A lot of the comments seem fixated on, and wanting to object to the idea of “reputational collapse” in a way that I find hard to relate to. This wasn’t a particularly load-bearing part of my argument, it was only used to argue that the idea that EA is a particularly promising way to get people interested in x-risk has become less plausible. Which was only one of three reasons not to promote EA in order to promote x-risk. Which was only one of many strategic suggestions.
That said, I find it hard not to notice that the reputation of, and enthusiasm for EA has changed, to a degree that must affect recruitment via EA to AI safety. If you’re surrounded by EAs, it feels obvious. Trajan had a funereal atmosphere for weeks. Some were depressed for months. In news articles and on the forum, there was a cascade of PR disasters took much airtime from Q4 2022 to Q1 2023. There’s been nothing like it in my 15 years around this community. The polling would have to have been pretty extraordinary to convince me that somehow I’ve misperceived what is really a pretty clear social reality.
The polling had some interesting findings, but not necessarily in a good way. The widely touted figure was that people’s recalled satisfaction dropped “only” 0.5 on a ten-point scale. But most people rate their satisfaction around 7 most of the time, so this looks like an effect size of Cohen’s d=0.4 or so. And this is in the more enthusiastic sample who were willing to keep answering the EA survey even after these disasters. Scanning over the next few questions, you then see that 55%+ of respondants now have some form of concerns about the EA community’s meta organisations, and likewise the community and its norms—much more than the 25% who had some concerns with the philosophy. Moreover, 39% agree in some way that they want to see the community look very different, and the same number say they are less likely to associate with EA. And 31% substantially lost trust in EA public figures or leadership. Those who were more engaged were in most ways more concerned, which would fit with the selection effect hypothesis (those of the less engaged EAs who became disaffected simply left, and didn’t respond to the survey). I find it really hard to understand those who would want to regard these results as “pretty compelling evidence” that EA has not suffered a major hit that would affect its viability as a way of recruiting to AIS.
The polling of people outside the EA community is least convincing to me for a variety of reasons. Firstly, these people currently know least, and many of them will hear more in the future, such as when SBF’s trial happens, the Michael Lewis book is released, or some of the nine film/video adaptations come. Importantly, if any of them become interested in EA, they are likely to hear about such things, and come to reflect the first cohort to a greater extent. But already, ~5% of them mention FTX in the interview, and ~1% of them mention it in the context of the meaning of EA or how they heard about it. In other words, the “scenario where promoting EA could go badly” is something that a community-builder would likely experience at least once. And those who know about FTX have a much more negative view (d=1.5 with high uncertainty). So although this is the more positive of the two batches of polling, I wouldn’t necessarily gloss it as “there’s no big problem”.
I’m sorry you feel that way. I’m a bit confused about the distinction, unless by ‘EA Movement’ you mean ‘EA Community’
I mean I’ve lost enthusiasm for the community/movement element, at least on a gut level. I’ve no objection to people donating, and living a consequentialist-leaning philosophy—rather I’m in favour of that so long as they’re applying the ideas carefully.
Firstly, these people currently know least, and many of them will hear more in the future, such as when SBF’s trial happens, the Michael Lewis book is released, or some of the nine film/video adaptations come.
I think this an underappreciated point. If you look at google trends for Theranos, the public interest didn’t really get going until a few years after the fraud was exposed, when popular podcasts, documentaries and tv series started dropping. I think the FTX story is about as juicy as that one. I could easily see a film about FTX becoming the next “the social network” or “the big short” (both directors are mentioned in your article), in which case it would instantly become the primary reference point for public perceptions of effective altruism.
I think there was perhaps some miscommunication around your use and my interpretation of “collapse”. To me it implies that something is at an unrecoverable stage, like a “collapsed” building or support for a presidential candidate “collapsing” in a primary race. In your pinned quick take you posit that Effective Altruism as a brand may be damaged to an unrecoverable extent which makes me feel this is the right reading of your post, or at least it was a justified interpretation at least.
***
I actually agree with a lot of your claims in your reply. For example, I think that the last 12 months has been the worst the movement has ever faced. I think many inside the EA movement have lost a lot of faith and trust in both the movement as a whole and its leadership. I don’t think anything I said in my comment would support the view that “there’s no big problem”, I guess I don’t things have to be so binary as “EA’s reputation has collapsed” or “it’s not that bad we’re back to normal”.
Looking into the future, I think you do raise a very good point about risks from media that reflects on the FTX collapse and the role EA played. I think that’s something that the movement does need to prepare for. I don’t have specific suggestions myself, apart from believing that we need a more positive strategic direction to counter mistaken criticisms of us instead of leaving them unchallenged, and accepting reforms where they have merit, but I think that’s a whole other discussion.
***
On the EA movement itself, I guess I find it harder to divorce it from the ideas and values of the movement. Here I think Scott’s already said what I believe in a better way:
“a lot of media is predicting the death of EA, or a major blow to EA, or something in that category. Not going to happen. The media isn’t good at understanding people who do things for reasons other than PR. But most EAs really believe. Like, really believe. If every single other effective altruist in the world were completely discredited, I would just shrug and do effective altruism on my own. If they instituted the death penalty for effective altruism, I would do it under cover of night using ZCash. And I’m nowhere near the most committed effective altruist; honestly I’m probably below average. “Saint gets eaten by lions in Colosseum, can early Christianity possibly survive this setback?” Update your model or prepare to be constantly surprised.”
Ideas have importance all on their own. The ideas that make up the philosophy of “Effective Altruism” exist, and cannot be destroyed. People would believe them, want to co-ordinate on it. Then they’d want to organise to help make their own ideas more efficient and boom, we’re just back to an EA movement all over again.
I guess where we most disagree given this would would be the tone/implications of your section 12.
a) I think most EAs are not yet ready to let go of the existence of an EA movement.
I don’t really know, given above, that this is an option.
b) Still, it’s hard to see how tweaking EA can lead to a product that we should be excited about growing.
I’m still excited about EA? I don’t know how broad the ‘we’ is meant to be. I still want concern about reducing the suffering on non-human animals to grow, I still want humanity to expand its moral circle beyond the parochial, I still want us to find the actions individually and collectively that will lead to humanity flourishing. Apologies if I’m misinterpreting, but this sentance really seems to come out of left-field from me given the rest of your post.
c) In this picture, EA would grow more slowly or shrink for a while, and maybe ultimately be overtaken by cause-specific communities.
I think again, given the ideas of EA exist, these cause-specific communities would find themselves connected again over time.
Yes, I had this exact quote in mind when I said in Sect 5 that “Religions can withstand persecution by totalitarian governments, and some feel just about as strongly about EA.”
People would believe them, want to co-ordinate on it. Then they’d want to organise to help make their own ideas more efficient and boom, we’re just back to an EA movement all over again.
One of my main theses is supposed to be that people can and should coordinate their activities without acting like a movement.
I still want concern about reducing the suffering on non-human animals to grow, I still want humanity to expand its moral circle beyond the parochial, I still want us to find the actions individually and collectively that will lead to humanity flourishing. Apologies if I’m misinterpreting, but this sentance really seems to come out of left-field from me given the rest of your post.
This feels like the same misunderstanding. Spreading EA ideas and values seems fine and good to me. It’s the collectivism, branding, identity-based reasoning, and other “movement-like” characteristics that concern me.
I think again, given the ideas of EA exist, these cause-specific communities would find themselves connected
This seems like black and white thinking to me. Of course these people will connect over their shared interests in consequentialism, RCTs, and so on. But this is different from branding and recruiting together, regulating this area as one community, hosting student chapters, etc.
Thanks for explaining your viewpoints Ryan. I think I have a better understanding, but I’m still not sure I grok it intuitively. Let me try to repeat what I think is your view here (with the help of looking at some of your other quick takes)
note for readers, this is my understanding of Ryan’s thoughts, not what he’s said
1 > The EA movement was directly/significantly causally responsible for the FTX disaster, despite being at a small scale (e.g. “there are only ~10k effective altruists”)
2 > We should believe that without reform, similar catastrophes will contain to happen as the movement grows, which would lead to many more such FTXs catastrophes (i.e. if we get to a movement of 1 million EAs in the current movement, we should expect ~100 FTX-scale disasters)
3 > This outcome is morally unacceptable, so the EA movement shouldn’t grow in its current form
4 > An alternative way to grow would be to continue to grow as a set of different, interconnected movements focused around direct action (e.g. The xRisk community, The animal welfare community, the Global Development community, The Longtermist community etc...)
5 > This would allow EA values to spread without the harms that we see occurring with EA as a movement
I’m think I follow along. I’m not sure about the extrapolation of FTX (would it scale linearly or logarithmically? Does it actually make any sense to extrapolate as if EA will continue the same way at all?) But that aside I think my main disagreement is to think why a set of separate fields/communities that co-ordinate would be better at avoiding the failure modes you see in EA than the current one. I feel like “collectivism, branding, identity-based reasoning, and other “movement-like” characteristics” are going to occur whenever humans organise themselves into groups.
I think perhaps an underlying disagreement we have is about the power of ideas. I just don’t think you can cleanly separate the EA movement from EA values. Ideas are powerful things which have logical and empirical consequences. The EA movement has grown so much so quickly, in my view, because its ideas and values are true[1] and convincing. That causes movements and not the other way around. I guess I’m finding it difficult to picture what a movement-less EA would look like?
As an intuition pump, it’d be like a reformer saying Christians so just go to church on Sunday and listen to sermon, follow the commandments, read the bible, tithe, and do good works, but not bother with all of the Father/Son/Holy Ghost stuff. But that belief is the reason why they’re doing the former. In a world where that was attempted to be removed, I think people would either stop doing the activities or reinvent them.
I’m also worried about Leverage and various other cults and disasters, not just FTX.
I wouldn’t think of the separate communities as “movements” per se. Rather, each cause area would have a professional network of nonprofits and companies.
Basically, why do mid-sized companies usually not spawn cults and socially harm their members like movements like EA and the animal welfare community sometimes do? I think it’s because movements by their nature try to motivate members towards their goals, using social pressures. This attracts young idealists, some of whom will be impressionable. People will try radical stuff like traveling to locations where they’re unsupported, going on intensive retreats, circling, drugs, polyamory, etc. These things benefit some people in some situations, but in they also can put people in vulnerable situations. My hypothesis is that predators detect this vulnerability and then start even crazier and more cultish projects, arguably including Leverage and FTX, under the guise of advancing the movement’s goals.
Companies rarely put junior staff in such vulnerable positions. People generally know not to sleep with subordinates, and better manage conflicts of interest. They don’t usually give staff a pass for misbehaviour due to being value-aligned.
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 agree that ideas are powerful things, and that people will continue to want to follow those ideas to their conclusions, in collaboration with others. 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”. Except that EA is smaller and thousands of years younger, so can be more ambitious in the ways we try to reform.
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.
A lot of the comments seem fixated on, and wanting to object to the idea of “reputational collapse” in a way that I find hard to relate to. This wasn’t a particularly load-bearing part of my argument, it was only used to argue that the idea that EA is a particularly promising way to get people interested in x-risk has become less plausible. Which was only one of three reasons not to promote EA in order to promote x-risk. Which was only one of many strategic suggestions.
That said, I find it hard not to notice that the reputation of, and enthusiasm for EA has changed, to a degree that must affect recruitment via EA to AI safety. If you’re surrounded by EAs, it feels obvious. Trajan had a funereal atmosphere for weeks. Some were depressed for months. In news articles and on the forum, there was a cascade of PR disasters took much airtime from Q4 2022 to Q1 2023. There’s been nothing like it in my 15 years around this community. The polling would have to have been pretty extraordinary to convince me that somehow I’ve misperceived what is really a pretty clear social reality.
The polling had some interesting findings, but not necessarily in a good way. The widely touted figure was that people’s recalled satisfaction dropped “only” 0.5 on a ten-point scale. But most people rate their satisfaction around 7 most of the time, so this looks like an effect size of Cohen’s d=0.4 or so. And this is in the more enthusiastic sample who were willing to keep answering the EA survey even after these disasters. Scanning over the next few questions, you then see that 55%+ of respondants now have some form of concerns about the EA community’s meta organisations, and likewise the community and its norms—much more than the 25% who had some concerns with the philosophy. Moreover, 39% agree in some way that they want to see the community look very different, and the same number say they are less likely to associate with EA. And 31% substantially lost trust in EA public figures or leadership. Those who were more engaged were in most ways more concerned, which would fit with the selection effect hypothesis (those of the less engaged EAs who became disaffected simply left, and didn’t respond to the survey). I find it really hard to understand those who would want to regard these results as “pretty compelling evidence” that EA has not suffered a major hit that would affect its viability as a way of recruiting to AIS.
The polling of people outside the EA community is least convincing to me for a variety of reasons. Firstly, these people currently know least, and many of them will hear more in the future, such as when SBF’s trial happens, the Michael Lewis book is released, or some of the nine film/video adaptations come. Importantly, if any of them become interested in EA, they are likely to hear about such things, and come to reflect the first cohort to a greater extent. But already, ~5% of them mention FTX in the interview, and ~1% of them mention it in the context of the meaning of EA or how they heard about it. In other words, the “scenario where promoting EA could go badly” is something that a community-builder would likely experience at least once. And those who know about FTX have a much more negative view (d=1.5 with high uncertainty). So although this is the more positive of the two batches of polling, I wouldn’t necessarily gloss it as “there’s no big problem”.
I mean I’ve lost enthusiasm for the community/movement element, at least on a gut level. I’ve no objection to people donating, and living a consequentialist-leaning philosophy—rather I’m in favour of that so long as they’re applying the ideas carefully.
I think this an underappreciated point. If you look at google trends for Theranos, the public interest didn’t really get going until a few years after the fraud was exposed, when popular podcasts, documentaries and tv series started dropping. I think the FTX story is about as juicy as that one. I could easily see a film about FTX becoming the next “the social network” or “the big short” (both directors are mentioned in your article), in which case it would instantly become the primary reference point for public perceptions of effective altruism.
I think there was perhaps some miscommunication around your use and my interpretation of “collapse”. To me it implies that something is at an unrecoverable stage, like a “collapsed” building or support for a presidential candidate “collapsing” in a primary race. In your pinned quick take you posit that Effective Altruism as a brand may be damaged to an unrecoverable extent which makes me feel this is the right reading of your post, or at least it was a justified interpretation at least.
***
I actually agree with a lot of your claims in your reply. For example, I think that the last 12 months has been the worst the movement has ever faced. I think many inside the EA movement have lost a lot of faith and trust in both the movement as a whole and its leadership. I don’t think anything I said in my comment would support the view that “there’s no big problem”, I guess I don’t things have to be so binary as “EA’s reputation has collapsed” or “it’s not that bad we’re back to normal”.
Looking into the future, I think you do raise a very good point about risks from media that reflects on the FTX collapse and the role EA played. I think that’s something that the movement does need to prepare for. I don’t have specific suggestions myself, apart from believing that we need a more positive strategic direction to counter mistaken criticisms of us instead of leaving them unchallenged, and accepting reforms where they have merit, but I think that’s a whole other discussion.
***
On the EA movement itself, I guess I find it harder to divorce it from the ideas and values of the movement. Here I think Scott’s already said what I believe in a better way:
Ideas have importance all on their own. The ideas that make up the philosophy of “Effective Altruism” exist, and cannot be destroyed. People would believe them, want to co-ordinate on it. Then they’d want to organise to help make their own ideas more efficient and boom, we’re just back to an EA movement all over again.
I guess where we most disagree given this would would be the tone/implications of your section 12.
I don’t really know, given above, that this is an option.
I’m still excited about EA? I don’t know how broad the ‘we’ is meant to be. I still want concern about reducing the suffering on non-human animals to grow, I still want humanity to expand its moral circle beyond the parochial, I still want us to find the actions individually and collectively that will lead to humanity flourishing. Apologies if I’m misinterpreting, but this sentance really seems to come out of left-field from me given the rest of your post.
I think again, given the ideas of EA exist, these cause-specific communities would find themselves connected again over time.
Yes, I had this exact quote in mind when I said in Sect 5 that “Religions can withstand persecution by totalitarian governments, and some feel just about as strongly about EA.”
One of my main theses is supposed to be that people can and should coordinate their activities without acting like a movement.
This feels like the same misunderstanding. Spreading EA ideas and values seems fine and good to me. It’s the collectivism, branding, identity-based reasoning, and other “movement-like” characteristics that concern me.
This seems like black and white thinking to me. Of course these people will connect over their shared interests in consequentialism, RCTs, and so on. But this is different from branding and recruiting together, regulating this area as one community, hosting student chapters, etc.
Thanks for explaining your viewpoints Ryan. I think I have a better understanding, but I’m still not sure I grok it intuitively. Let me try to repeat what I think is your view here (with the help of looking at some of your other quick takes)
I’m think I follow along. I’m not sure about the extrapolation of FTX (would it scale linearly or logarithmically? Does it actually make any sense to extrapolate as if EA will continue the same way at all?) But that aside I think my main disagreement is to think why a set of separate fields/communities that co-ordinate would be better at avoiding the failure modes you see in EA than the current one. I feel like “collectivism, branding, identity-based reasoning, and other “movement-like” characteristics” are going to occur whenever humans organise themselves into groups.
I think perhaps an underlying disagreement we have is about the power of ideas. I just don’t think you can cleanly separate the EA movement from EA values. Ideas are powerful things which have logical and empirical consequences. The EA movement has grown so much so quickly, in my view, because its ideas and values are true[1] and convincing. That causes movements and not the other way around. I guess I’m finding it difficult to picture what a movement-less EA would look like?
As an intuition pump, it’d be like a reformer saying Christians so just go to church on Sunday and listen to sermon, follow the commandments, read the bible, tithe, and do good works, but not bother with all of the Father/Son/Holy Ghost stuff. But that belief is the reason why they’re doing the former. In a world where that was attempted to be removed, I think people would either stop doing the activities or reinvent them.
or true-enough, or seem true enough. Not claiming EA has anywhere near ‘ultimate truth’ on any issue
Roughly yes, with some differences:
I think the disasters would scale sublinearly
I’m also worried about Leverage and various other cults and disasters, not just FTX.
I wouldn’t think of the separate communities as “movements” per se. Rather, each cause area would have a professional network of nonprofits and companies.
Basically, why do mid-sized companies usually not spawn cults and socially harm their members like movements like EA and the animal welfare community sometimes do? I think it’s because movements by their nature try to motivate members towards their goals, using social pressures. This attracts young idealists, some of whom will be impressionable. People will try radical stuff like traveling to locations where they’re unsupported, going on intensive retreats, circling, drugs, polyamory, etc. These things benefit some people in some situations, but in they also can put people in vulnerable situations. My hypothesis is that predators detect this vulnerability and then start even crazier and more cultish projects, arguably including Leverage and FTX, under the guise of advancing the movement’s goals.
Companies rarely put junior staff in such vulnerable positions. People generally know not to sleep with subordinates, and better manage conflicts of interest. They don’t usually give staff a pass for misbehaviour due to being value-aligned.
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 agree that ideas are powerful things, and that people will continue to want to follow those ideas to their conclusions, in collaboration with others. 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”. Except that EA is smaller and thousands of years younger, so can be more ambitious in the ways we try to reform.
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.