Hey Ollie, thanks for your feedback! It helped me understand some of the downvotes the post was getting which I was a bit confused by. I think you and perhaps others are interpreting the post as āHere are some case studies that show EA is in declineā, but thatās not what I was trying to write, it was more āEA is in decline, what historical cases can inform us about this?ā
Iām not really arguing for āIs EA in decline?ā in the post, in fact Iām just assuming it and punting the empirical evidence for another time, since I was interested in bringing out the historical cases rather than EAs current state. So the tweets are meant to be indicative of mood/āsentiment but not load bearing proof. I do see that the rhetorical flourish in the intro might have given a misleading impression, so I will edit that to make the point of the piece more clear.
As for why, I mean, it does just seem fairly obvious to me, but social movements have fuzzy boundaries and decline doesnāt have to be consistent. Nevertheless answering this question was a post I was planning on write and the evidence seemed fairly damning to meāfor instance:
Spikes in visiting the āEffective Altruismā Wikipedia page seem to mainly be in response to negative media coverage, such as the OpenAI board fallout or a Guardian Article about Wytham Abbey. Other Metrics like Forum engagement that were growing preFTX clearly spike and decline after the scandal period.
Other organisations similar to EA considering rebounding away. Apparently CE/āAIM was considering this, and Rutger Bregman seems to be trying really hard to keep Moral Ambition free of EAs reputational orbit, which I think heād be doing much less of if EAs prospects were more positive.
Previous community members leaving the Forum or EA in general, sometimes turning quite hostile to it. Some examples here are Habryka, NuƱo Sempere, Nathan Young, Elizabeth from the more ārationalistā side. Iāve noticed various people who were long term EAs, like Akash Wasil and John Halstead have deactivated their accounts. A lot of more left-wing EAs like Bob Jacobs seem to have started to move away too, or like Habiba moderate their stanc and relationship to EA.
This goes double so for leadership.
I think loads kf the community felt a leadership vacuum post FTX. Dustin has deactivated his account. Holden has left OP, gone quiet, and might not longer consider himself EA? Every so often Ben Todd tweets something which I can only interpret as ātesting the waters before jumping shipā. I donāt think leadership of a thriving, growing movement acts this.
If you search āEffective Altruismā on almost any major social media site (X, Bluesky, Reddit, etc) I suspect the general sentiment toward EA will be strongly negative and probably worse than it was preFTX and staying that way.
There might be some counter evidence. Some metrics might have improved, and I know some surveys are showing mixed or positive things. I think Habrykaās point that reputation is evaluated lazily rings true to me even if I disagree on specifics.
But again, the above is my memory of a draft, and Iām not sure Iāll ever finish that post. I think hard data on a well formed version of the question would be good, but once again itās not the question I was trying to get at with this post.
Thanks for adding more here :) I think that evidence is more persuasive, though still reads a little vibe-y and data-free, and involves reading intention into some actions that might not be there.
As I said, those bullet points were a memory of a draft so I donāt have the hard data to share on hand. But when dealing with social movements itās always going to be somewhat vibesyādata will necessarily be observational and we canāt travel back in time and run RCTs on whether SBF commits fraud or not. And the case studies do show that declines can go on for a very long time post major crisis. Itās rare for movements to disappear overnight (The Levellers come closest of all the cases I found to that)
Fwiw I think that the general evidence does point to āEA is in declineā broadly understood, and that should be considered the null hypothesis at this point. Iād feel pretty gaslit if someone said EA was going swimmingly and unaffected by the tribulations of the last couple of years, perhaps less so if they think thereās been a bounce back after an initial decline but, you know, Iād want to see the data for that.
But as I said, itās really not the (main) point of the post! Iād love to add my points to a post where someone did try and do a deep dive into that question.
Iād feel pretty gaslit if someone said EA was going swimmingly and unaffected by the tribulations of the last couple of years, perhaps less so if they think thereās been a bounce back after an initial decline but, you know, Iād want to see the data for that.
Hey Ollie, thanks for your feedback! It helped me understand some of the downvotes the post was getting which I was a bit confused by. I think you and perhaps others are interpreting the post as āHere are some case studies that show EA is in declineā, but thatās not what I was trying to write, it was more āEA is in decline, what historical cases can inform us about this?ā Iām not really arguing for āIs EA in decline?ā in the post, in fact Iām just assuming it and punting the empirical evidence for another time, since I was interested in bringing out the historical cases rather than EAs current state. So the tweets are meant to be indicative of mood/āsentiment but not load bearing proof. I do see that the rhetorical flourish in the intro might have given a misleading impression, so I will edit that to make the point of the piece more clear.
As for why, I mean, it does just seem fairly obvious to me, but social movements have fuzzy boundaries and decline doesnāt have to be consistent. Nevertheless answering this question was a post I was planning on write and the evidence seemed fairly damning to meāfor instance:
Spikes in visiting the āEffective Altruismā Wikipedia page seem to mainly be in response to negative media coverage, such as the OpenAI board fallout or a Guardian Article about Wytham Abbey. Other Metrics like Forum engagement that were growing preFTX clearly spike and decline after the scandal period.
Other organisations similar to EA considering rebounding away. Apparently CE/āAIM was considering this, and Rutger Bregman seems to be trying really hard to keep Moral Ambition free of EAs reputational orbit, which I think heād be doing much less of if EAs prospects were more positive.
Previous community members leaving the Forum or EA in general, sometimes turning quite hostile to it. Some examples here are Habryka, NuƱo Sempere, Nathan Young, Elizabeth from the more ārationalistā side. Iāve noticed various people who were long term EAs, like Akash Wasil and John Halstead have deactivated their accounts. A lot of more left-wing EAs like Bob Jacobs seem to have started to move away too, or like Habiba moderate their stanc and relationship to EA.
This goes double so for leadership. I think loads kf the community felt a leadership vacuum post FTX. Dustin has deactivated his account. Holden has left OP, gone quiet, and might not longer consider himself EA? Every so often Ben Todd tweets something which I can only interpret as ātesting the waters before jumping shipā. I donāt think leadership of a thriving, growing movement acts this.
If you search āEffective Altruismā on almost any major social media site (X, Bluesky, Reddit, etc) I suspect the general sentiment toward EA will be strongly negative and probably worse than it was preFTX and staying that way. There might be some counter evidence. Some metrics might have improved, and I know some surveys are showing mixed or positive things. I think Habrykaās point that reputation is evaluated lazily rings true to me even if I disagree on specifics.
But again, the above is my memory of a draft, and Iām not sure Iāll ever finish that post. I think hard data on a well formed version of the question would be good, but once again itās not the question I was trying to get at with this post.
Thanks for adding more here :) I think that evidence is more persuasive, though still reads a little vibe-y and data-free, and involves reading intention into some actions that might not be there.
No worries Ollie, thanks for the feedback :)
As I said, those bullet points were a memory of a draft so I donāt have the hard data to share on hand. But when dealing with social movements itās always going to be somewhat vibesyādata will necessarily be observational and we canāt travel back in time and run RCTs on whether SBF commits fraud or not. And the case studies do show that declines can go on for a very long time post major crisis. Itās rare for movements to disappear overnight (The Levellers come closest of all the cases I found to that)
Fwiw I think that the general evidence does point to āEA is in declineā broadly understood, and that should be considered the null hypothesis at this point. Iād feel pretty gaslit if someone said EA was going swimmingly and unaffected by the tribulations of the last couple of years, perhaps less so if they think thereās been a bounce back after an initial decline but, you know, Iād want to see the data for that.
But as I said, itās really not the (main) point of the post! Iād love to add my points to a post where someone did try and do a deep dive into that question.
I canāt seem to find it now, but I think someone calculated that funding to EA was higher in 2023 and 2024 than any year except 2022.
I agree with this fwiw, that seems fair