Still, it’s hard to see how tweaking EA can lead to a product that we and others be excited about growing. Especially considering that we have the excellent option of just talking directly about the issues that matter to us, and doing field-building around those ideas… This would be a relatively clean slate, allowing us to do more (as outlined in 11), to discourage RB, and stop bad actors.
Do you remember how animal rights was pre-EA? The first Animal Rights National Conference I went to, Ingrid Newkirk dedicated her keynote address to criticizing scope sensitivity, and arguing that animal rights activists should not focus on tactics which help more animals. And my understanding is that EA deserves a lot of the credit for removing and preventing bad actors in the animal rights space (e.g. by making funding conditional on organizations following certain HR practices).
It’s useful to identify ways to improve EA, but we have to be honest that imaginary alternatives largely seem better because they are imaginary, and actual realistic alternatives also have lots of flaws.
(Of course, it’s possible that those flawed alternatives are still better than EA, but figuring this out requires actually comparing EA to those alternatives. Some people have started to do this e.g. here, and I find that work valuable.)
And my understanding is that EA deserves a lot of the credit for removing and preventing bad actors in the animal rights space (e.g. by making funding conditional on organizations following certain HR practices).
Do you know of anywhere this is more documented or discussed? It seems a pretty relevant case to the concerns people have about EA itself being under-HR’d.
ACE’s “organizational health” criterion is described here and they wrote a blog post about it here. tl;dr is that they have a checklist of various policies and also survey staff, then combine this into a rating on dimensions like “Harassment and discrimination policies”.
As an example of it in action, see the 2022 review of Vegetarianos Hoy:
A few staff (1–3 individuals) report that they have experienced harassment or discrimination at their workplace during the last 12 months, and a few (1–3 individuals) report to have witnessed harassment or discrimination of others in that period. In particular, they report low recognition of others’ work and low salaries. All of the claimants reported that the situation was not handled appropriately...
Vegetarianos Hoy’s leadership team recognizes reported issues and reports that they have taken steps to resolve them. In particular, they report they are aware of alleged issues and have hired a Culture and Talent Analyst position and two new leadership positions.
I think OP also deserves a lot of the credit, but I am not aware of anything publicly written to describe what they have done.
Do you remember how animal rights was pre-EA? The first Animal Rights National Conference I went to, Ingrid Newkirk dedicated her keynote address to criticizing scope sensitivity, and arguing that animal rights activists should not focus on tactics which help more animals. And my understanding is that EA deserves a lot of the credit for removing and preventing bad actors in the animal rights space (e.g. by making funding conditional on organizations following certain HR practices).
It’s useful to identify ways to improve EA, but we have to be honest that imaginary alternatives largely seem better because they are imaginary, and actual realistic alternatives also have lots of flaws.
(Of course, it’s possible that those flawed alternatives are still better than EA, but figuring this out requires actually comparing EA to those alternatives. Some people have started to do this e.g. here, and I find that work valuable.)
Do you know of anywhere this is more documented or discussed? It seems a pretty relevant case to the concerns people have about EA itself being under-HR’d.
ACE’s “organizational health” criterion is described here and they wrote a blog post about it here. tl;dr is that they have a checklist of various policies and also survey staff, then combine this into a rating on dimensions like “Harassment and discrimination policies”.
As an example of it in action, see the 2022 review of Vegetarianos Hoy:
I think OP also deserves a lot of the credit, but I am not aware of anything publicly written to describe what they have done.