Thanks for the post, but I strongly disagree that this is the problem we’re going through. Here are some things I think might be relevant that are not accounted for in this diagnosis: First, there are some strong divides inside the movement (or among people who identify as EAs): longtermists vs. people focused on global poverty, wild animal suffering v. effective environmentalists, opinions on climate change as a GCR, etc. Second, I don’t think the problem here is just about “optics”… I was imagining that, next time I tell someone (as someone told me 5y ago, thus getting me interested in effective giving) that maybe they want to reconsider donating to their Alma Mater (because donations to universities are usually not neglected) and instead use an ITN framework to evaluate causes and projects, I might heard a reply like “Oh, you mean the ITN framework consolidated by Owen Cotton-Barrat in 2014… same guy who decided to pay 15 mi GBP for a manor-not-castle conference centre in 2022.” And how can I respond to that? I’m pretty confident that OCB had good reasons, but I cannot provide them; thus the other person may just add “oh I trust the dean has reasons to act that way as well.” End of discussion. Third, probably my main issue here: we are beginning to sound a bit neurotic. I’m kinda tired of reading / arguing about EA-the-community. Some months ago, people were commenting Scott Alexander on EA’s “criticim fetish”—but I think the problem might be deeper: EA forum is flooding with self-reference, meta-debates about how the community is or should be. I long for those days when the forum was full of thriving intellectual discussions on cost-benefit analysis, “nuka zaria”, population ethics… you’d post a high-quality, well researched and informative text, and be super glad if it received 20 karma points… Now it’s about the community, identity, self-care, etc. I’m not saying these things are not important—but, well, that’s not why we’re here, right? It’s not that I don’t appreciate something very well-written like We must be very clear: fraud in the service of effective altruism is unacceptable or don’t think it deserves a lot of attention… but the very fact that we got to a point where quite obvious things like that have to be said—that we have to say that we are against specific types of felonies - and argued for aloud, and that it gets 17x more attention than, e.g., a relevant discussion on altruism and development by David Nash… I don’t know how to conclude this sentence, sorry. And ofc I realize my comment is another instance of this… it reminds me one of those horrible “relationship arguments” where a couple starts arguing about something and then the very relationship becomes the main topic—and they just can’t conclude the discussion in a satisfying way.
Thanks for the post, but I strongly disagree that this is the problem we’re going through. Here are some things I think might be relevant that are not accounted for in this diagnosis:
First, there are some strong divides inside the movement (or among people who identify as EAs): longtermists vs. people focused on global poverty, wild animal suffering v. effective environmentalists, opinions on climate change as a GCR, etc.
Second, I don’t think the problem here is just about “optics”… I was imagining that, next time I tell someone (as someone told me 5y ago, thus getting me interested in effective giving) that maybe they want to reconsider donating to their Alma Mater (because donations to universities are usually not neglected) and instead use an ITN framework to evaluate causes and projects, I might heard a reply like “Oh, you mean the ITN framework consolidated by Owen Cotton-Barrat in 2014… same guy who decided to pay 15 mi GBP for a manor-not-castle conference centre in 2022.” And how can I respond to that? I’m pretty confident that OCB had good reasons, but I cannot provide them; thus the other person may just add “oh I trust the dean has reasons to act that way as well.” End of discussion.
Third, probably my main issue here: we are beginning to sound a bit neurotic. I’m kinda tired of reading / arguing about EA-the-community. Some months ago, people were commenting Scott Alexander on EA’s “criticim fetish”—but I think the problem might be deeper: EA forum is flooding with self-reference, meta-debates about how the community is or should be. I long for those days when the forum was full of thriving intellectual discussions on cost-benefit analysis, “nuka zaria”, population ethics… you’d post a high-quality, well researched and informative text, and be super glad if it received 20 karma points… Now it’s about the community, identity, self-care, etc. I’m not saying these things are not important—but, well, that’s not why we’re here, right? It’s not that I don’t appreciate something very well-written like We must be very clear: fraud in the service of effective altruism is unacceptable or don’t think it deserves a lot of attention… but the very fact that we got to a point where quite obvious things like that have to be said—that we have to say that we are against specific types of felonies - and argued for aloud, and that it gets 17x more attention than, e.g., a relevant discussion on altruism and development by David Nash… I don’t know how to conclude this sentence, sorry.
And ofc I realize my comment is another instance of this… it reminds me one of those horrible “relationship arguments” where a couple starts arguing about something and then the very relationship becomes the main topic—and they just can’t conclude the discussion in a satisfying way.