That’s true, but before the brand “Effective Altruism” existed, there was no reason why starting an organisation using that name should have made the founders beholden to the will of every single participant in this community—you’d need to conjecture a pretty unreasonable amount of foresight and scheming to think that even back then the founders were trying to structure these orgs in a manner designed to maintain central control over the movement.
If you or me or anyone else wanted to start our own organisation under a new brand with similar goals to CEA or GWWC I don’t think anyone would try to stop us!
If you or me or anyone else wanted to start our own organisation under a new brand with similar goals to CEA or GWWC I don’t think anyone would try to stop us!
My model is that no one would try to formally stop this effort (i.e. via a lawsuit), though it would receive substantial pushback in the form of:
Private communication discouraging the effort
Organizers of the effort excluded and/or removed from coordinating fora, such as EA slack groups
Public writing suggesting that the effort be rolled into the existing EA movement
Attempts (by professional EAs) to minimize the funding directed to the effort from traditional EA funders (i.e. the effort would be viewed as a competitor for funding)
I’d disagree. Probably Good, a direct competitor to 80k, is overall supported by the community, though it gets less support than 80k.
CEA goes out of their way to solicit competition in their new update. But probably a competitor to CEA would not end up being fiscally sponsored by EVF, and would receive less support than EVF.
However, I think instead of starting new orgs, the EA community should first try to improve the ones we have today.
Probably Good is a reasonable counterexample to my model here (though it’s not really a direct competitor – they’re aiming at a different audience and consulted with 80k on how to structure the project).
It’ll be interesting to see how its relationships with 80k and Open Phil develop as we enter a funding contraction.
The coinage of a name for a movement is different from the establishment of that movement.
That’s true, but before the brand “Effective Altruism” existed, there was no reason why starting an organisation using that name should have made the founders beholden to the will of every single participant in this community—you’d need to conjecture a pretty unreasonable amount of foresight and scheming to think that even back then the founders were trying to structure these orgs in a manner designed to maintain central control over the movement.
If you or me or anyone else wanted to start our own organisation under a new brand with similar goals to CEA or GWWC I don’t think anyone would try to stop us!
My model is that no one would try to formally stop this effort (i.e. via a lawsuit), though it would receive substantial pushback in the form of:
Private communication discouraging the effort
Organizers of the effort excluded and/or removed from coordinating fora, such as EA slack groups
Public writing suggesting that the effort be rolled into the existing EA movement
Attempts (by professional EAs) to minimize the funding directed to the effort from traditional EA funders (i.e. the effort would be viewed as a competitor for funding)
I’d disagree. Probably Good, a direct competitor to 80k, is overall supported by the community, though it gets less support than 80k.
CEA goes out of their way to solicit competition in their new update. But probably a competitor to CEA would not end up being fiscally sponsored by EVF, and would receive less support than EVF.
However, I think instead of starting new orgs, the EA community should first try to improve the ones we have today.
Probably Good is a reasonable counterexample to my model here (though it’s not really a direct competitor – they’re aiming at a different audience and consulted with 80k on how to structure the project).
It’ll be interesting to see how its relationships with 80k and Open Phil develop as we enter a funding contraction.
I don’t follow what you’re pointing to with “beholden to the will of every single participant in this community.”
My point is that CEA was established as a centralizing organization to coordinate the actions and branding of the then-nascent EA community.
Whereas Luke’s phrasing suggests that CEA drove the creation of the EA community, i.e. CEA was created and then the community sprung up around it.