Collaborative spirit: Itâs often possible to achieve more by working together, and doing this effectively requires high standards of honesty, integrity, and compassion. Effective altruism does not mean supporting âends justify the meansâ reasoning, but rather is about being a good citizen, while ambitiously working toward a better world.
This list of principles isnât totally exhaustive. For example, CEAâs website lists a number of âother principles and toolsâ below these core four principles and âWhat is Effective Altruism?â lists principles like âcollaborative spiritâ, but many of them seem to be ancillary or downstream of the core principles. There are also other principles like integrity that seem both true and extremely important to me, but also seem to be less unique to EA compared to the four core principles (e.g. I think many other communities would also embrace integrity as a principle).
CEA created the website effectivealtruism.org, and my understanding was that it used a collaborative approach to getting input from different stakeholders and was also published after the list of principles on CEAâs website. Maybe Iâm wrong here, but I would find it helpful to know more about the decision process behind the principle selection.
I expect disagreement about the principles, but an approach focussed on principles (which I support) could be more powerful when there is broader stakeholder consensus on what they are. In your EAG London speech, you talked about CEA taking a stewardship role for the EA community, which I interpreted as hearing membersâ perspectives when making community-wide decisions. When you write, âI view the community as CEAâs team, not its customers.â this sounds similar.
While CEA can have its own principles that differ, for example, from national and regional EA groups, a more consensus-based approach could help promote the brand across different target groups.
Thank you for writing this up! I was happy to hear youâre taking this approach at your EAG London opening talk and now see it in writing.
One point that stands out is that the principles published on effectivealtruism.org also include a âcollaborative spiritâ that is missing from your list:
In the footnote, you write:
CEA created the website effectivealtruism.org, and my understanding was that it used a collaborative approach to getting input from different stakeholders and was also published after the list of principles on CEAâs website. Maybe Iâm wrong here, but I would find it helpful to know more about the decision process behind the principle selection.
I expect disagreement about the principles, but an approach focussed on principles (which I support) could be more powerful when there is broader stakeholder consensus on what they are. In your EAG London speech, you talked about CEA taking a stewardship role for the EA community, which I interpreted as hearing membersâ perspectives when making community-wide decisions. When you write, âI view the community as CEAâs team, not its customers.â this sounds similar.
While CEA can have its own principles that differ, for example, from national and regional EA groups, a more consensus-based approach could help promote the brand across different target groups.