JWS, do you think EA could work as a professional network of âimpact analystsâ or âimpact engineersâ rather than as a âmovementâ?
I guess I still donât have a clear idea of what Ryanâs ânetwork of networksâ approach would look like without the âmovementâ 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? Itâs especially the latter Iâm having trouble getting my head around.
Some engineers work in policy or politics, but they clearly arenât a political movement. They donât assume engineering is a complete ethos for all major life decisions, and they donât assume that other engineers are trustworthy just because they are engineers.
I donât think that âfield of engineeringâ is the right level of analogy here. I think the best analogies for EA are other movements, like âEnvironmentalismâ or âFeminismâ or âThe Enlightenmentâ.
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 thereâs 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 Iâm not sure thatâs really possible or even a coherent idea.
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[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 donât need to lose our goals, or our social network, but we could strip away a lot of risk-increasing behaviour that âmovementsâ do, and take on some risk-reducing âprofessionalisingâ measures thatâs more typical of companies.
Iâm completely with you here, but to me this is something that ends up miles away from âwinding down EAâ, or EA being ânot a movementâ.
But Iâm 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, itâs not like telling Christians to disavow the holy Trinity. Itâs more like noticing abuse in a branch of Christianity, and thinking âweâve got to do some things differentlyâ.
I think abuse might be a bit strong as an analogy but directionally I think this is correct, and Iâd agree we need to do things differently. But in this analogy I donât think the answer is end âChristianityâ 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 weâre closer to agreement here, but on reflection the details of your plan here donât sum up to âend EA as a movementâ at all.
I guess I still donât have a clear idea of what Ryanâs ânetwork of networksâ approach would look like without the âmovementâ 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? Itâs especially the latter Iâm having trouble getting my head around.
I donât think that âfield of engineeringâ is the right level of analogy here. I think the best analogies for EA are other movements, like âEnvironmentalismâ or âFeminismâ or âThe Enlightenmentâ.
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 thereâs 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 Iâm not sure thatâs 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]
Iâm completely with you here, but to me this is something that ends up miles away from âwinding down EAâ, or EA being ânot a movementâ.
I think abuse might be a bit strong as an analogy but directionally I think this is correct, and Iâd agree we need to do things differently. But in this analogy I donât think the answer is end âChristianityâ 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 weâre closer to agreement here, but on reflection the details of your plan here donât sum up to âend EA as a movementâ at all.
To be clear, winding down EA is something I was arguing we shouldnât 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 âmotivate members re social pressuresâ and expose junior members to risk
whether or not it counts as changing from being a âmovementâ 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 âtry to reduce abuses common within the churchâ seems a better analogy.