Am I one of you? I suppose that’s for you to tell me.
One of the most upvoted articles on this forum is how we shouldn’t think of effective altruism as a fixed identity, lest we lose sight of the question of how to do the most good. Despite the apparent consensus here, the identity of ‘effective altruist’ keeps being a thing. Part of the difficulty is the ambiguity of words. ‘Effective altruism’ is and has been a convenient name which will nonetheless always have negative connotations. Nobody has thought of a phrase that gets across the core ideas that doesn’t sound presumptuous, and yet isn’t unwieldy.
A first question asked is, “if they’re effective altruists, are they implying that everyone else are ineffective?” The answer is, of course, no, because there are lots of people doing lots of great work who don’t identify with effective altruism at all. The term is meant to imply an intent to be effectively altruistic, not a monopoly on what are or aren’t effective ways of doing good.
I believe another factor is people tend to unconsciously build for themselves and their communities a sense of identity, even if they’re consciously aware this can cause problems like groupthink and have an urge to to stay impartial among all considerations. Building a social identity is natural human behaviour. So, it seems keeping one’s identity small is not something to be done once, but a process of constant vigilance and maintenance.
All that stated, we’ll probably keep calling each others ‘effective altruists’ (often abbreviated as EAs) for the indefinite future. Nobody can specifically tell you if you’re an effective altruist or not. It’s socially constructed. It’s an idea and explicit identity that didn’t exist even five years ago. First of all, I don’t think you can be an effective altruist unless you think of yourself as one. There are lots of people who have good exactly the way effective altruism (EA) would’ve in a similar position, utterly independent of the community. When EA reaches out to them, some decline to consider themselves part of EA because of what they consider shortcomings or flaws in our ideas. I think time will tell if they’re right and wrong, and while I don’t respect all differences people have with effective altruism, I respect efforts to engage its ideas in good faith.
Of course, whether one is part of the worldwide EA community will depend on what members of the community itself think. There isn’t any clean process for generating this sort of consensus, or any hard qualifying criteria. If you get and stay involved with EA, people may start to think of you as an ‘effective altruist’. The label isn’t super special, though. As “effective altruism” grows as a brand, becoming more high-status, it can confer benefits to its adherents. Like, a charity brandishing the “effective altruism” label may attract more donors. So, the most important function of the phrase may be what it (currently) rules out. This means denying the franchise of “effective altruism” or “effective altruist” to those who aren’t actually effective and/or altruistic in their work. This hasn’t come up much, but when it does, it’s carried out through informal community policing. There isn’t yet any clear process for how this is or should be done, either.
Thanks, Evan. I did see that article, but I think its thesis makes more sense in theory than in practice. The reality is that people coming into these spaces from the outside will think of “effective altruists” as an identity whether we/you want them to or not, because that’s a frame that is familiar to them from other contexts. Communities are sometimes defined as much by people outside of them as by people on the inside.
I think there are also unconsidered benefits of community solidarity as well. Community solidarity and identification might not absolutely hold up as net positive when its negative impacts are also counted. Yet if communities like EA will be pigeonholed and defined as an identity by outsiders anyway, we might as well steer into the skid and realize the benefits of a common identity.
One of the most upvoted articles on this forum is how we shouldn’t think of effective altruism as a fixed identity, lest we lose sight of the question of how to do the most good. Despite the apparent consensus here, the identity of ‘effective altruist’ keeps being a thing. Part of the difficulty is the ambiguity of words. ‘Effective altruism’ is and has been a convenient name which will nonetheless always have negative connotations. Nobody has thought of a phrase that gets across the core ideas that doesn’t sound presumptuous, and yet isn’t unwieldy.
A first question asked is, “if they’re effective altruists, are they implying that everyone else are ineffective?” The answer is, of course, no, because there are lots of people doing lots of great work who don’t identify with effective altruism at all. The term is meant to imply an intent to be effectively altruistic, not a monopoly on what are or aren’t effective ways of doing good.
I believe another factor is people tend to unconsciously build for themselves and their communities a sense of identity, even if they’re consciously aware this can cause problems like groupthink and have an urge to to stay impartial among all considerations. Building a social identity is natural human behaviour. So, it seems keeping one’s identity small is not something to be done once, but a process of constant vigilance and maintenance.
All that stated, we’ll probably keep calling each others ‘effective altruists’ (often abbreviated as EAs) for the indefinite future. Nobody can specifically tell you if you’re an effective altruist or not. It’s socially constructed. It’s an idea and explicit identity that didn’t exist even five years ago. First of all, I don’t think you can be an effective altruist unless you think of yourself as one. There are lots of people who have good exactly the way effective altruism (EA) would’ve in a similar position, utterly independent of the community. When EA reaches out to them, some decline to consider themselves part of EA because of what they consider shortcomings or flaws in our ideas. I think time will tell if they’re right and wrong, and while I don’t respect all differences people have with effective altruism, I respect efforts to engage its ideas in good faith.
Of course, whether one is part of the worldwide EA community will depend on what members of the community itself think. There isn’t any clean process for generating this sort of consensus, or any hard qualifying criteria. If you get and stay involved with EA, people may start to think of you as an ‘effective altruist’. The label isn’t super special, though. As “effective altruism” grows as a brand, becoming more high-status, it can confer benefits to its adherents. Like, a charity brandishing the “effective altruism” label may attract more donors. So, the most important function of the phrase may be what it (currently) rules out. This means denying the franchise of “effective altruism” or “effective altruist” to those who aren’t actually effective and/or altruistic in their work. This hasn’t come up much, but when it does, it’s carried out through informal community policing. There isn’t yet any clear process for how this is or should be done, either.
Thanks, Evan. I did see that article, but I think its thesis makes more sense in theory than in practice. The reality is that people coming into these spaces from the outside will think of “effective altruists” as an identity whether we/you want them to or not, because that’s a frame that is familiar to them from other contexts. Communities are sometimes defined as much by people outside of them as by people on the inside.
I think there are also unconsidered benefits of community solidarity as well. Community solidarity and identification might not absolutely hold up as net positive when its negative impacts are also counted. Yet if communities like EA will be pigeonholed and defined as an identity by outsiders anyway, we might as well steer into the skid and realize the benefits of a common identity.