Mostly regarded as a happy human, conversationalist, drummer, developer, wannabe psychologist, imminent philosopher, and stuntman — more or less… (definitely less towards the end there).
Catch me in the wild @ davidhartsough.com
I’m here to discuss “flourishing” and to just meet you! (So stop by, come thru, say hey, grab a slice of ’zza, kick off ya shoes, stay awhile. Stay stupendous.)
I should also probably clarify again that my motives are to see the EA Forum and its ideas be spread to a broader audience. I want it to grow and become more welcoming and inclusive.
In fact, I just decided to write an entire post about just that: Toward a more approachable and accessible EA Forum
I’ve gotta hand it to ya @AllAmericanBreakfast: your comment inspired me to write more about how this is all connected to EA communication, connection, and community building. Cheers!
Oh, fascinating! I’ve never come across an idea like these “focus groups” on a forum. Have you tried this before?
(I suppose, upon reflection, I might regard the things I’ve created for a small audience of friends to account for maybe a third of my best work...? haha very rough estimates of course.)
I guess “Step 2” became my next post: Toward a more approachable and accessible EA Forum
(But it reads as a preface/prelude to this post, so it’s more like how the Star Wars trilogies were released out of order...… haha, far stretch of an example)
Fascinating! @Noah, have you seen this discussed in the EA community as well?
This post is “Step 1” towards a side mission: “to make the EA Forum more readable and approachable.”
Improving written language for readers is a great way to practice making the EA Forum/community more:
friendly
welcoming
inclusive
congenial
compelling
considerate
thoughtful
caring
kind
understandable
understanding
(and also, yeah, altruistic)
From the outside looking in:
“A readable and approachable writing/forum” = “A reasonable and approachable people/community”
By making writings more readable, you demonstrate your understanding of others.
By making writings more approachable, you demonstrate your care for others.
I love the comparison to corporations! I’ve never heard that before and think it’s terrific.
Overall well-written and clever. Good formatting. Readable and skimmable. (This is one of those posts that has the necessity of being a “41 minute read”.) Many reasons to give props to this.
My favorite quote:
“There are large and powerful systems doing things vastly beyond the ability of individual humans, and acting in a definitively goal-directed way. We have a vague understanding of their goals, and do not assume that they are coherent. Their goals are clearly not aligned with human goals, but they have enough overlap that many people are broadly in favor of their existence. They seek power. This all causes some problems, but problems within the power of humans and other organized human groups to keep under control, for some definition of ‘under control’.”
Some people in the EA community who are particularly terrified of AI risks might end up saying in response, “well, this scares me almost equally too!” In which case, maybe we can hope for a branch of EA cause areas to focus on all kinds of risks from “large and powerful systems” including mega corporations.
GREAT post! Such a fantastic and thorough explanation of a truly troubling issue! Thank you for this.
We definitely need to distinguish what I call the various “flavors” of EA. And we have many options for how to organize this.
Personally, I’m torn because, on one hand, I want to bring everyone together still under an umbrella movement, with several “branches” within it. However, I agree that, as you note, this situation feels much more like the differences between the rationality community and the EA community: “the two have a lot of overlap but they are not the same thing and there are plenty of people who are in one but not the other. There’s also no good umbrella term that encompasses both.” The EA movement and the extinction risk prevention movement are absolutely different.
And anecdotally, I really want to note that the people who are emphatically in one camp but not the other are very different people. So while I often want to bring them together harmoniously in a centralized community, I’ve honestly noticed that the two groups don’t relate as well and sometimes even argue more than they collaborate. (Again, just anecdotal evidence here — nothing concrete, like data.) It’s kind of like the people who represent these movements don’t exactly speak the same language and don’t exactly always share the same perspectives, values, worldviews, or philosophies. And that’s OK! Haha, it’s actually really necessary I think (and quite beautiful, in its own way).
I love the parallel you’ve drawn between the rationality community and the EA community. It’s the perfect example: people have found their homes among 2 different forums and different global events and different organizations. People in the two communities have shared views and can reasonably expect people within to be familiar with the ideas, writings, and terms from within the group. (For example, someone in EA can reasonably expect someone else who claims any relation to the movement/community to know about 80000 Hours and have at least skimmed the “key ideas” article. Whereas people in the rationality community would reasonably expect everyone within it to have familiarity with HPMOR. But it’s not necessarily expected that these expectations would carry across communities and among both movements.)
You’ve also pointed out amazing examples of how the motivations behind people’s involvement vary greatly. And that’s one of the strongest arguments for distinguishing communities; there are distinct subsets of core values. So, again, people don’t always relate to each other across the wide variety of diverse cause areas and philosophies. And that’s OK :)
Let’s give people a proper home — somewhere they feel like they truly belong and aren’t constantly questioning if they belong. Anecdotally I’ve seen so many of my friends struggle to witness the shifts in focus across EA to go towards X risks like AI. My friends can’t relate to it; they feel like it’s a depressing way to view this movement and dedicate their careers. So much so that we often stop identifying with the community/movement depending on how it’s framed and contextualized. (If I were in a social setting where one person [Anne] who knows about EA was explaining it to someone [Kyle] who had never heard of it and that person [Kyle] then asked me if I am “an EA”, then I might vary my response, depending on the presentation that the first person [Anne] provided. If the provided explanation was really heavy handed with an X-risk/AI focus, I’d probably have a hard time explaining that I work for an EA org that is actually completely unrelated… Or I might just say something like “I love the people and the ideas” haha)
I’m extra passionate about this because I have been preparing a forum post called either “flavors of EA” or “branches of EA” that would propose this same set of ideas! But you’ve done such a great job painting a picture of the root issues. I really hope this post and its ideas gain traction. (I’m not gonna stop talking about it until it does haha) Thanks ParthThaya
Hey Stijn, loved your post! Would you be interested in writing a second version of this without the use of philosophical terms (jargon) so that a common layperson would be able to easily read and understand these ideas? (I’d like to be able to share these ideas, but I wouldn’t be able to with the current terminology. I understand it is written for an audience who has a background in moral philosophy and ethics, but I want to share these ideas with people who don’t have that prior knowledge.)
Thanks Teo!
Thank you for these thoughtful reflections! This is exactly the kind of discussions I was hoping this might generate.
Is flourishing even possible “all else being equal”, such as in an experience machine?
Hmmm, depends on how magical your machine is 😅 and not to be that guy again, but it depends on your definition of flourishing. (I’m choosing to not impose any of my own ideas in this post and even in the comments for now.)
Let’s take the PERMA theory of well-being from Seligman as an example though. He’d probably say:
“If the machine completely stimulates a reality in which I can pursue some or all of these lifestyles of PERMA, then I could flourish in it. So if I could experience and cultivate positive emotions and engagement, and if I could have other simulated beings with me to relate to and build meaning with, then you’ve probably got an experience machine that allows for flourishing.”
To be fair though, I’m not sure Seligman is clear on intricate details within this, such the questions of “what about relationships in particular do humans truly value?” or “what might the machine need to offer to help people forge meaning?” or “what might one do in the machine to experience engagement?”
I feel bad leaving this question largely unanswered for you, but I’ll let you and others discuss!
Relatedly: To what degree does flourishing refer to positive intrinsic vs. extrinsic value?
It seems as though so many of these theories are hinting at intrinsic values, yet it’s strange to not see the term widely used in the literature.
For example, the last 2 theories listed in this document make a claim to say that each element in the model is “universally desired”, “an end in and of itself”, and “pursued by many people for its own sake, not merely to get any of the other elements.”
That kind of phrasing really insinuates “universal intrinsic values”. So I think these psychologists would pretty much all say, “yeah, flourishing directly relates to intrinsic values.”
Ok, I’ll “give in” (AKA step outside my choice to not impose my own thoughts) just for a moment here to give you 2 hot takes:
#1.) Those two theorists, Seligman and VanderWeele, did not use any data when compiling their list of domains. To be frank, it feels like armchair philosophy. They claim their elements of their models to essentially be these exhaustive lists of the most universal intrinsic values, but they didn’t test this at all. They didn’t even run a worldwide survey. (To be fair Harvard did run some surveys years later.) They didn’t have a systematic method to arrive at their models of multidimensional well-being. I’ll write more about this in another post sometime, but I wanted to leave a fair warning here that: while these theories do refer to intrinsic values, their approach is unfortunately lacking a scientific process.
#2.) I believe any theory of flourishing should begin from a theory of intrinsic values (both in a philosophical sense and even in a “data-driven” sense). So by this I mean to say that any theory that suggests a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of the domains of well-being would need to first clarify and define the intrinsic values that are presumed in the theory. As a basic example, these theories all presume humans, human life, “psychological functioning”, and other concepts are all intrinsically valuable. I would say this principle is doubly applicable to any theory of “needs” as well (and often there’s overlaps where a theory of well-being models a theory of needs). To say that there is any “need” at all in this universe is to assume premises of intrinsic values. To say that a human “needs” to eat nutrients, assumes that we care about that human’s biological systems functioning well (and that we care about that human’s health and life and that human in general). (Haha pardon the ramble, but my personal answer to your question is: “to what degree? In the first degree!” 😅)
Haha one reason might be that there’s probably bias towards psychological needs when you get a bunch of psychologists to come up with the theories 😅🤷
(Might look very different if there were 6 prominent theories of well-being coming out of a humanistic field of biology!)
Thanks hornbill!
I think you’re right, this isn’t necessarily a “meta-analysis” or “systematic review” by academic standards. (I’ll update the description.)
“I think if you were to frame this differently and draw out a little more why we should care about wellbeing, you’d get more punch.”
What kind of framing might you have preferred?
While I was sitting on this document for over 2 years now, I went back and forth on what I wanted to accomplish with it. I’ve decided that I don’t necessarily want it to “pack a punch” in the sense of being persuasive about anything at all. I just wanted it to be an unbiased historical overview/outline of these theories, as a reference/resource. It doesn’t really read like an article, and I decided to be ok with that. It’s much more like a Wikipedia outline, and that’s what I was going for.
If the reader doesn’t care about well-being, then I’m very surprised they chose to open this link 😅
I’m not here to convince anyone of anything. (I do plan to do that kind of stuff in another post that can make references to this resource though!)
Also thanks for bringing up the other major concepts in positive psychology. While I think you’re right that those ideas are valuable context and were important to the field, I chose to exclude them in favor of only focusing on theories of well-being that established a multidimensional framework and an accompanying measurement. (Flow, grit, broaden and build,… These ideas fell outside the scope. Plus this document is too huge already 😅 eh?)
But seriously, thank you for this comment 🙂
Haha “chutzpah”, nice. Big fan of this series! Hope it continues! Can’t wait to see the 300s.
Love this article and the series. Couldn’t be happier to see you get this discussion rolling!
Questions for you regarding this piece:
The fungible thing in the analysis, i.e. the common unit of account, should be a year of healthy, happy, flourishing human life.
Just out of curiosity, why do you think this measure ought to be the unit? You could say “a month” or “a day” or “a decade” or “a six second conscious moment”, but the choice is “a year”.
And how do we deal with “healthy, happy, and flourishing” as a singular unit, when, in a sense, each of these things are in themselves such complex, multidimensional metrics?
What is your overall basis for this conclusion that the healthy, happy human life-year is the best unit of measurement vs other possible measures of “welfare”?
(Just to be clear, I 100% agree with you that we should use this unit of measurement, especially in favor of money. But I have been struggling with these additional questions and have a feeling you might have some insights to offer.)
+1 to the “living reviews” idea! Love that Peter! Such a good goal to have the outputs be “consistently improved and updated over time”.
Great question! I don’t actually know. (Although I do know that Spark Wave, the parent organization, is also the “parent” of Positly [both founded by Spencer Greenberg], so they probably have a deal worked out haha. Who knows.)
Fantastic! I feel as though nearly any project founded with the basis of those 7 principles is bound to be pretty amazing.
I can’t wait to see how you’ll tackle these challenges and uncertainties. You’ve got great question along with a great idea.
I had a few thoughts pop up throughout the read, but I’ll just stick to 2 to post in this comment:
#1.) I’m curious to hear what people in the EA forum think about the idea of ESH running its own research from time to time to help fill in any gaps or further test any ideas. If ESH is truly struggling to find good research on a particular topic, then could the ESH team conduct its own studies? For example, Clearer Thinking runs its own studies for almost every article it writes. Thoughts?
#2.) Since your feedback request is for potential flaws, I’ll briefly mention a risk that I’ve seen in self-help that is adjacent to two of the points you mentioned in the “Downside risks” section (“ESH gives advice that proves to be of net harm” and “Individual differences in benefit significantly outweigh the general differences in value between interventions”) ::
Some self-help interventions can be wonderful for resolving a personal problem for X% of people in a particular set of circumstances yet also exacerbate the problem for Y% of people with a particular factor that changes the conditions. (And without getting into details, I’ll just say that the cascading consequences tend to result in a lot of suffering for the people in group Y.)
So how can this be prevented? In the section on “differences in value between interventions” you mentioned the idea of using “a screening quiz for prioritising recommendations based on the individual.” I think that’s a great idea. Maybe there are other solutions to come up with as well.
I just wanted to call this out since sometimes interventions aren’t just a positive “difference in value” between people — sometimes they’re helpful for most yet harmful to a few. And with any given medium/format for the resources ESH will provide, it will need to consider how to communicate this (if there is that risk of harm). In the form of an article, sometimes all you can do is empower the reader with the tools they need to evaluate their own conditions/circumstances to determine which intervention makes sense for them personally (or how to customize an intervention, or whether or not they should even consider the intervention for themselves at all). Beyond articles, it would be terrific to incorporate more interactive elements (like the screening idea) to not only improve the effectiveness of the ESH resources but also prevent potential harms/risks. (And I think these ideas fall nicely into “Practicality”, “Comprehensiveness/Breadth”, “Presentation”, “Research Rigor”, and [personalized] “Prioritization”.)
(Overall, I’m in love with the idea and am surprised it didn’t come into being 10 years ago. Thanks for the thorough introduction!)
+1 to being able to speak about these important topics and concepts to a broad, general audience.
+1 to striving to be inclusive.
+1 to making me laugh at the irony of how this post has some technical (jargon) words both in the title (what is “promisingness”? hehe) and in the post. (But to be fair: you know your audience here on the forum.)
+1 to your suggestions. Great suggestions :)
I’m reminded of the successes of scientific educators that this EA community could learn from. For example educators like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Kurzgesagt demonstrate how taking some of the most complex and difficult-to-understand topics and explaining them in simple, everyday language can actually get a huge, broad, and diverse audience to care about science and genuinely get excited about it (to the point of wanting to participate).
This is something I feel I have yet to see happen at a similar scale of success with EA. I tend to believe effective communication with the use of everyday language is one of the most important keys to “building effective altruism”.
Well written! Great points! 10⁄10 am convinced.
I would love to have more audio and video content. I consume in that medium almost exclusively. I always prefer audiobooks over ebooks, podcasts over blogs, and videos over articles.
But the medium I love most of all is the combination of all of it together in a beautiful, complementary harmony. Give me the audio paired with the text transcript paired with the visual imagery and video elements 🤌
Mmmm what a pairing! (If only I could taste the altruism and smell the effectiveness.)
We’ve evolved to listen to other people talk and to parse visual imagery. Our ears are remarkable listening tools honed by evolution over 2 million years at least (speculative assumptions here), and our eyes are tremendous observation tools for extracting meaningful images out of visual patterns (also developed by evolution since basically forever). We shouldn’t willfully neglect these things.
Bring the senses together, and you’ve got a recipe for effectively encoding information that will not be easily forgotten and will be much more easily retrieved!
The main critiques from the comments here are:
Text is the only medium best suited for “serious discourse” (assuming serious discourse never happened elsewhere or before text was commonplace, like on a stoa in ancient Athens).
We aren’t casual here. This isn’t fun and games. We’re serious. And again, the only serious medium is text. Don’t bother us with your funny stuff like audio or video. Those are for casual sites only. (Sorry, I like to poke fun with exaggeration.)
Text may be the cheapest medium. And we can’t afford much...? (Good point generally, but that doesn’t really mean you can’t allow for other more expensive mediums in addition to text. Right?)
Text only, or else...! [Insert some “slippery slope” notions that things could maybe get bad probably, possibly, perhaps, somehow...?] (Not sure what to make of it.)
Please don’t mess with the front page. (Agreed.)
and, “oh god please no, don’t bring ‘engagement’ up in here ever again please.” (Understandable.)
(also, please just focus on cultivating good discussion.)
To be fair, there’s good concern there regarding the whole “engagement” thing, but that misses the point of this and focuses too much on a problem that isn’t really a problem on this forum.
(Also side note probably not worth mentioning… If we looked at the stats on how many people read the average post on here [and for how long], then I don’t think any of us would be deeply concerned about “engagement” being a problem right now haha. [Not sure where those stats would be, but I kinda imagine that the average post on here gets rather few reads and most people don’t spend a whole lot of time on here in general.])
I think there are wonderful things to be learned from two great examples: TED and Kurzgesagt.
TED has figured out the power of a short talk (less than 18 minutes, usually) to effectively spread an important idea. As an organization they’ve given thorough thought to their process and structure, concluding that a “talk” is the most effective means to communicate ideas worth spreading. They help people condense their incredible research and books into ~15 minutes of good discussion, usually paired with visual imagery accompaniment. But they also go way out of their way to get all their talks transcribed into every language they can. And on their website, you can watch the talk, listen to audio, and read along all at the same time, while the website automatically highlights the currently spoken sentence in the transcript. (You can even click on any portion of the transcript to jump straight to that point in the talk.) And the entire transcription is timestamped. It’s really fantastic but could still be even better!
Imagine written forum posts having the complementary accompaniment of (1) the author reading the post as a script and (2) helpful imagery to visualize the concepts and ideas in the discussion. At that point, you’re basically breaking down all the classic components of a video and letting them each provide benefit when needed. (Again, the more senses activated, the better the encoding and retention.)
Secondly, I mention Kurzgesagt because it’s just incredibly successful at getting the public to care about science and education in a way that is rather surprising. Consider the fact that this little YouTube channel, founded by brilliant information designers, now has 17.5M subscribers. Every video they release is immediately trending in the top 10 videos on YouTube for usually two days, getting easily 5M+ views within the first week. Each video they make is serious and spends upwards of 10-15 minutes explaining a concept in great detail. They’re packed with valuable information from rigorous research.
If this kind of communication can suddenly spark the interest of millions and millions of people to care about thinking through topics like energy, meat, disease, and existential risks (all with a scientific lens), then why wouldn’t it be possible to do the same with EA concepts?
These things captivate me.
I want to be captivated by EA content and writings in this same way. I want it. And despite this desire, I so rarely read text and text alone. I’m not the only person out there like this. If great ideas from EA folks only ever sit on the shelves of this forum in text alone, they may never reach a broader audience. And that’s a shame, because I relate to that audience and have the audacity to believe that they have some terrifically valuable contributions to offer.
It would be amazing if every post had a direct link to its respective audio version (on each major podcast platform). Ex: I would love to go to a post on the front page, read the first paragraph, decide I’d like to give it a go, click a link on the post’s page that could take me straight to the track on Spotify, hit play, return to the post, and then read along with the audio.
100% agree. Each author gives each post its own intended audience (broad, narrow, niche, etc). And sometimes it’s important to make a deliberate choice to only want a select audience to read your post.
Also I’ve never heard of jargon as a tool for protection. Very interesting.
The curious thing to me is that the EA Forum is entirely public online, so in theory everyone can read your post, even if you don’t want them to. So it seems if you have some need to protect either yourself or the post, then you’ll need some other strategies. For example, you could write anonymously so that your identity can’t be traced.
But I really hope the vast majority of posts don’t require any kind of “protective” measures.