Really enjoyed and appreciated this wonderful piece of analysis. Thank you!
Considering this post was written 7 years ago, I’m wondering if some of the insights you made have not been fully exploited by the EA community.
EAs do some of the vital things you identify extremely well. One of them is intellectual rigour, which fits with the academic angle that neoliberalism exploited. In an argument between an EA and a non-EA, you typically feel that the more intelligent and critical the audience, the better the chance that the EA will win, because we really test arguments to the nth degree. This is great.
One where we do less well maybe the the Utopian aspect. I believe that this may be because we do not necessarily recognise the importance of making our message “visionary” in a way that resonates with the general public. EAs are sometimes perceived as a group of nerdy, elitist intellectuals, which is not the reality. But it may be true that we allow this image to exist by not proactively changing it.
The tragedy of this is: EAs do have a very aspirational world-vision—a world without poverty or malaria or nuclear war or pandemics or animal suffering or existential AI risks … maybe we just don’t talk about it enough. Maybe in addition to all the critical, quantitative arguments and focus on the risks and the problems, we should have more “I have a dream” type communication, talking about the kind of world EA’s would create, using positive language (not “no poverty” but “everyone has a good standard of life and access to good education and health-care”; not “no animal suffering in factory farms” but “we have access to as much nutritious, delicious food as we want, while animals roam the fields in freedom with no worries about being slaughtered for our food.” … well, we can find better words …).
It could be that we do this already and I’m just not seeing it (I’m in Belgium!) - but when I see the press-coverage of EA during the SBF trial, it was so negative and so divorced from the reality that I actually see in the EA community.
Really enjoyed and appreciated this wonderful piece of analysis. Thank you!
Considering this post was written 7 years ago, I’m wondering if some of the insights you made have not been fully exploited by the EA community.
EAs do some of the vital things you identify extremely well. One of them is intellectual rigour, which fits with the academic angle that neoliberalism exploited. In an argument between an EA and a non-EA, you typically feel that the more intelligent and critical the audience, the better the chance that the EA will win, because we really test arguments to the nth degree. This is great.
One where we do less well maybe the the Utopian aspect. I believe that this may be because we do not necessarily recognise the importance of making our message “visionary” in a way that resonates with the general public. EAs are sometimes perceived as a group of nerdy, elitist intellectuals, which is not the reality. But it may be true that we allow this image to exist by not proactively changing it.
The tragedy of this is: EAs do have a very aspirational world-vision—a world without poverty or malaria or nuclear war or pandemics or animal suffering or existential AI risks … maybe we just don’t talk about it enough. Maybe in addition to all the critical, quantitative arguments and focus on the risks and the problems, we should have more “I have a dream” type communication, talking about the kind of world EA’s would create, using positive language (not “no poverty” but “everyone has a good standard of life and access to good education and health-care”; not “no animal suffering in factory farms” but “we have access to as much nutritious, delicious food as we want, while animals roam the fields in freedom with no worries about being slaughtered for our food.” … well, we can find better words …).
It could be that we do this already and I’m just not seeing it (I’m in Belgium!) - but when I see the press-coverage of EA during the SBF trial, it was so negative and so divorced from the reality that I actually see in the EA community.