Full-time manager of a cat sanctuary. Environmental activist. In the past, I established an educational NGO and ran it for many years.
In my free time left from those engaging activities, I am a qualified investment professional with diverse professional experience across the sector.
Alex (Αλέξανδρος)
Karma: 169
Thank you for reading my post and for the thoughtful comment — and for the links to the Sentience Institute methodology, which I found genuinely interesting.The goal of my post was to draw lessons for the EA community from the Fabians’ approach, not to provide a rigorous causal analysis of their impact — which would require considerably more space and evidence than a forum post allows. That said, I do think however the evidence for Fabian influence goes well beyond the two points you mentioned. The historical literature — Margaret Cole’s The Story of Fabian Socialism, Edward Pease’s History of the Fabian Society, and several academic assessments — document specific causal pathways, such as for example the Fabians’ direct role in drafting the Labour Party’s 1918 constitution, their documented influence on the Education Act of 1902 (passed by a Conservative government), the institutional legacy of the LSE in training generations of policymakers and researchers. These are examples of traceable policy influence.
Establishing rigorous causal attribution for social change is inherently difficult — as your own methodology work discusses so well. My post would have certainly benefited from foregrounding these specific causal pathways more clearly rather than relying primarily on references to the existing literature made in my post:
- Pease,
- Cole,
- MacDonald in the Journal of Politics,
- Poirier in Political Science Quarterly,
- Scott Alexander’s post.If I revisit this topic, I’ll aim to incorporate that kind of evidence more explicitly. Thank you for pushing the analysis to be stronger — that’s what makes the Forum valuable.
Kes, my sincere congratulations, glad that all went well despite the unexpected challenges! Strong upvote and hope it just the first step!
Kes, excellent post, strong upvote! I have a feeling that combination of Quaker culture and EA might some very positive impact )
I hope to be able to visit one of your future events, especially given that the concept is very close to my concept of EA holiday retreat.
Maybe someone should suggest to CEA to allocate a grant so that you could develop a brief course or workshop and advise people in other national groups on how to organise such events!
And good luck with the upcoming event!
As for the main theme of the post, there seems to be a simple fundamental reason for such difficulties in finding an EA-aligned job. EA overall funding is just not big enough to create enough jobs for all interested people. And among other consequences, an important one is that it limits participation in EA − 2019 EA survey by @David_Moss showed that “too few job opportunities” were No. 1 barrier to greater involvement with EA.
This situation will not change until EA starts focusing on how to attract or create more donors (I have ideas but no one would read this anyway, so why bother )))
A personal and therefore rather limited observation (sample size about 40-50 people in total). Interestingly enough, for all this intensive hiring processes, I’ve happened to come across presumably nice people (in very different EA organisations and across diverse ranges of experience) who are nevertheless spectacularly ineffective, at least using my (probably too high) bar of experience in investments. What surprises me further, such people so far significantly outnumbered highly effective people whom I was fortunate to meet in EA.
I deliberately don’t give examples of ineffectiveness so as not to offend those nice people, but with my 25+ years of working in highly effective business organisations and managing people, believe me – I know what I’m talking about 😉
Great idea—thank you, Kestrel! Strong upvote!
BTW, for some reason it’s not visible in the Evens section
Strong upvote—we need more such events! Respect to @Laszlo Treszkai and @Marlyn for organising it!
Great piece of work and pioneering research. Strong upvote!
Kestrel, I’d very much like to come—but unfortunately for me a it’s a long trip from Cyprus ((
Vasco, looking at the title I thought first that you were the author—but surprisingly, no! I fully agree with you—excellent post, strongly upvoted, too!
It would be good to think how these thoughts could be translated to, say, social media strategy recommendations for organisations such as Mercy For Animals …
Thanks for drawing attention to this, Vasco! I am not yet at that level of satori to consider the well-being of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails—but who knows, maybe some day … ;)
Vasco, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I have my shelter for feral cats caring for them every day and I know from my daily experience that their life even in my protected garden has risks… I often think that If we were not in the XXI century with vet clinics, modern diagnostic tests and drugs, at least 25-30% of those cats would be already dead regardless of how well I feed them…
Thank you for the wonderful job you did—the Forum’s navigation and ease of use is remarkable!
I am curious about one aspect which is not clear to me from the post. Assuming EA is really in decline, do you personally regret it or not?
Why not form an informal group within EA which shares the values and views that you outlined in your post?
”For those whose EA retreat experience is mostly pre-2023 like me, both the numbers and reactions here are kind of shocking. I would have expected the retreat to be ~70% vegetarian and for most of the response to be hard-nosed questions about the most effective interventions, not “huh, so do you think any charities actually work?”
Hi Tyler, this is something that can significantly strengthen EA community. I think the idea is excellent as demonstrated by history of different groups and networks you named and also for example the Inklings, the Bloomsbury Group and Fabian Society. I also have a concept that could complement it, I’ll send you details for discussion by DM.
I read this cross-post with great interest. I wonder if I can buy a franchise from Michael Huemer—I’d like to write a whole series of articles using his brilliant line of reasoning.
The first installment would be provisionally titled: “Be Grateful to Your Lord, You Lowly Serf.”
It would explain why the wealth gap between lords and serfs wasn’t a problem at all. After all, the lords protected their serfs from raiders, settled disputes, and maintained order. They trained for years to become warriors, risking their lives to preserve peace. Their horses and armor were expensive! True, the serfs did labor on the land, but the land was granted to the lords by God himself to own and protect—as any honest priest would be happy to confirm.Besides, the lords carried superior genes and noble heritage, which they even generously shared with some serfs through the occasional exercise of droit du seigneur—not so much a “right,” really, as a touching act of feudal philanthropy.
Surely it’s only fair they received a larger share of the surplus!
Next in the series: “Ancient Rome—Slaves’ Paradise Lost.”
Excellent post, thanks for sharing your experience! Strongly recommend for all group organisers
Thank you for reminding about this remarkable person. I’ll add him to my personal inspirational list of Humanity’s Best People