EA has a culture of deferring to leaders and people in positions of expertise, and for good reasonāitās impossible for everyone to figure out everything from first principles, and relying on othersā judgement is essential for doing good at scale.
A lot of people have said this, but compared to what? I assume compared to the ideal. Compared to the communities I have spent the most time in, I would say:
Environmentalism: defers far more
Unitarian Universalism: defers a lot more
Academia: defers significantly more
LessWrong: defers a little bit less
Longer-standing EAs also donāt seem to engage much with EA infrastructure. Of the EAs I know whoāve been around for a while, I donāt know any who are part of a local group, and only a small handful actively engage on the Forum.
Many past leaders of EA no longer seem to support it, and many seem to actively disavow it.
I would love to hear more anecdata from other early EAs (I realize surveys would be really hard to run). I think it was around 2017 that @Benjamin_Todd estimated an attrition rate of about 2% per year from early EAs, so it would be interesting to hear an update on that. And again, it would be good to compare to other movements.
This has not been my experience from 9 years of academia in physics and material science. Opinions published in scientific papers must be backed up with reference to actual evidence, not merely opinion. When deferral happens behind the scenes, itās usually justified by the person in question being an actual expert that knows their shit.
EA is far worse: I sometimes see people defer to random blog posters who have zero expertise in the subject they are talking about.
As in my other comment, I am mixing deference to orthodoxy and leaders. I have similar experience duration in academia. I think questioning things like political left positions and the value of education is more discouraged in academia than questioning the common beliefs in EA. I think it also depends on the field. In some academic fields, there are specific camps with a lot of tribal behavior. Thereās a quote that science advances one funeral at a time. I think that EAs are more open to changing their opinions. There is also a lot of tribal behavior between fields in academiaāI think there is significantly more bias towards oneās strand of academia than towards oneās strand of EA. Maybe thatās not deference to leaders, but the questioning of the value of oneās field in academia is uncommon. Whereas in EA, there is lots of questioning whether different strands are net negative.
However, I do agree that some EAs like taking contrary opinions and might defer to a random blogger against scientific consensus. Those EAs often have a low opinion of peer review, and are probably more often wrong than the scientific consensus.
The point of UU is to have certain differences from traditional religion. UU encourages questioning traditional religion, but it discourages questioning of UUās own positions.
EA encourages questioning of EAās principles. I could get hundreds of upvotes by writing a post about why ITN is a bad framework and should be ditched, whereas youād get tarred and feathered for suggesting that a UU congregation should drop one of their seven principles.
I didnāt knew about the seven principles of UU. Apparently those are:
1st Principle: The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
2nd Principle: Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
3rd Principle: Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
4th Principle: A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
5th Principle: The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
6th Principle: The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
7th Principle: Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
Those seem quite a bit more fundamental than the ITN framework is for EA, and Iām sure there are more fundamental principles of EA that you would in fact get the same reaction if you said they should be ditched. (In fact, they would probably be basically the same ones?)
I agree there is some overlap between these principles and EA principles. But I still think the EAs are more willing to debate them. For instance, the first implies torture is never justified (and this is a common view in UU), but some EAs will debate the cases where it could be justified. Also, maximizing utility does not necessarily push you to justice and equity. Spiritual growth does not apply to most of EA. And EAs generally question environmental/ābiodiversity principles.
I very much expect a speaker at an EA conference talking about the benefits of torture would be quickly shown the door. More to the point, this goes double for a speaker saying EAs should ditch the ādoing good impartially based on reason and evidenceā thing and instead pick a Great Leader to never criticize and embark on a crusade to genocide the inferior races.
Iām blending deference to leaders and orthodoxy here. In UU, questioning of traditional theology is encouraged; questioning the views of the political left, much less so. Of course EA has its own orthodoxy, but questioning and criticism of it is much more encouraged. I think there has been more criticism of Moskovitz, Karnofsky, MacAskill, and Ord in EA than typical leaders in UU (e.g. ministers), but maybe your experience is different?
A lot of people have said this, but compared to what? I assume compared to the ideal. Compared to the communities I have spent the most time in, I would say:
Environmentalism: defers far more
Unitarian Universalism: defers a lot more
Academia: defers significantly more
LessWrong: defers a little bit less
I would love to hear more anecdata from other early EAs (I realize surveys would be really hard to run). I think it was around 2017 that @Benjamin_Todd estimated an attrition rate of about 2% per year from early EAs, so it would be interesting to hear an update on that. And again, it would be good to compare to other movements.
This has not been my experience from 9 years of academia in physics and material science. Opinions published in scientific papers must be backed up with reference to actual evidence, not merely opinion. When deferral happens behind the scenes, itās usually justified by the person in question being an actual expert that knows their shit.
EA is far worse: I sometimes see people defer to random blog posters who have zero expertise in the subject they are talking about.
As in my other comment, I am mixing deference to orthodoxy and leaders. I have similar experience duration in academia. I think questioning things like political left positions and the value of education is more discouraged in academia than questioning the common beliefs in EA. I think it also depends on the field. In some academic fields, there are specific camps with a lot of tribal behavior. Thereās a quote that science advances one funeral at a time. I think that EAs are more open to changing their opinions. There is also a lot of tribal behavior between fields in academiaāI think there is significantly more bias towards oneās strand of academia than towards oneās strand of EA. Maybe thatās not deference to leaders, but the questioning of the value of oneās field in academia is uncommon. Whereas in EA, there is lots of questioning whether different strands are net negative.
However, I do agree that some EAs like taking contrary opinions and might defer to a random blogger against scientific consensus. Those EAs often have a low opinion of peer review, and are probably more often wrong than the scientific consensus.
ā¦ who are those leaders of Unitarian Universalism that UUs are deferring a lot more than EAs defer to Moskovitz, Karnofsky, MacAskill, Ord?
The point of UU is to have certain differences from traditional religion. UU encourages questioning traditional religion, but it discourages questioning of UUās own positions.
EA encourages questioning of EAās principles. I could get hundreds of upvotes by writing a post about why ITN is a bad framework and should be ditched, whereas youād get tarred and feathered for suggesting that a UU congregation should drop one of their seven principles.
I didnāt knew about the seven principles of UU. Apparently those are:
1st Principle: The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
2nd Principle: Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
3rd Principle: Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
4th Principle: A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
5th Principle: The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
6th Principle: The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
7th Principle: Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
Those seem quite a bit more fundamental than the ITN framework is for EA, and Iām sure there are more fundamental principles of EA that you would in fact get the same reaction if you said they should be ditched. (In fact, they would probably be basically the same ones?)
I agree there is some overlap between these principles and EA principles. But I still think the EAs are more willing to debate them. For instance, the first implies torture is never justified (and this is a common view in UU), but some EAs will debate the cases where it could be justified. Also, maximizing utility does not necessarily push you to justice and equity. Spiritual growth does not apply to most of EA. And EAs generally question environmental/ābiodiversity principles.
I very much expect a speaker at an EA conference talking about the benefits of torture would be quickly shown the door. More to the point, this goes double for a speaker saying EAs should ditch the ādoing good impartially based on reason and evidenceā thing and instead pick a Great Leader to never criticize and embark on a crusade to genocide the inferior races.
Iām blending deference to leaders and orthodoxy here. In UU, questioning of traditional theology is encouraged; questioning the views of the political left, much less so. Of course EA has its own orthodoxy, but questioning and criticism of it is much more encouraged. I think there has been more criticism of Moskovitz, Karnofsky, MacAskill, and Ord in EA than typical leaders in UU (e.g. ministers), but maybe your experience is different?