I’ve had similar feelings to Alice. Part of it is that group membership serves a role of signalling information about yourself to others. Its very different to describe yourself to others as an EA when the primary association with it is “slightly weird but well meaning group of charitable people” vs when its “those weird crypto/eugenics people”. And in the latter case you are better off moving to labelling yourself as something else
That seems bad in equilibrium. For example, if the public view of EA after the WWOTF publicity tour is “those people who think about the long term future”, then a global health/animal welfare person in EA would be “better off” by not calling themselves EA and labelling themselves as something else. But that would make it much harder to have a big tent within EA.
Why is big tent EA an end in itself? The EA movement exists for the purpose of doing good, not for having a movement. If multiple smaller movements are more effective at doing good then we should do that.
Multiple groups make it easier to specialise and avoid having single points of failure. Though you lose some economies of scale and coordination benefits.
IMO big tent is valuable due to gains from trade. I have X cause area, but Charlie is better suited to work on X than I am, and I am better suited to work on their cause area Y. Our labour swap is more effective for our cause areas than each focusing on our own area.
Gains from trade, and agglomeration effects, and economies of scale. Being effective is useful for doing good, having a lot of close friends and allies is useful for being effective.
It’s not necessarily an end in and of itself, but a scenario like this can lead to fairly arbitrary factors deciding what EA “is” in a self reinforcing cycle. Let’s say a popular news outlet wrote a critical article about EA and then many EAs decided to stop identifying with it because of the now negative connotations. It seems wrong to let external forces dictate what EA Is in that way.
I think a meta that emerges here is: do I have Alice-like feelings because I feel that EA will weaken (or “detract from my issues”) as a rallying call or because I’m concerned with how I’m perceived (both by others and myself), which is why I really appreciated how you framed Alice’s POV as personal and emotional, KT!
I’ve had similar feelings to Alice. Part of it is that group membership serves a role of signalling information about yourself to others. Its very different to describe yourself to others as an EA when the primary association with it is “slightly weird but well meaning group of charitable people” vs when its “those weird crypto/eugenics people”. And in the latter case you are better off moving to labelling yourself as something else
That seems bad in equilibrium. For example, if the public view of EA after the WWOTF publicity tour is “those people who think about the long term future”, then a global health/animal welfare person in EA would be “better off” by not calling themselves EA and labelling themselves as something else. But that would make it much harder to have a big tent within EA.
Why is big tent EA an end in itself? The EA movement exists for the purpose of doing good, not for having a movement. If multiple smaller movements are more effective at doing good then we should do that.
Multiple groups make it easier to specialise and avoid having single points of failure. Though you lose some economies of scale and coordination benefits.
IMO big tent is valuable due to gains from trade. I have X cause area, but Charlie is better suited to work on X than I am, and I am better suited to work on their cause area Y. Our labour swap is more effective for our cause areas than each focusing on our own area.
Gains from trade, and agglomeration effects, and economies of scale. Being effective is useful for doing good, having a lot of close friends and allies is useful for being effective.
It’s not necessarily an end in and of itself, but a scenario like this can lead to fairly arbitrary factors deciding what EA “is” in a self reinforcing cycle. Let’s say a popular news outlet wrote a critical article about EA and then many EAs decided to stop identifying with it because of the now negative connotations. It seems wrong to let external forces dictate what EA Is in that way.
I think a meta that emerges here is: do I have Alice-like feelings because I feel that EA will weaken (or “detract from my issues”) as a rallying call or because I’m concerned with how I’m perceived (both by others and myself), which is why I really appreciated how you framed Alice’s POV as personal and emotional, KT!
If you stop calling yourself an EA in public because you think doing so will give people the wrong impression, that’s one thing, I guess.