JWS, do you think EA could work as a professional network of “impact analysts” or “impact engineers” rather than as a “movement”?
Ryan, do you have a sense of what that would concretely look like?
If we look at other professionals, for example, engineers have in common some key ideas, values, and broad goals (like ‘build things that work’). Senior engineers recruit young engineers and go to professional conferences to advance their engineering skills and ideas. Some engineers work in policy or politics, but they clearly aren’t a political movement. They don’t assume engineering is a complete ethos for all major life decisions, and they don’t assume that other engineers are trustworthy just because they are engineers.
I share your appreciation for EA ideas and think they’ll have longevity. I don’t know that there is a way to push back against the pitfallls of being a social movement instead of just being a collection of professionals. But I agree with Ryan that if there were a way to just be a group of skilled colleagues rather than “brethren”, it would be better. Social movements have the pitfalls of religions, tribes, and cults that most professions do not and fall prey to more demagogues as a result.
JWS, do you think EA could work as a professional network of “impact analysts” or “impact engineers” rather than as a “movement”?
I guess I still don’t have a clear idea of what Ryan’s ‘network of networks’ approach would look like without the ‘movement’ aspect broadly defined. How definitely would that be practically from current EA but with more decentralisation of money and power, and more professional norms?
But would this be a set of rigid internal norms that prevent people from the philanthropy space connecting with those in specific cause areas? Are we going to split AI technical and governance fields strictly? Is nobody meant to notice the common philosophical ideas which underline the similar approaches to all these cause areas? It’s especially the latter I’m having trouble getting my head around.
Some engineers work in policy or politics, but they clearly aren’t a political movement. They don’t assume engineering is a complete ethos for all major life decisions, and they don’t assume that other engineers are trustworthy just because they are engineers.
I don’t think that ‘field of engineering’ is the right level of analogy here. I think the best analogies for EA are other movements, like ‘Environmentalism’ or ‘Feminism’ or ‘The Enlightenment’.
Social movements have the pitfalls of religions, tribes, and cults that most professions do not and fall prey to more demagogues as a result.
Social movements have had a lot of consequences in the human history, some of them very positive and some very negative. It seems to me that you and Ryan think that there’s a way to structure EA so that we can cleanly excise the negative parts of a movement and keep the positive parts without being a movement, and I’m not sure that’s really possible or even a coherent idea.
***
[to @RyanCarey I think you updated your other comment as I was thinking of my response, so folding in my thoughts on that here]
We don’t need to lose our goals, or our social network, but we could strip away a lot of risk-increasing behaviour that “movements” do, and take on some risk-reducing “professionalising” measures that’s more typical of companies.
I’m completely with you here, but to me this is something that ends up miles away from ‘winding down EA’, or EA being ‘not a movement’.
But I’m suggesting to be faithful to those ideas might be to shape up a little bit and practice them somewhat differently. For the case of Christianity, it’s not like telling Christians to disavow the holy Trinity. It’s more like noticing abuse in a branch of Christianity, and thinking “we’ve got to do some things differently”.
I think abuse might be a bit strong as an analogy but directionally I think this is correct, and I’d agree we need to do things differently. But in this analogy I don’t think the answer is end ‘Christianity’ as a movement and set up an overlapping network of tithing, volunteering, Sunday schools etc, which is what I take you to be suggesting. I feel like we’re closer to agreement here, but on reflection the details of your plan here don’t sum up to ‘end EA as a movement’ at all.
JWS, do you think EA could work as a professional network of “impact analysts” or “impact engineers” rather than as a “movement”? Ryan, do you have a sense of what that would concretely look like?
Well I’m not sure it makes sense to try to fit all EAs into one professional community that is labelled as such, since we often have quite different jobs and work in quite different fields. My model would be a patchwork of overlapping fields, and a professional network that often extends between them.
It could make sense for there to be a community focused on “effective philanthropy”, which would include OpenPhil, Longview, philanthropists, and grant evaluators. That would be as close to “impact analysis” as you would get, in my proposal.
There would be an effective policymaking community too.
And then a bevy of cause-specific research communities: evidence-based policy, AI safety research, AI governance research, global priorities research, in vitro meat, global catastrophic biorisk research, global catastrophic risk analysis, global health and development, and so on.
Lab heads and organisation leaders in these research communities would still know that they ought to apply to the “effective philanthropy” orgs to fund their activities. And they would still give talks at universities to try to attract top talent. But there wouldn’t be a common brand or cultural identity, and we would frown upon the risk-increasing factors that come from the social movement aspect.
JWS, do you think EA could work as a professional network of “impact analysts” or “impact engineers” rather than as a “movement”?
Ryan, do you have a sense of what that would concretely look like?
If we look at other professionals, for example, engineers have in common some key ideas, values, and broad goals (like ‘build things that work’). Senior engineers recruit young engineers and go to professional conferences to advance their engineering skills and ideas. Some engineers work in policy or politics, but they clearly aren’t a political movement. They don’t assume engineering is a complete ethos for all major life decisions, and they don’t assume that other engineers are trustworthy just because they are engineers.
I share your appreciation for EA ideas and think they’ll have longevity. I don’t know that there is a way to push back against the pitfallls of being a social movement instead of just being a collection of professionals. But I agree with Ryan that if there were a way to just be a group of skilled colleagues rather than “brethren”, it would be better. Social movements have the pitfalls of religions, tribes, and cults that most professions do not and fall prey to more demagogues as a result.
I guess I still don’t have a clear idea of what Ryan’s ‘network of networks’ approach would look like without the ‘movement’ aspect broadly defined. How definitely would that be practically from current EA but with more decentralisation of money and power, and more professional norms?
But would this be a set of rigid internal norms that prevent people from the philanthropy space connecting with those in specific cause areas? Are we going to split AI technical and governance fields strictly? Is nobody meant to notice the common philosophical ideas which underline the similar approaches to all these cause areas? It’s especially the latter I’m having trouble getting my head around.
I don’t think that ‘field of engineering’ is the right level of analogy here. I think the best analogies for EA are other movements, like ‘Environmentalism’ or ‘Feminism’ or ‘The Enlightenment’.
Social movements have had a lot of consequences in the human history, some of them very positive and some very negative. It seems to me that you and Ryan think that there’s a way to structure EA so that we can cleanly excise the negative parts of a movement and keep the positive parts without being a movement, and I’m not sure that’s really possible or even a coherent idea.
***
[to @RyanCarey I think you updated your other comment as I was thinking of my response, so folding in my thoughts on that here]
I’m completely with you here, but to me this is something that ends up miles away from ‘winding down EA’, or EA being ‘not a movement’.
I think abuse might be a bit strong as an analogy but directionally I think this is correct, and I’d agree we need to do things differently. But in this analogy I don’t think the answer is end ‘Christianity’ as a movement and set up an overlapping network of tithing, volunteering, Sunday schools etc, which is what I take you to be suggesting. I feel like we’re closer to agreement here, but on reflection the details of your plan here don’t sum up to ‘end EA as a movement’ at all.
To be clear, winding down EA is something I was arguing we shouldn’t be doing.
At a certain point it becomes semantic, but I guess readers can decide, when you put together:
the changes in sec 11 of the main post
ideas about splitting into profession-oriented subgroups, and
shifting whether we “motivate members re social pressures” and expose junior members to risk
whether or not it counts as changing from being a “movement” to something else.
Fair.
Having run through the analogy, EA becoming more like an academic field or a profession rather than a movement seems very improbable.
I agree that “try to reduce abuses common within the church” seems a better analogy.
Well I’m not sure it makes sense to try to fit all EAs into one professional community that is labelled as such, since we often have quite different jobs and work in quite different fields. My model would be a patchwork of overlapping fields, and a professional network that often extends between them.
It could make sense for there to be a community focused on “effective philanthropy”, which would include OpenPhil, Longview, philanthropists, and grant evaluators. That would be as close to “impact analysis” as you would get, in my proposal.
There would be an effective policymaking community too.
And then a bevy of cause-specific research communities: evidence-based policy, AI safety research, AI governance research, global priorities research, in vitro meat, global catastrophic biorisk research, global catastrophic risk analysis, global health and development, and so on.
Lab heads and organisation leaders in these research communities would still know that they ought to apply to the “effective philanthropy” orgs to fund their activities. And they would still give talks at universities to try to attract top talent. But there wouldn’t be a common brand or cultural identity, and we would frown upon the risk-increasing factors that come from the social movement aspect.