m not sure I agree with this. As far as I can tell the EA community has always been quite focused on being inclusive, kind and welcoming—see for instance this and this post from CEA, which are both years old. I’m very sorry to hear about the OP’s experiences of course, and honestly surprised personally since my own experience has been a lot more positive. However, this doesn’t automatically imply to me that we need a whole new community or something to that effect.
I would see this more as presenting an opportunity to improve our culture and amend any failures that our currently happening despite the efforts of a lot of community leaders. I don’t think there’s a ‘fundamental flaw’ in how the EA community is trying to operate in that respect. Also it seems to me that distancing the EA brand in this way you’re suggesting would potentially incentivize it to become even less human and amiable—because then it would be distinguished by being the ‘weird, rationalist / philosophical community’. (Not to mention that it would seemingly decrease opportunities for collaboration with the ‘other community’ and create confusion for those looking to get involved in EA.)
Edit: Just to be clear, I’m not making any general claims here about how successful the EA community has been in implementing the ideals I mentioned above. Obviously this post points to updating against that.
My view is that there should be a ‘weird, rationalist/ philosophical altruistic community’ that is allowed to be as inhuman, non-amiable, etc as it wants to be, and that is a good thing because it is an useful sort of place for certain types of people to find each other and interact, and because it will come up with ideas that wouldn’t be found if this group was thoroughly mixed with other sub groups of people.
“In my opinion, a new more inclusive organisation with a focus on making a positive impact needs to be created—with a better name.”
This seems right to me, and it should be focused on recruiting in a different part of the population, and having a very different culture than EA. Of course the end goal should still be doing lots of good in the world as efficiently as possible.
At the same time, EA and the EA brand should remain, and without any big cultural changes (ie still mostly utilitarian, nerd, philosophy grad, using explicit EV calculations, and jargon heavy).
We need more than one effectiveness focused altruism brand.
Related: There is EA the actual movement, and EA the philosophy. I wonder how much we are losing out on by not having a clear line between the two. Maybe internally this distinction can be carefully navigated, but to an outsider it is one and the same. I wonder if that might be one of the things that could be improved about EA.
I’m not sure I agree with this. As far as I can tell the EA community has always been quite focused on being inclusive, kind and welcoming—see for instance this and this post from CEA, which are both years old. I’m very sorry to hear about the OP’s experiences of course, and honestly surprised personally since my own experience has been a lot more positive. However, this doesn’t automatically imply to me that we need a whole new community or something to that effect.
I would see this more as presenting an opportunity to improve our culture and amend any failures that our currently happening despite the efforts of a lot of community leaders. I don’t think there’s a ‘fundamental flaw’ in how the EA community is trying to operate in that respect. Also it seems to me that distancing the EA brand in this way you’re suggesting would potentially incentivize it to become even less human and amiable—because then it would be distinguished by being the ‘weird, rationalist / philosophical community’. (Not to mention that it would seemingly decrease opportunities for collaboration with the ‘other community’ and create confusion for those looking to get involved in EA.)
Edit: Just to be clear, I’m not making any general claims here about how successful the EA community has been in implementing the ideals I mentioned above. Obviously this post points to updating against that.
My view is that there should be a ‘weird, rationalist/ philosophical altruistic community’ that is allowed to be as inhuman, non-amiable, etc as it wants to be, and that is a good thing because it is an useful sort of place for certain types of people to find each other and interact, and because it will come up with ideas that wouldn’t be found if this group was thoroughly mixed with other sub groups of people.