Epistemic status: I’m acutely aware of how much less educated I am than the typical EA. If you disagree with the general thrust of this post, I’d appreciate someone explaining why. If you agree, I’d love it if someone could write a more eloquent and informed version.
I’ve seen a few people say recently that EA should be more democratic with respect to who the thought leaders are, who the board members are, who gets invited to events, how large donors’ money is spent, etc. Sometimes they seem to be proposing that things get decided by community-wide votes and sometimes they seem to be just calling for a lot more transparency and consultation with the wider community.
Those arguing in bad faith are presumably just looking for another bad word to associate with EA (‘undemocratic’).
Those arguing in good faith are presumably starting from a place of democracy being the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried. But then I’m not sure where they go next.
EA is not a country. Neither is it a corporation. The closest analogy is perhaps a charity, but I don’t think charities are particularly democratic? The idea of an intern having an equal say as a founding director in who the CEO/Chair is, for example, seems a bit absurd to me.
The success of a democracy is heavily dependent on sufficient enfranchisement of those the democracy purports to serve.
And the EA community does not purport to serve the EA community. It purports to serve all current and future sentient beings.
It’s a useful ‘meta’ bonus if working and socialising closely together makes us more effective agents of positive change. And, y’know, it’s just nice to hang out with like-minded people. But ultimately, we’re not here to help each other. We’re here to help a countless number of people, the vast majority of whom can’t vote.
So it’s far from obvious to me what the ideal structure of the EA community as a whole looks like. (And also who should work on moving EA in that direction and what they should deprioritise in order to do so.)
It’s easier to argue for what certain parts of it should look like: charities should presumably start from a default of whatever’s widely considered best practice for charities, the same goes for startups, university groups, academic institutes, online discussion spaces, etc. But this potentially unprecedented informal organic amalgamation of many different kinds of groups ultimately all striving to hold themselves equally accountable to every sentient being there is or ever will be?
I’m not saying that certain people definitely shouldn’t stop what they’re doing and instead figure out how to make certain aspects of EA more internally democratic (or, for that matter, less bureaucratic / more centralised / less deferential / more conformist / less social / more concerned with optics / less hero-worship-y...I’m sure you can remember many more proposals).
I just want to push back on what I see as a tendency for people—especially highly altruistic people—to give a knee-jerk enthusiastic reaction to calls for democratic reform.
Should EA be more democratic?
Epistemic status: I’m acutely aware of how much less educated I am than the typical EA. If you disagree with the general thrust of this post, I’d appreciate someone explaining why. If you agree, I’d love it if someone could write a more eloquent and informed version.
I’ve seen a few people say recently that EA should be more democratic with respect to who the thought leaders are, who the board members are, who gets invited to events, how large donors’ money is spent, etc. Sometimes they seem to be proposing that things get decided by community-wide votes and sometimes they seem to be just calling for a lot more transparency and consultation with the wider community.
Those arguing in bad faith are presumably just looking for another bad word to associate with EA (‘undemocratic’).
Those arguing in good faith are presumably starting from a place of democracy being the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried. But then I’m not sure where they go next.
EA is not a country. Neither is it a corporation. The closest analogy is perhaps a charity, but I don’t think charities are particularly democratic? The idea of an intern having an equal say as a founding director in who the CEO/Chair is, for example, seems a bit absurd to me.
The success of a democracy is heavily dependent on sufficient enfranchisement of those the democracy purports to serve.
And the EA community does not purport to serve the EA community. It purports to serve all current and future sentient beings.
It’s a useful ‘meta’ bonus if working and socialising closely together makes us more effective agents of positive change. And, y’know, it’s just nice to hang out with like-minded people. But ultimately, we’re not here to help each other. We’re here to help a countless number of people, the vast majority of whom can’t vote.
So it’s far from obvious to me what the ideal structure of the EA community as a whole looks like. (And also who should work on moving EA in that direction and what they should deprioritise in order to do so.)
It’s easier to argue for what certain parts of it should look like: charities should presumably start from a default of whatever’s widely considered best practice for charities, the same goes for startups, university groups, academic institutes, online discussion spaces, etc. But this potentially unprecedented informal organic amalgamation of many different kinds of groups ultimately all striving to hold themselves equally accountable to every sentient being there is or ever will be?
I’m not saying that certain people definitely shouldn’t stop what they’re doing and instead figure out how to make certain aspects of EA more internally democratic (or, for that matter, less bureaucratic / more centralised / less deferential / more conformist / less social / more concerned with optics / less hero-worship-y...I’m sure you can remember many more proposals).
I just want to push back on what I see as a tendency for people—especially highly altruistic people—to give a knee-jerk enthusiastic reaction to calls for democratic reform.