One I was very glad not to see in this list was “EA as Utilitarianism”. Although utilitarian ethics are popular among EAs, I think we leave out many people who would “do good better” but from a different meta-ethical perspective. One of the greatest challenges I’ve seen in my own conversations about EA is with those who reject the ideas because they associate them with Singer-style moral arguments and living a life of subsistence until not one person is in poverty. This sadly seems to turn them off of ways they might think about better allocating resources, for example, because they think their only options are either to do what they feel good about or to be a Singer-esque maximizer. Obviously this is not the case, there’s a lot of room for gradation and different perspectives, but it does create a situation where people see themselves in an adversarial relationship to EA and so reject all its ideas rather than just the subset of EA-related ideas they actually disagree with because they got the idea that one part of EA was the whole thing.
Even though I agree that presenting EA as Utilitarianism is alienating and misleading, I think that it is a useful mode of thinking about EA in some contexts. Many practices in EA are rooted in Utilitarianism, and many (about half from the respondents to the survey, if I recall correctly) of the people in EA consider themselves utilitarian. So, while Effective Utilitarianism is not the same as EA, I think that the confusion of the outsiders is sometimes justified.
One I was very glad not to see in this list was “EA as Utilitarianism”. Although utilitarian ethics are popular among EAs, I think we leave out many people who would “do good better” but from a different meta-ethical perspective. One of the greatest challenges I’ve seen in my own conversations about EA is with those who reject the ideas because they associate them with Singer-style moral arguments and living a life of subsistence until not one person is in poverty. This sadly seems to turn them off of ways they might think about better allocating resources, for example, because they think their only options are either to do what they feel good about or to be a Singer-esque maximizer. Obviously this is not the case, there’s a lot of room for gradation and different perspectives, but it does create a situation where people see themselves in an adversarial relationship to EA and so reject all its ideas rather than just the subset of EA-related ideas they actually disagree with because they got the idea that one part of EA was the whole thing.
Even though I agree that presenting EA as Utilitarianism is alienating and misleading, I think that it is a useful mode of thinking about EA in some contexts. Many practices in EA are rooted in Utilitarianism, and many (about half from the respondents to the survey, if I recall correctly) of the people in EA consider themselves utilitarian. So, while Effective Utilitarianism is not the same as EA, I think that the confusion of the outsiders is sometimes justified.