The movement at large strikes me as too prestige-seeking and power-seeking, and as such has pretty strong antibodies against a lot of stuff that could potentially, hypothetically, pose a PR risk or make enemies of any kind, or seem generally off-putting to anyone.
I have found that when I identified as an EA, I had a lot more unproductive critical voices in my head that prevented me from considering a lot of potentially good ideas, and it exposed me to a lot of people who would get angry at me if I did anything that “damaged the reputation of the movement”. After many years of actively carrying EA as part of my identity, I had noticed that my ability to take directed action in the world had very greatly atrophied, I was much more anxious and risk-averse, and it took me at least two years of internally distancing myself quite a lot from the EA-identity cluster before I felt like I could have novel ideas again and start working on ambitious projects again.
In short, overall identifying as an EA and placing myself as a representative of the EA community made me much worse at thinking and achieving difficult things. These days I am holding the identity very much at a distance, but am of course still active in the community. I still find this pretty stressful, but mostly think the costs are worth it.
Since you achieved some internal distance from an EA identity, are there any projects you’ve worked on, or ideas you’ve discussed publicly, that fall into the category “I wouldn’t have done this before, because it felt like the kind of thing that would have made people angry/raised the ‘reputation damage’ flag”?
I’m interested in the extent to which the thing that happened was:
a) Feeling empowered to do specific things that run counter to what you think people in the movement would have approved of, vs.
b) Feeling more ambitious and creative in general, even if the results didn’t have much to do with controversial-in-EA topics
Since you achieved some internal distance from an EA identity, are there any projects you’ve worked on, or ideas you’ve discussed publicly, that fall into the category “I wouldn’t have done this before, because it felt like the kind of thing that would have made people angry/raised the ‘reputation damage’ flag”?
I guess… almost everything I am now working on?
My Long Term Future Fund writeups were something that definitely falls into this category, as does a lot of the grant analysis and debating with people that’s behind the final decisions. This is also true for my involvement with the Survival and Flourishing Fund.
Also, my work on LessWrong feels like very much like the kind of thing that felt harder. LessWrong’s reputation is a lot better now, but a lot of people thought I was investing in something quite harmful when I started working on LessWrong, and I was definitely quite self-conscious about it.
The movement at large strikes me as too prestige-seeking and power-seeking, and as such has pretty strong antibodies against a lot of stuff that could potentially, hypothetically, pose a PR risk or make enemies of any kind, or seem generally off-putting to anyone.
I have found that when I identified as an EA, I had a lot more unproductive critical voices in my head that prevented me from considering a lot of potentially good ideas, and it exposed me to a lot of people who would get angry at me if I did anything that “damaged the reputation of the movement”. After many years of actively carrying EA as part of my identity, I had noticed that my ability to take directed action in the world had very greatly atrophied, I was much more anxious and risk-averse, and it took me at least two years of internally distancing myself quite a lot from the EA-identity cluster before I felt like I could have novel ideas again and start working on ambitious projects again.
In short, overall identifying as an EA and placing myself as a representative of the EA community made me much worse at thinking and achieving difficult things. These days I am holding the identity very much at a distance, but am of course still active in the community. I still find this pretty stressful, but mostly think the costs are worth it.
Since you achieved some internal distance from an EA identity, are there any projects you’ve worked on, or ideas you’ve discussed publicly, that fall into the category “I wouldn’t have done this before, because it felt like the kind of thing that would have made people angry/raised the ‘reputation damage’ flag”?
I’m interested in the extent to which the thing that happened was:
a) Feeling empowered to do specific things that run counter to what you think people in the movement would have approved of, vs.
b) Feeling more ambitious and creative in general, even if the results didn’t have much to do with controversial-in-EA topics
I guess… almost everything I am now working on?
My Long Term Future Fund writeups were something that definitely falls into this category, as does a lot of the grant analysis and debating with people that’s behind the final decisions. This is also true for my involvement with the Survival and Flourishing Fund.
Also, my work on LessWrong feels like very much like the kind of thing that felt harder. LessWrong’s reputation is a lot better now, but a lot of people thought I was investing in something quite harmful when I started working on LessWrong, and I was definitely quite self-conscious about it.