I think it can be all of this, and much more. EA can have tremendous capacity for issuing broad recommendations and tailored advice to individual people. It can be about philosophy, governance, technology, and lifestyle.
How could we have a movement for effective altruism if we couldn’t encompass all that?
This is a community, not a think tank, and a movement rather than an institution. It goes beyond any one thing. So to join it or explain it—that’s a little like explaining what America is all about, or Catholicism is all about, or science is all about. You don’t just explain it, you live it, and the journey will look different to different people. That’s a feature, not a bug.
Thanks for this response! This is helpful, but I still have uncertainties.
Take conferences as an example. Conferences can only be about so much, obviously given their limited time and bandwidth. Should we expect that EA conferences in the next ten years (let’s say) will have all of these things? That Session A will be about how veganism is necessary (or unnecessary) and that Session B will be about how it only makes sense to focus on the longterm?
I think it seems possible that you’re right, but also EA is still very young and has already changed a lot in its short time on Earth. So, I think it’s reasonable to assume that it will continue to change, and I think we can’t easily say that it will or won’t change in a way that becomes far less interested in lifestyle issues and far more interested in really big, cerebral questions about the future, cause x, and so on. Anecdotally, I think it’s fair to notice that EA is moving in this direction a bit already. Why would we think that it won’t continue to? The proportion of EA that is interested in lifestyle vs metaethics vs whatever else is not destined to be the same proportion forever, right? And therefore the content of the movement will change.
Some of this disagreement might come down to the earlier forum debate of EA as a question vs an ideology. I view it as an ideology and very much not as something that you live in the way that you describe. But that strikes me as an agree to disagree-type situation.
I think it can be all of this, and much more. EA can have tremendous capacity for issuing broad recommendations and tailored advice to individual people. It can be about philosophy, governance, technology, and lifestyle.
How could we have a movement for effective altruism if we couldn’t encompass all that?
This is a community, not a think tank, and a movement rather than an institution. It goes beyond any one thing. So to join it or explain it—that’s a little like explaining what America is all about, or Catholicism is all about, or science is all about. You don’t just explain it, you live it, and the journey will look different to different people. That’s a feature, not a bug.
Thanks for this response! This is helpful, but I still have uncertainties.
Take conferences as an example. Conferences can only be about so much, obviously given their limited time and bandwidth. Should we expect that EA conferences in the next ten years (let’s say) will have all of these things? That Session A will be about how veganism is necessary (or unnecessary) and that Session B will be about how it only makes sense to focus on the longterm?
I think it seems possible that you’re right, but also EA is still very young and has already changed a lot in its short time on Earth. So, I think it’s reasonable to assume that it will continue to change, and I think we can’t easily say that it will or won’t change in a way that becomes far less interested in lifestyle issues and far more interested in really big, cerebral questions about the future, cause x, and so on. Anecdotally, I think it’s fair to notice that EA is moving in this direction a bit already. Why would we think that it won’t continue to? The proportion of EA that is interested in lifestyle vs metaethics vs whatever else is not destined to be the same proportion forever, right? And therefore the content of the movement will change.
Some of this disagreement might come down to the earlier forum debate of EA as a question vs an ideology. I view it as an ideology and very much not as something that you live in the way that you describe. But that strikes me as an agree to disagree-type situation.