These are all fair points. For myself, I’ll say that (a) we have a lot of evidence internally that Vox’s readership is pretty left-leaning and (b) I care a lot about persuading people of core EA ideas, like giving impartially and effectively, the importance of global poverty/animals/future people, etc. So naturally when I’m aiming to persuade, I tend to make arguments I think will make sense to the audience I know I have.
I didn’t intend the piece to alienate EAs who don’t have center-left politics, and apologize if I had that effect anyway. I agree that a strength of the movement is the relative lack of ideological litmus tests, and I hope that continues.
Thanks for the reply. I do appreciate that Vox’s readership leans left, and it can be useful to tailor one’s messaging to the expected readership.
Trouble is, in the social media era, articles intended for one readership can easily get picked up, shared, mocked, trolled, satirized, and misunderstood by people from other political perspectives. So I’m worried about conservatives who see the article might end up thinking that EA is ‘just virtue signaling for liberal Vox readers’, or ‘just an excuse to push the Soros/WEF globalism agenda’, some such.
As one of the (few?) EAs with a substantial social media following among conservatives, I might be more tuned in to these issues than some other folks might be.
The takeaway is: political polarization has almost never been higher than it is today, mostly due to social media (if we agree with Jonathan Haidt’s take on it), and if EA becomes associated with the Left, whether strategically or accidentally, that will lead to big problems down the road.
These are all fair points. For myself, I’ll say that (a) we have a lot of evidence internally that Vox’s readership is pretty left-leaning and (b) I care a lot about persuading people of core EA ideas, like giving impartially and effectively, the importance of global poverty/animals/future people, etc. So naturally when I’m aiming to persuade, I tend to make arguments I think will make sense to the audience I know I have.
I didn’t intend the piece to alienate EAs who don’t have center-left politics, and apologize if I had that effect anyway. I agree that a strength of the movement is the relative lack of ideological litmus tests, and I hope that continues.
Hi Dylan,
Thanks for the reply. I do appreciate that Vox’s readership leans left, and it can be useful to tailor one’s messaging to the expected readership.
Trouble is, in the social media era, articles intended for one readership can easily get picked up, shared, mocked, trolled, satirized, and misunderstood by people from other political perspectives. So I’m worried about conservatives who see the article might end up thinking that EA is ‘just virtue signaling for liberal Vox readers’, or ‘just an excuse to push the Soros/WEF globalism agenda’, some such.
As one of the (few?) EAs with a substantial social media following among conservatives, I might be more tuned in to these issues than some other folks might be.
The takeaway is: political polarization has almost never been higher than it is today, mostly due to social media (if we agree with Jonathan Haidt’s take on it), and if EA becomes associated with the Left, whether strategically or accidentally, that will lead to big problems down the road.