Thank you for this post, I think it’s important. I completely agree with your suggestion to focus on more moderately engaged EAs, but not so much with the impetus for it being “evaporative cooling”.
Essentially, when a group goes through a crisis, those who hold the group’s beliefs least strongly leave, and those who hold the group’s beliefs most strongly stay.
I don’t think that what will determine leaving or staying in response to recent events will be the degree to which people hold EA beliefs. Based on recent discussions on the Forum, I think those most likely to leave the community as a result of recent events would pe people who
care very deeply about transparency and accountability in organizations in general and charitable of non-governmental organizations in particular and feel like EVF and other pillar institutions and actors are not upholding these principles in a meaningful way
care very deeply about the standard of evidence-based reasoning and are struggling to reconcile things like the purchase of Wyndham Abbey with this standard
think EAs are espousing principles and ideas that don’t match up with their actions
are concerned that visible engagement with EA might take meaningful action or make effective career choices more difficult due to negative public perception over the longterm
don’t want to be associated with EA because of negative public perception and don’t think it’s worth it
I think that out of these, the first two and to a more limited extent the third and fourth would be more likely to strongly hold EA beliefs and the beliefs themselves would be the reason they leave the community. You could argue that the fifth in particular is an example of evaporative cooling, and I would probably agree, but I also think that the other groups deserve more attention in this discussion and the tone of less dedicated rats leaving a sinking ship that I’m getting from the evaporative cooling framing seems counterproductive—I absolutely do not think that that is what you mean or want to indicate, but I feel like it’s latent in the framing.
I also agree very strongly that focusing on moderately involved EAs is beneficial for non-attrition related factors, most importantly for engendering intellectual diversity and allowing the movement to learn from and incorporate experiences that are outside of the non-EA ecosystem.
Thank you for this post, I think it’s important. I completely agree with your suggestion to focus on more moderately engaged EAs, but not so much with the impetus for it being “evaporative cooling”.
I don’t think that what will determine leaving or staying in response to recent events will be the degree to which people hold EA beliefs. Based on recent discussions on the Forum, I think those most likely to leave the community as a result of recent events would pe people who
care very deeply about transparency and accountability in organizations in general and charitable of non-governmental organizations in particular and feel like EVF and other pillar institutions and actors are not upholding these principles in a meaningful way
care very deeply about the standard of evidence-based reasoning and are struggling to reconcile things like the purchase of Wyndham Abbey with this standard
think EAs are espousing principles and ideas that don’t match up with their actions
are concerned that visible engagement with EA might take meaningful action or make effective career choices more difficult due to negative public perception over the longterm
don’t want to be associated with EA because of negative public perception and don’t think it’s worth it
I think that out of these, the first two and to a more limited extent the third and fourth would be more likely to strongly hold EA beliefs and the beliefs themselves would be the reason they leave the community. You could argue that the fifth in particular is an example of evaporative cooling, and I would probably agree, but I also think that the other groups deserve more attention in this discussion and the tone of less dedicated rats leaving a sinking ship that I’m getting from the evaporative cooling framing seems counterproductive—I absolutely do not think that that is what you mean or want to indicate, but I feel like it’s latent in the framing.
I also agree very strongly that focusing on moderately involved EAs is beneficial for non-attrition related factors, most importantly for engendering intellectual diversity and allowing the movement to learn from and incorporate experiences that are outside of the non-EA ecosystem.