I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I largely agree with you. I also think studying “pure” value drift (as opposed to “symptoms” ofvalue drift, which is what a lot of the research in this area focuses on, including, to some extent, my own) comes with a few challenges. (Epistemic status: Pretty uncertain and writing this in haste. Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong.)
EA isn’t (supposed to be) dogmatic, and hence doesn’t have clearly defined values. We’re “effective” and we’re “altruistic,” and those are more or less the only requirements to being EA. But what is altruism? Is it altruistic to invest in yourself so you can have more of an impact later on in life? Effectiveness, on the surface, seems more objective, since it mostly means relying on high-quality evidence and reasoning. But evidence and reason can get messy and biased, which can make defining effectiveness more difficult. For example, even if valuing effectiveness leads you to choose to believe in interventions that have the most robust evidence, it’s possible that that robust evidence might come from p-hacking, publication bias, or studies with an over-representation of middle-class people from high-income countries. At some point effectiveness (from the EA point of view) also hinges on a valuing certainty vs. risk-taking, and probably a number of other sub-values as well.
Measuring raw values relies primarily on self-reporting, which is a notoriously unreliable social science method. People often say they value one thing and then act in a contradictory manner. Sometimes it’s a signaling thing, but sometimes we just don’t really understand ourselves that well. Classic example: a young college student says they don’t care much about financial stability, until they actually enter the workforce, get a not-super-well-paid job, and realize that maybe they actually do care. I think this is a big reason why people have chosen to focus on behavior and community involvement. It’s the closest thing to objective data we can get.
This isn’t an argument against what you’ve written. I still think a lot of people err on assigning the label “value drift” to things like leaving the EA community that could be caused by a number of different scenarios in which it actually perfectly reflects your values to do that thing. I guess I don’t know what the solution is here, but I do think it’s worth digging into further.
EA isn’t (supposed to be) dogmatic, and hence doesn’t have clearly defined values.
I agree.
I think this is a big reason why people have chosen to focus on behavior and community involvement.
Community involvement is just instrumental to the goals of EA movement building. I think the outcomes we want to measure are things like career and donations. We also want to measure things that are instrumental to this, but I think we should keep those separated.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I largely agree with you. I also think studying “pure” value drift (as opposed to “symptoms” of value drift, which is what a lot of the research in this area focuses on, including, to some extent, my own) comes with a few challenges. (Epistemic status: Pretty uncertain and writing this in haste. Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong.)
EA isn’t (supposed to be) dogmatic, and hence doesn’t have clearly defined values. We’re “effective” and we’re “altruistic,” and those are more or less the only requirements to being EA. But what is altruism? Is it altruistic to invest in yourself so you can have more of an impact later on in life? Effectiveness, on the surface, seems more objective, since it mostly means relying on high-quality evidence and reasoning. But evidence and reason can get messy and biased, which can make defining effectiveness more difficult. For example, even if valuing effectiveness leads you to choose to believe in interventions that have the most robust evidence, it’s possible that that robust evidence might come from p-hacking, publication bias, or studies with an over-representation of middle-class people from high-income countries. At some point effectiveness (from the EA point of view) also hinges on a valuing certainty vs. risk-taking, and probably a number of other sub-values as well.
Measuring raw values relies primarily on self-reporting, which is a notoriously unreliable social science method. People often say they value one thing and then act in a contradictory manner. Sometimes it’s a signaling thing, but sometimes we just don’t really understand ourselves that well. Classic example: a young college student says they don’t care much about financial stability, until they actually enter the workforce, get a not-super-well-paid job, and realize that maybe they actually do care. I think this is a big reason why people have chosen to focus on behavior and community involvement. It’s the closest thing to objective data we can get.
This isn’t an argument against what you’ve written. I still think a lot of people err on assigning the label “value drift” to things like leaving the EA community that could be caused by a number of different scenarios in which it actually perfectly reflects your values to do that thing. I guess I don’t know what the solution is here, but I do think it’s worth digging into further.
I agree.
Community involvement is just instrumental to the goals of EA movement building. I think the outcomes we want to measure are things like career and donations. We also want to measure things that are instrumental to this, but I think we should keep those separated.
Related: my comment on “How have you become more (or less) engaged with EA in the last year?”