What is actually wrong with âEffective altruistsâ?
If I talk about âChristiansâ without much context, you will assume I am referring to the baseline Christian who believes in Jesus, God and the Resurrection, has a passing but far from comprehensive knowledge of the bible, etc. If I want to refer to a narrower group than that, I might say âpastorsâ, âfundamentalist Christiansâ, etc. I donât need to say something like âcasual Christiansâ.
Similarly, if I talk about âLabour supportersâ without much context, you will assume I am referring to the lowest common denominator; people who routinely vote Labour and broadly agree with the partyâs policy stances. Not activists, donors, politicians, or wannabe politicians.
Partly this is a numbers game; the vast majority of Christians (at least in an irreligious country like the UK) are concentrated at the casual end of the spectrum. Ditto for Labour supporters, environmentalists, and even animal welfare advocates. So if you refer to them on mass, it can be safely assumed you are talking about the casual version. Movements virtually always overwhelmingly concentrate at the casual end, because itâs just very hard to get people to do anything that isnât casual.
I really donât expect EA to be any different even within a year or two if it isnât there already, and I think the only reason it looks a bit different now is because (a) the core is relatively large due to the youth of the movement and (b) weâre having this discussion on the EA forum, which was created by the core for the core.
Edit: But if you insist on having a modifier, what about âmostâ? If I want to communicate the fact that âcasualâ, âliberalâ, Christians in the UK are not anti-gay-marriage, I would just say something like âactually most Christians in the UK arenât anti-gay-marriage, even if the archbishops areâ. I can imagine similar statements for EAs such as:
âMost EAs donât give nearly as much as they think they should.â
âMost EAs donât change their careers for EA reasons.â
etc.
To put this another wayâwhen Iâm giving someone career advice, how âhardcoreâ they are is one of the top 3 things I need to know to tailor the information to them so that itâs actually useful.
Things that make our content more appealing to âhardcoreâ people can make it less appealing to âsoftcoreâ people and vice versa. If I need to communicate that to someone else on the team, I need a way to express it in words.
Because Iâm doing work to directly serve these different groups, I canât afford to enter a fantasy land where we refuse to have a descriptive term for a group, because acknowledging its existence would hurt someoneâs feelings.
For this purpose, things like âmore committedâ and âless committedâ seem like they would work, and indicate a range rather than firm categories.
Very good points! I was updating closer to ABGâs position initially, but these points convinced me that we really need terms to indicate both the lower end and the higher end of involvement. Thanks!
I just think youâre trying to solve a problem that doesnât exist. The reason I think it doesnât exist is because most movements donât have the problem. You can either explain why weâre actually different, how they are actually the same, or why such successful movements as Christianity and the Labour movement also living in fantasy land. In the last case you also need to explain why living in fantasy land is actually bad if it doesnât prevent such success (i.e. Could it be, maybe, that respecting peopleâs feelings correlates with movement building success..?)
What you canât do is patronise the problem out of existence. I await a real response that meets one of the above three criteria.
I donât think we are different. I think those groups do use extreme and some other term for less extreme. Perhaps not in their induction booklet, but internally definitely they do. How can they possibly canvas without recognising the range of views in the people they speak to?
There are benefits to being welcoming, and there are benefits to being demanding. I think being so undemanding that we go far out of our way to avoid thinking about or drawing attention to differences in how extreme peopleâs attitudes are is too far. We have to retain at least some intellectual honesty about describing the world as we see it and not bullshitting the people we speak to.
We have a set A, that is comprised of (non-overlapping) subsets B and C.
Youâre saying we should have a name for A, a name for B, but refuse to have a name for C.
It wonât work. People will naturally want to refer to group C when composing sentences. We need a word we like, or weâll get one we donât.
I do indeed use expressions like ârelaxed Christiansâ, âsoft-core labour membersâ, etc. Itâs absurd to discourage the use of such terms when identifying those groups. The world is the way it is, describing it doesnât make it so. If someone doesnât want to be called a soft-core labour member, maybe they should be more hardcore.
Perception of reality >> reality most of the time. Reality only affects how the world works right now, perception of reality affects how everyone responds to it which in turn affects how the world works in future. Many perceptions are self-fulfilling, so that perception will in fact become the reality after a (typically short) time delay.
âEA is hardcore-onlyâ is actually a classic example of such a perception. Whether itâs actually true is just much much less important than whether people think itâs true, because the latter is a better predictor of reality in the long term than the former. And presumably we care about the long-term.
In my ideal world everyone would be a hardcore EA.
I think we should also be fun for those who arenât willing to be extreme yet, or ever if they are willing to meet some minimum bar.
I agree softcore is too unappealing a term. Part-time seems fine and not negative by design.
I think we must be honest internally about how extreme peopleâs views are, or we lose a great deal of clarity in describing them. Thereâs just no practical way I can do my work without thinking and talking in terms of how dedicated someone is to doing good at cost to themselves. This level of group taboo even risks pushing us in the direction of ceasing to be aware that we are trying to get people to become more extreme.
Whatâs âinternallyâ? I have no interest in policing peopleâs internal thoughts or private conversations where they are confident they everyone in the room is going to understand what they mean. But thatâs in the same way as I donât mind the use of the vast majority of offensive language behind firmly closed doors; I just canât see the harm. But that doesnât mean it isnât offensive*.
But anything that could at some point be read by a journalist, including this forum and random blog posts, should be held to a significantly higher standard in my book. The clarity versus reputational risk trade-off looks alarmingly poor given youâre basically complaining about having to add an extra clause or two to your sentences in public-facing material only.
*Not that I would go as far as calling the suggestions here offensive. Iâm just elaborating on the principle.
Sounds like we have been talking past one anotherâIâm really only talking about closed-door conversations and thoughts in your head. Clearly you have to be much more careful when speaking to a wide audience.
In response to edit: Most is at least something, but it makes it pretty unclear what you are driving at. Compare:
Most EAs donât eat enough vegetables.
Softcare EAs /â Part time EAs donât eat enough vegetables.
In one case youâre just making a general statement about everyone. In the second youâre claiming this is correlated with how extreme their attitudes are.
I prefer full-time and part-time. Itâs not insulting. Itâs quite descriptive. Letâs just go with that.
âMost EAs donât eat enough vegetables, though the dedicated ones doâ sounds fine to me. Itâs actually almost directly analogous to my chosen example (âactually most Christians in the UK arenât anti-gay-marriage, even if the archbishops areâ).
I find going this far out of our way to be indirect and use convoluted sentence structures to avoid acknowledging some peopleâs lax moral attitudes a bad sign about our intellectual integrity.
Why does this avoid acknowledging? The example I gave conveys the same factual information that casual EAs suck at eating vegetables, which means it acknowledges and indeed explicitly states the same factual reality. If I was refusing to even talk about the state of the world, then worrying about intellectual integrity seems reasonable.
But actually the content is unchanged, and all it does is eliminate a loaded word that can and will be used to make some people feel bad, whether you want it to or not.
Whereas Iâve never yet met the person who has been offended by being caught under the qualifier âmostâ.
This is complicated by the fact that you might just want to make the statement about literal vegetables, where âmostâ is true but doesnât align with a level of dedication.
Iâm sympathetic to not generally using a term for this.
What is actually wrong with âEffective altruistsâ?
If I talk about âChristiansâ without much context, you will assume I am referring to the baseline Christian who believes in Jesus, God and the Resurrection, has a passing but far from comprehensive knowledge of the bible, etc. If I want to refer to a narrower group than that, I might say âpastorsâ, âfundamentalist Christiansâ, etc. I donât need to say something like âcasual Christiansâ.
Similarly, if I talk about âLabour supportersâ without much context, you will assume I am referring to the lowest common denominator; people who routinely vote Labour and broadly agree with the partyâs policy stances. Not activists, donors, politicians, or wannabe politicians.
Partly this is a numbers game; the vast majority of Christians (at least in an irreligious country like the UK) are concentrated at the casual end of the spectrum. Ditto for Labour supporters, environmentalists, and even animal welfare advocates. So if you refer to them on mass, it can be safely assumed you are talking about the casual version. Movements virtually always overwhelmingly concentrate at the casual end, because itâs just very hard to get people to do anything that isnât casual.
I really donât expect EA to be any different even within a year or two if it isnât there already, and I think the only reason it looks a bit different now is because (a) the core is relatively large due to the youth of the movement and (b) weâre having this discussion on the EA forum, which was created by the core for the core.
Edit: But if you insist on having a modifier, what about âmostâ? If I want to communicate the fact that âcasualâ, âliberalâ, Christians in the UK are not anti-gay-marriage, I would just say something like âactually most Christians in the UK arenât anti-gay-marriage, even if the archbishops areâ. I can imagine similar statements for EAs such as:
âMost EAs donât give nearly as much as they think they should.â âMost EAs donât change their careers for EA reasons.â etc.
To put this another wayâwhen Iâm giving someone career advice, how âhardcoreâ they are is one of the top 3 things I need to know to tailor the information to them so that itâs actually useful.
Things that make our content more appealing to âhardcoreâ people can make it less appealing to âsoftcoreâ people and vice versa. If I need to communicate that to someone else on the team, I need a way to express it in words.
Because Iâm doing work to directly serve these different groups, I canât afford to enter a fantasy land where we refuse to have a descriptive term for a group, because acknowledging its existence would hurt someoneâs feelings.
For this purpose, things like âmore committedâ and âless committedâ seem like they would work, and indicate a range rather than firm categories.
Very good points! I was updating closer to ABGâs position initially, but these points convinced me that we really need terms to indicate both the lower end and the higher end of involvement. Thanks!
I just think youâre trying to solve a problem that doesnât exist. The reason I think it doesnât exist is because most movements donât have the problem. You can either explain why weâre actually different, how they are actually the same, or why such successful movements as Christianity and the Labour movement also living in fantasy land. In the last case you also need to explain why living in fantasy land is actually bad if it doesnât prevent such success (i.e. Could it be, maybe, that respecting peopleâs feelings correlates with movement building success..?)
What you canât do is patronise the problem out of existence. I await a real response that meets one of the above three criteria.
I donât think we are different. I think those groups do use extreme and some other term for less extreme. Perhaps not in their induction booklet, but internally definitely they do. How can they possibly canvas without recognising the range of views in the people they speak to?
There are benefits to being welcoming, and there are benefits to being demanding. I think being so undemanding that we go far out of our way to avoid thinking about or drawing attention to differences in how extreme peopleâs attitudes are is too far. We have to retain at least some intellectual honesty about describing the world as we see it and not bullshitting the people we speak to.
Because effective altruists includes both groups.
We have a set A, that is comprised of (non-overlapping) subsets B and C.
Youâre saying we should have a name for A, a name for B, but refuse to have a name for C.
It wonât work. People will naturally want to refer to group C when composing sentences. We need a word we like, or weâll get one we donât.
I do indeed use expressions like ârelaxed Christiansâ, âsoft-core labour membersâ, etc. Itâs absurd to discourage the use of such terms when identifying those groups. The world is the way it is, describing it doesnât make it so. If someone doesnât want to be called a soft-core labour member, maybe they should be more hardcore.
âThe world is the way it is, describing it doesnât make it so.â
This is true of the natural world, but not of the social world. Our categorisations of social behaviour have well-known consequences on behaviour.
Perception of reality >> reality most of the time. Reality only affects how the world works right now, perception of reality affects how everyone responds to it which in turn affects how the world works in future. Many perceptions are self-fulfilling, so that perception will in fact become the reality after a (typically short) time delay.
âEA is hardcore-onlyâ is actually a classic example of such a perception. Whether itâs actually true is just much much less important than whether people think itâs true, because the latter is a better predictor of reality in the long term than the former. And presumably we care about the long-term.
In my ideal world everyone would be a hardcore EA.
I think we should also be fun for those who arenât willing to be extreme yet, or ever if they are willing to meet some minimum bar.
I agree softcore is too unappealing a term. Part-time seems fine and not negative by design.
I think we must be honest internally about how extreme peopleâs views are, or we lose a great deal of clarity in describing them. Thereâs just no practical way I can do my work without thinking and talking in terms of how dedicated someone is to doing good at cost to themselves. This level of group taboo even risks pushing us in the direction of ceasing to be aware that we are trying to get people to become more extreme.
Whatâs âinternallyâ? I have no interest in policing peopleâs internal thoughts or private conversations where they are confident they everyone in the room is going to understand what they mean. But thatâs in the same way as I donât mind the use of the vast majority of offensive language behind firmly closed doors; I just canât see the harm. But that doesnât mean it isnât offensive*.
But anything that could at some point be read by a journalist, including this forum and random blog posts, should be held to a significantly higher standard in my book. The clarity versus reputational risk trade-off looks alarmingly poor given youâre basically complaining about having to add an extra clause or two to your sentences in public-facing material only.
*Not that I would go as far as calling the suggestions here offensive. Iâm just elaborating on the principle.
Sounds like we have been talking past one anotherâIâm really only talking about closed-door conversations and thoughts in your head. Clearly you have to be much more careful when speaking to a wide audience.
That wasnât really clear though, since this discussion started upon the term being used in public facing channels.
I thought Iâd made it clear by talking about how it was necessary given my job and so on, but evidently I hadnât.
In response to edit: Most is at least something, but it makes it pretty unclear what you are driving at. Compare:
Most EAs donât eat enough vegetables.
Softcare EAs /â Part time EAs donât eat enough vegetables.
In one case youâre just making a general statement about everyone. In the second youâre claiming this is correlated with how extreme their attitudes are.
I prefer full-time and part-time. Itâs not insulting. Itâs quite descriptive. Letâs just go with that.
âMost EAs donât eat enough vegetables, though the dedicated ones doâ sounds fine to me. Itâs actually almost directly analogous to my chosen example (âactually most Christians in the UK arenât anti-gay-marriage, even if the archbishops areâ).
I find going this far out of our way to be indirect and use convoluted sentence structures to avoid acknowledging some peopleâs lax moral attitudes a bad sign about our intellectual integrity.
Why does this avoid acknowledging? The example I gave conveys the same factual information that casual EAs suck at eating vegetables, which means it acknowledges and indeed explicitly states the same factual reality. If I was refusing to even talk about the state of the world, then worrying about intellectual integrity seems reasonable.
But actually the content is unchanged, and all it does is eliminate a loaded word that can and will be used to make some people feel bad, whether you want it to or not.
Whereas Iâve never yet met the person who has been offended by being caught under the qualifier âmostâ.
This is complicated by the fact that you might just want to make the statement about literal vegetables, where âmostâ is true but doesnât align with a level of dedication.
Iâm sympathetic to not generally using a term for this.