It seems like we really don’t know whether a more hierarchical structure is good for EA or not. Some types of organizations/institutions have hierarchies (most religions, governments, companies), and some (like more social movements, communities, friend groups) don’t, or have extremely informal and loose ones.
At best, the hierarchies provide valuable information about merit and dedication level, facilitate coordination, and incentivize high-quality work. At worst, they fuck everything up completely.
I don’t think we have good information about what structure would be best for EA. The idea that other social movements don’t seem to have hierarchies isn’t particularly convincing to me, because I doubt they’re using the optimal structure, and especially doubt that they’re using the optimal structure for a movement like EA. But I don’t know and it seems like no one else does. I don’t like the terms “hardcore” and “softcore” but haven’t seen a convincing argument about whether these sorts of distinctions in general increase or decrease movement impact.
Anecdotally, I tried to explain my friend in global health activism that effective altruism is a movement/philosophy, not an organization something like five times now, and he still doesn’t really get it. He keeps on asking me where “effective altruism”’s headquarters are. I told him about CEA but emphasized that there’s important work being done that isn’t directly connected to CEA (eg. GiveWell), but I don’t really think he gets it/really believes me. Some people takes the non-hierarchal elements of EA deeply in stride, and some people have a lot of trouble understanding it, apparently.
I think it’s important to differentiate between the degree to which a hierarchy is “formal” and the degree to which a hierarchy is “loose”. A Silicon Valley startup may have a hierarchy that’s “formal” in the sense that everyone has a job title, but “loose” in the sense that it’s very acceptable to tell your boss why they’re wrong. A high school may have a hierarchy that’s “informal” in the sense that no one has a title specifying their position in the hierarchy, but “tight” in the sense that people lower in the hierarchy have very little influence.
I suspect as a group grows, formation of some kind of hierarchy is basically inevitable. Jockeying for status is a very deep human behavior. I expect groups that explicitly disclaim hierarchy to have a de facto hierarchy of some sort or another.
The de facto hierarchy can end up being much worse than a formal hierarchy would be. The extreme example would be an autocratic communist state where the official fiction is that everyone is equal. To take a less extreme example, I’m not very familiar with the environmental movement, but I wouldn’t be surprised if environmentalists with lots of twitter followers are de facto significantly more influential than ones without. My observation is that people who are good at getting attention online tend to be people who enjoy generating controversies and have lots of time on their hands, which probably aren’t ideal characteristics for a leader.
Paradoxically, I suspect hierarchies tend to work better when they are at least somewhat immobile. In a turbulent hierarchy without formal rules for ascension, you select for some combination of skill at rabble-rousing (in order to ascend in the hierarchy) and skill at repression (in order to defend one’s position)--good leadership becomes a rarer and less stable state.
I don’t know whether a formal hierarchy would be right for EA. The chief downside is I can’t think of a way to pull it off without it seeming weird. My sense is that informal hierarchy is likely sufficient. As an interest group, EA is basically defined by its local status yardstick, which is currently a pretty meritocratic one. The EA “tribal elders” are sufficiently respected that there’s little incentive for rabble-rousing or repression, and they seem willing to share the stage with meritorious up-and-comers.
That said, I think it makes sense to keep an eye on things… such favorable conditions can degenerate. Also, my perception is that some social media platforms are structured in a way that greatly increases the ease of rabble-rousing. Luckily the incentive structure of this forum looks relatively good, and the discussion here seems to have stayed high quality thus far.
I wonder if there’s research from social or organizational psychology that might shed light on these questions?
Yeah, maybe. I’m trying to think of groups that do this besides the usual suspects (governments, corporations, religions, and nonprofits) that we could learn from. The ideal example might be a group that has formal titles but is still mostly run by volunteers. Maybe Scouting? The Society for Creative Anachronism / LARPing? Volunteer organizations? Service groups like Rotary/Lions/City Year/etc.?
I guess Giving What We Can would probably be the organization we’d want to administer the titles? It does kinda feel like someone should award you a title after you’ve pledged to donate 10% of your income to charity for the rest of your life (or after you’ve made your first 10% donation say, to better align incentives). This is something simple GWWC could do to recognize layperson EAs.
Gamification of EA… I wonder how many achievements I can unlock! You could have an achievement for working at a recognized EA organization for at least 6 months, having donated for 5 (then 10) consecutive years, etc. etc.
I think some people love this kind of thing - I remember being drawn to scouting once I read about all the steps you could take to earn different badges and awards, and how disappointed I was when I joined a troop and realized the other girls were not interested in grubbing after badges in their spare time, so that pursuing the status symbols would make me look like a dweeb. Other people hate that kind of thing from the beginning.
It probably has a lot to do with whether they see the people handing out rewards as having real authority (“Who are they to tell me how good I am?”) Whereas several people have pointed to examples of those who are relieved to have some category that indicates one can be a “casual” EA, as this lets them self-identify as EA without being super involved.
Gamification of EA… I wonder how many achievements I can unlock! You could have an achievement for working at a recognized EA organization for at least 6 months, having donated for 5 (then 10) consecutive years, etc. etc.
There’s been discussion of this and ‘EA points systems’ over the past. Here’s the .impact page for the idea.
Feminism has first/second/third wave feminists, but I think that’s not an ideal example due to infighting within the feminism movement.
Volunteer organizations certainly have lots of different titles to choose from. For example, leader/organizer/activist vs. member/participant. We can have “leader” EA leader vs. “normal” EA for example.
If we’re going to make it organizational, I’d say The Life You Can Save can award the lower-level EA status, as their pledge minimum is 1%, and maybe GWWC can award higher-level EA status, but I’m not convinced organizations should be the ones doing the awards.
Perhaps a community-recognized standard, or something like that, with people ascribing it to themselves. After all, all giving is self-reported anyhow. Moreover, I think we should have a standard that’s based on resourced contributed, not money contributed. For example, if you spend your resources—time and money—convincing others to give effectively, that could mean you’re doing quite a bit more good in the long run than contributing yourself.
So my take would be that devoting 1% of your resources, however defined, to EA causes should be sufficient to be at the lower-level threshold of an EA. Not sure what the higher-level threshold should be.
I think the honor system is not super scalable in the long run. There’s always a small portion of the population who are jerks. If telling people you are an “official EA” means something, then there well be an incentive to fake this. I would like to see GWWC work towards eventually doing donation verification.
I also think receiving a title from someone else is significantly more meaningful than bestowing it upon yourself. One complaint I’ve heard about Google’s promotion process is that you have to nominate yourself, which works against people who have humbler dispositions. For some reason this blog post I read recently also comes to mind. If you are giving 10% of your income to effective charities, or even 1%, I think there should be an organization that says “no, you really are being a good person, please take this token of our gratitude on behalf of those you’re helping”.
For example, if you spend your resources—time and money—convincing others to give effectively, that could mean you’re doing quite a bit more good in the long run than contributing yourself.
Of course. I’m in favor of there being a broad range of merit badges one could earn in this thought experiment.
Ok, you convinced me, I updated toward your position of the benefits of having an external source of bestowing a title. Not sure if GWWC is the best source for it, but that’s a downstream question.
I would like to see GWWC work towards eventually doing donation verification.
One thing that gets closer to this is that we now have a Trust through which people can donate to our recommended charities, which means we have a more direct sense of how much people are donating. (It also has other important benefits, like donors being able to get tax deductions on charities that aren’t registered in the UK.) At the moment this is only a UK registered charity, but we’re hoping to broaden the process to other countries.
I suspect as a group grows, formation of some kind of hierarchy is basically inevitable. Jockeying for status is a very deep human behavior. I expect groups that explicitly disclaim hierarchy to have a de facto hierarchy of some sort or another.
Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion [...]
For everyone to have the opportunity to be involved in a given group and to participate in its activities the structure must be explicit, not implicit. The rules of decision-making must be open and available to everyone, and this can happen only if they are formalized. This is not to say that formalization of a structure of a group will destroy the informal structure. It usually doesn’t. But it does hinder the informal structure from having predominant control and make available some means of attacking it if the people involved are not at least responsible to the needs of the group at large. “Structurelessness” is organizationally impossible. We cannot decide whether to have a structured or structureless group, only whether or not to have a formally structured one. [...]
Elites are nothing more, and nothing less, than groups of friends who also happen to participate in the same political activities. They would probably maintain their friendship whether or not they were involved in political activities; they would probably be involved in political activities whether or not they maintained their friendships. It is the coincidence of these two phenomena which creates elites in any group and makes them so difficult to break.
These friendship groups function as networks of communication outside any regular channels for such communication that may have been set up by a group. If no channels are set up, they function as the only networks of communication. Because people are friends, because they usually share the same values and orientations, because they talk to each other socially and consult with each other when common decisions have to be made, the people involved in these networks have more power in the group than those who don’t. And it is a rare group that does not establish some informal networks of communication through the friends that are made in it. [...]
Once the informal patterns are formed they act to maintain themselves, and one of the most successful tactics of maintenance is to continuously recruit new people who “fit in.” One joins such an elite much the same way one pledges a sorority. If perceived as a potential addition, one is “rushed” by the members of the informal structure and eventually either dropped or initiated. If the sorority is not politically aware enough to actively engage in this process itself it can be started by the outsider pretty much the same way one joins any private club. Find a sponsor, i.e., pick some member of the elite who appears to be well respected within it, and actively cultivate that person’s friendship. Eventually, she will most likely bring you into the inner circle.
All of these procedures take time. So if one works full time or has a similar major commitment, it is usually impossible to join simply because there are not enough hours left to go to all the meetings and cultivate the personal relationship necessary to have a voice in the decision-making. That is why formal structures of decision making are a boon to the overworked person. Having an established process for decision-making ensures that everyone can participate in it to some extent.”
It seems like we really don’t know whether a more hierarchical structure is good for EA or not. Some types of organizations/institutions have hierarchies (most religions, governments, companies), and some (like more social movements, communities, friend groups) don’t, or have extremely informal and loose ones.
At best, the hierarchies provide valuable information about merit and dedication level, facilitate coordination, and incentivize high-quality work. At worst, they fuck everything up completely.
I don’t think we have good information about what structure would be best for EA. The idea that other social movements don’t seem to have hierarchies isn’t particularly convincing to me, because I doubt they’re using the optimal structure, and especially doubt that they’re using the optimal structure for a movement like EA. But I don’t know and it seems like no one else does. I don’t like the terms “hardcore” and “softcore” but haven’t seen a convincing argument about whether these sorts of distinctions in general increase or decrease movement impact.
Anecdotally, I tried to explain my friend in global health activism that effective altruism is a movement/philosophy, not an organization something like five times now, and he still doesn’t really get it. He keeps on asking me where “effective altruism”’s headquarters are. I told him about CEA but emphasized that there’s important work being done that isn’t directly connected to CEA (eg. GiveWell), but I don’t really think he gets it/really believes me. Some people takes the non-hierarchal elements of EA deeply in stride, and some people have a lot of trouble understanding it, apparently.
I think it’s important to differentiate between the degree to which a hierarchy is “formal” and the degree to which a hierarchy is “loose”. A Silicon Valley startup may have a hierarchy that’s “formal” in the sense that everyone has a job title, but “loose” in the sense that it’s very acceptable to tell your boss why they’re wrong. A high school may have a hierarchy that’s “informal” in the sense that no one has a title specifying their position in the hierarchy, but “tight” in the sense that people lower in the hierarchy have very little influence.
I suspect as a group grows, formation of some kind of hierarchy is basically inevitable. Jockeying for status is a very deep human behavior. I expect groups that explicitly disclaim hierarchy to have a de facto hierarchy of some sort or another.
The de facto hierarchy can end up being much worse than a formal hierarchy would be. The extreme example would be an autocratic communist state where the official fiction is that everyone is equal. To take a less extreme example, I’m not very familiar with the environmental movement, but I wouldn’t be surprised if environmentalists with lots of twitter followers are de facto significantly more influential than ones without. My observation is that people who are good at getting attention online tend to be people who enjoy generating controversies and have lots of time on their hands, which probably aren’t ideal characteristics for a leader.
Paradoxically, I suspect hierarchies tend to work better when they are at least somewhat immobile. In a turbulent hierarchy without formal rules for ascension, you select for some combination of skill at rabble-rousing (in order to ascend in the hierarchy) and skill at repression (in order to defend one’s position)--good leadership becomes a rarer and less stable state.
I don’t know whether a formal hierarchy would be right for EA. The chief downside is I can’t think of a way to pull it off without it seeming weird. My sense is that informal hierarchy is likely sufficient. As an interest group, EA is basically defined by its local status yardstick, which is currently a pretty meritocratic one. The EA “tribal elders” are sufficiently respected that there’s little incentive for rabble-rousing or repression, and they seem willing to share the stage with meritorious up-and-comers.
That said, I think it makes sense to keep an eye on things… such favorable conditions can degenerate. Also, my perception is that some social media platforms are structured in a way that greatly increases the ease of rabble-rousing. Luckily the incentive structure of this forum looks relatively good, and the discussion here seems to have stayed high quality thus far.
I wonder if there’s research from social or organizational psychology that might shed light on these questions?
I wonder if it can be helpful to have more formal hierarchy for EAs for the purpose of managing status jockeying.
Yeah, maybe. I’m trying to think of groups that do this besides the usual suspects (governments, corporations, religions, and nonprofits) that we could learn from. The ideal example might be a group that has formal titles but is still mostly run by volunteers. Maybe Scouting? The Society for Creative Anachronism / LARPing? Volunteer organizations? Service groups like Rotary/Lions/City Year/etc.?
I guess Giving What We Can would probably be the organization we’d want to administer the titles? It does kinda feel like someone should award you a title after you’ve pledged to donate 10% of your income to charity for the rest of your life (or after you’ve made your first 10% donation say, to better align incentives). This is something simple GWWC could do to recognize layperson EAs.
Gamification of EA… I wonder how many achievements I can unlock! You could have an achievement for working at a recognized EA organization for at least 6 months, having donated for 5 (then 10) consecutive years, etc. etc.
I think some people love this kind of thing - I remember being drawn to scouting once I read about all the steps you could take to earn different badges and awards, and how disappointed I was when I joined a troop and realized the other girls were not interested in grubbing after badges in their spare time, so that pursuing the status symbols would make me look like a dweeb. Other people hate that kind of thing from the beginning.
It probably has a lot to do with whether they see the people handing out rewards as having real authority (“Who are they to tell me how good I am?”) Whereas several people have pointed to examples of those who are relieved to have some category that indicates one can be a “casual” EA, as this lets them self-identify as EA without being super involved.
There’s been discussion of this and ‘EA points systems’ over the past. Here’s the .impact page for the idea.
Feminism has first/second/third wave feminists, but I think that’s not an ideal example due to infighting within the feminism movement.
Volunteer organizations certainly have lots of different titles to choose from. For example, leader/organizer/activist vs. member/participant. We can have “leader” EA leader vs. “normal” EA for example.
If we’re going to make it organizational, I’d say The Life You Can Save can award the lower-level EA status, as their pledge minimum is 1%, and maybe GWWC can award higher-level EA status, but I’m not convinced organizations should be the ones doing the awards.
Gamification of EA—intriguing!
What alternatives did you have in mind?
Perhaps a community-recognized standard, or something like that, with people ascribing it to themselves. After all, all giving is self-reported anyhow. Moreover, I think we should have a standard that’s based on resourced contributed, not money contributed. For example, if you spend your resources—time and money—convincing others to give effectively, that could mean you’re doing quite a bit more good in the long run than contributing yourself.
So my take would be that devoting 1% of your resources, however defined, to EA causes should be sufficient to be at the lower-level threshold of an EA. Not sure what the higher-level threshold should be.
I think the honor system is not super scalable in the long run. There’s always a small portion of the population who are jerks. If telling people you are an “official EA” means something, then there well be an incentive to fake this. I would like to see GWWC work towards eventually doing donation verification.
I also think receiving a title from someone else is significantly more meaningful than bestowing it upon yourself. One complaint I’ve heard about Google’s promotion process is that you have to nominate yourself, which works against people who have humbler dispositions. For some reason this blog post I read recently also comes to mind. If you are giving 10% of your income to effective charities, or even 1%, I think there should be an organization that says “no, you really are being a good person, please take this token of our gratitude on behalf of those you’re helping”.
Of course. I’m in favor of there being a broad range of merit badges one could earn in this thought experiment.
Ok, you convinced me, I updated toward your position of the benefits of having an external source of bestowing a title. Not sure if GWWC is the best source for it, but that’s a downstream question.
One thing that gets closer to this is that we now have a Trust through which people can donate to our recommended charities, which means we have a more direct sense of how much people are donating. (It also has other important benefits, like donors being able to get tax deductions on charities that aren’t registered in the UK.) At the moment this is only a UK registered charity, but we’re hoping to broaden the process to other countries.
Relevant essay: The Tyranny of Structurelessness
Claire, in my comment below, I point out why I think we need some distinctions in order to increase movement impact.