Thanks for writing this! I’m curious about how important you think the selection effects are here? eg. in terms of people who have had worse experiences with EA being less likely to fill out the survey.
I think my initial guess here would be that EA is roughly net neutral for people in terms of mental health, and because I expect the selection effects in who takes the survey to be fairly strong, I don’t really update much on seeing the above data
hbesceli
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Thanks for your work on this!
I think I mildly prefer the older landing page (sorry!).
The newer one feels more shiny, in a way that appeals to me a bit less. Trying to spell this out a bit more/ what it is that appeals to me less:
- In terms of the vibe it feels more professionalismy, status signallingy, corporate, respectable or something. (I don’t think it’s entirely fair to describe the new website as these things, but it does at least feel like the new website is more in this direction relative to the old).
- I’m remembering Sarah Constantin’s article on Ra as I write this, which I think gestures towards what I like less.
- I feel a bit of an ick of the ‘featured in’ section (which has logos of eg. the BBC, NYT etc.). I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe because it feels like there’s a subtle implication of ‘if you respect these institutions/ brands, then you’ll like this effective altruism thing’. And I’m like ‘huh, I’m not sure how much I do respect these institutions/ brands’… idk. (also, featured in feels like a bit of an odd way to put it, as a bunch of these places have written things very unchartiable about EA).
- From the new website, I get a bit more of a sense that someone is trying to sell something to me somehow. Like, it seems like the kind of website that I expect to see from a corporation that wants me to buy their product, and less like the kind of website that I expect to see from something that wants to provide me information or something.
- It may just be that I am into boring websites. For example, my idea of a good time/ a good website is eg. Wikipedia, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and Astral Codex Ten. I guess I’m just really into large walls of text. But doubling down on this, I think there is something good about the statement that large walls of text makes. It’s like ‘hey, what we’re about is like thinking carefully and passionately impassionate reasoning, and so we’re going to communicate with you via lots of words and explicit arguments and claims, and not with shiny images and vague associations with established institutions, because we think that in an ideal world people should be persuaded to get involved with a community/ philosophy on the basis of explicit arguments and claims, and not on the basis of shiny images etc.’
- I think the above comments might make it seem like I’m more anti the new website than I actually am. I think it’s like if there was a content-to-shiny scale for websites, with Wikipedia at 1 and idk the Adidas website at 10, then I’d put the new website at like a 5.5, and ideally I’d want it to be a 3.5. Maybe even a 3. But also if I were king then I’d want all websites to move a couple of points down on this scale.
- I like the tagline change and other word changes! I also like that an essay to what EA is is linked early on and also highlighting actions that people have taken.
On this topic, I like Anna Salamon’s post What should you change in response to an “emergency”? And AI risk for working out how to react/ respond appropriately to emergencies
Could you expand on why that’s the case? Is the idea that you believe those projects are net negative, or that you would rather marginal donations go to animal welfare and the long term future instead of EA infrastructure?
In some cases there are projects that I or other fund managers think are net negative, but this is rare. Often things that we decide against funding I think are net positive, but think that the projects aren’t competitive with funding things outside of the EA Infrastructure space (either the other EA Funds or more broadly).
I think it’s a bit weird for donors who want to donate to EA infrastructure projects to see that initiatives like EA Poland are funding constrained while the EA Infrastructure fund isn’t
I think it makes sense that there are projects which EAIF decides not to fund, and that other people will still be excited about funding (and in these cases I think it makes sense for people to consider donating to those projects directly). Could you elaborate a bit on what you find weird?
and extra donations to the EAIF will likely counterfactually go to other cause areas
I don’t think this is the case. Extra donations to EAIF will help us build up more reserves for granting out at a future date. But it’s not the case that eg. if EAIF has more money that we think that we can spend well at the moment, that we’ll then eg. start donating this to other cause areas. I might have misunderstood you here?
A lot of what I have seen regarding “EA Community teams” seems to be be about managing conflicts between different individuals.
Not sure I understand this part—curious if you could say more.
It would be interesting to see an organization or individual that was explicitly an expert in knowing different individuals and organizations and the projects that they are working on and could potentially connect people who might be able to add value to each other’s projects.
I like this idea. A related idea/ framing that comes to mind.
There’s often a lot of value for people having a strong professional network. Eg. for finding collaborators, getting feedback or input etc.
People’s skills/ inclination for network building will vary a lot. And I suspect there’s a significant fraction of people working on EA projects that have lower network building inclination/ skills, and would benefit from support in building their network.
eg. If I could sign up for a service that substantially increased my professional network/ helped me build more valuable professional relationships, I would and would be willing to pay for such a service.
Thanks for the suggestion—I read the proposal a while ago, and hadn’t thought about it recently, so it’s good to be reminded of it again.
The fact that that has not already been funded, and that talk around it has died down, makes me wonder if you have already ruled out funding such a project.
We haven’t decided against funding projects like this. (EAIF’s grantmaking historically has been very passive—eg. the projects that we end up considering for funding has been determined by the applications we received. And we haven’t received any strong applications in the ‘FHI of the West’ ballpark—at least as far as I’m aware)
as you get better models of the world/ability to get better models of the world, you start noticing things that are inconvenient for others. Some of those inconvenient truths can break coordination games people are playing, and leave them with worse alternatives.
I haven’t thought about this particular framing before, and it’s interesting to me to think about—I don’t quite have an opinion on it at the moment. Here’s some of the things that are on my mind at the moment which feel related to this.
Perhaps relatedly or perhaps as a non-sequitur, I’m also curious about what changed since your post a year ago talking about how EA doesn’t bring out the best in you.
This seems related to me, and I don’t have a full answer here, but some things that come to mind:
For me personally, I feel a lot happier engaging with EA than I did previously. I don’t quite know why this is, I think some combination of: being more selective in terms of what I engage with and how, having a more realistic view of what EA is and what to expect from it, being part of other social environments which I get value from and make me feel less ‘attached to EA’ and my mental health improving. And also perhaps having a stronger view of what I want to be different with EA, and feeling more willing to stand behind that.
I still feel pretty wary of things which I feel that EA ‘brings out of me’ (envy, dismissiveness, self-centredness etc.) which I don’t like, and it still can feel like a struggle to avoid the pull of those things.
Have you messaged people on the EA and epistemics slack?
… there is an EA and epistemics slack?? (cool!) if it’s free for anyone to join, would you be able to send me an access link or somesuch?
Thanks! (I don’t have an immediate response to this, and found a bunch of the points you’re raising here pretty interesting)
EA Jobs, Scarcity and Performance
It seems like:
For many people, having an EA job is pretty important.
It’s pretty competitive and many people who want EA jobs will not in fact get them.
There’s been some discussion related to this on the EA Forum, focusing in particular on jobseekers. I’m also interested in exploring this dynamic with people who are working in EA jobs.
I expect EA job scarcity not only have an impact on EA jobseekers, but also people who are working in EA jobs.
Given 1 and 2, it seems like for people working in EA jobs it will be pretty important for them to keep their jobs. If the job market is competitive it may not be obvious that they can get another one. (For people who have got one EA job, it will presumably be easier to get another, but maybe not guaranteed).
For someone who’s in a position of scarcity about their EA job, I can imagine this meaning they focus primarily on performing well/ being seen to perform well.
This becomes a problem if what counts as performing well and what is actually good to do comes into conflict. Eg. this might involve things like:
Agreeing with the organisational strategy or one’s manager more than one endorses
Focusing on ensuring that they have achieved certain outputs independent of whether that output seems good
In general I expect that under conditions of scarcity people will be less able to do valuable work (and I mean valuable here as ‘actually good’ as opposed to ’work that is perceived to be valuable).
(If I’m right about this, then one potential answer to ‘what is it for EA to thrive’, is: EAs aren’t in a position of scarcity).
Things I’d be interested to ask people who are working at EA jobs to understand whether this is in fact a thing:
How concerned are you about your perceived performance?
If your employer/ manager/ funder/ relevant people said something like: ‘We have full confidence in you, your job is guaranteed and we want you to focus on whatever you think is best’ - would that change what you focus on? How much?
Some EA psychological phenomena
Some things that people report in EA:
Are these EA phenomena? Also, are they psychological phenomena?
These things (I guess excluding EA disillusionment), don’t just exist within EA they exist within society in general, so it’s plausibly unfair to call them EA phenomena. Though it also seems to me that for each of these things, there’s somewhat strong fit with EA, and EA culture.
Taking impostor syndrome as an example: EA often particularly values ambitious and talented people. Also, it seems to me there’s something of a culture of assessing and prioritising people on this basis. Insofar as it’s important for people to be successful within EA, it’s also important for people to be seen in a certain way by others (talented, ambitious etc.). In general, the stronger the pressure there is for people to be perceived in a certain way, the more prominent I expect impostor syndrome to be.
(I’m a bit wary of ‘just so’ stories here, but my best guess is that this in fact explanatory).
I think impostor syndrome and other things in this ballpark are often discussed as an individual/ psychological phenomena. I think such framings are pretty useful. And there’s another framing which is seeing it instead as a ~sociological phenomena—these are things which happen in a social context, as a result of different social pressures and incentives within the environment.
I don’t know quite what to conclude here, in a large part because I don’t know how common these things are within EA, and how this compares to other places (or even what the relevant comparison class is). Though tentatively, if I’m asking ‘What does it look like for EA to thrive?’, then part of my answer is ‘being an environment where impostor syndrome, burnout, impact obsession and EA disillusionment are less common’.
What’s going on with ‘EA Adjacents’?
There’s a thing where lots of people will say that they are EA Adjacent rather than EA (funny post related to this). In particular, it seems to me that the closer to the core people are, the less inclined they are to identify themselves with EA. What’s going on here? I don’t know, but it’s an interesting trailhead to me.
Plausibly there are some aspects of EA, the culture, norms, worldview, individuals, organisations etc. that people disagree with or don’t endorse, and so prefer to not identify as EAs.
I’m unsure how much to treat this as reflective of a substantive issue vs. a quirk, or reflective of things being actually fine. At least in terms of EA being a ‘beacon for thoughtful, sincere, and selfless’, it seems a little bit worrying to me that some of the core members of the community aren’t willing to describe themselves as EA.
Perhaps a way of getting to the heart of this is asking people something like: Imagine you’re talking to someone who is thoughtful, sincere and selfless. Would you recommend EA to them? Which parts? How strongly? Would you express any reservations?
Looping back to the question of ‘What is it for EA to thrive?’, one answer is: It’s the kind of community that EA’s would strongly recommend to a thoughtful, sincere and selfless friend.
(Maybe this is too strong—people will probably reasonably have disagreements about what aspects of EA are good and aren’t, and if everyone is very positive on EA in this way, this plausibly means that there’s not enough disagreement in the community. )
Incentives within EA
Here’s a story you could tell about academia. Academia, is in some sense supposed to be about generating knowledge. But it ends up being ineffective at doing this because of something something incentives. Eg.
Academic jobs are highly competitive
In order to get an academic job, it’s more important to have done things like original research than things like replications.
Things like replications are undersupplied, and the replication crisis happens.
What are the incentives within EA? How does this affect how well EA ends up ‘doing the most good?’. I don’t have a full theory here, though I also suspect that there are ways in which incentives in EA can push against doing the most good. Professional EA group funding is one example:
Professional EA group organisers are often in a bit of a precarious position. Their job depends on their ability to get funding from organisations like CEA or EAIF.
One of the main ways that EA group organisers are assessed is on the basis of things like how well they produce highly engaged EAs, or career plan changes or other such things (I think this is broadly true, though I don’t have a great insight into how CEA assesses groups).
Professional EA group organisers are incentivised to produce these kinds of things. Some potential problems here: It’s hard to assess what counts as a good eg. career, which pushes in the direction of non-standard career options being discounted, often it may make sense for someone to focus on building career capital over working at an EA organisation, but these kinds of things are less obviously/ legibly impactful…
What is the EA project? Also, who is it for?
There’s a comment by Saulius on an old EA Forum post: ‘[...] I see EA as something that is mostly useful when you are deciding how you want to do good. After you figured it out, there is little reason to continue engaging with it [...]’.
I found this pretty interesting, and it inspired a bunch of thoughts. Here’s a couple of oversimplified models of what it is to pursue the EA project:
Model 1:
EA involves figuring out how to do the most good and doing it.
Figuring out how to do the most good involves working out what cause area is most important and what career path to pursue.
Doing it involves getting such a job and executing well on it.
Model 2:
EA involves figuring out how to do the most good and doing it.
This is less of a two step process, and more of an ongoing cultivation of virtues and attitudes like scout mindset, effectiveness and so on. It involves constant vigilance, or constant attunement. It’s an ongoing process of development, personal, epistemic, moral etc.
I see most EA community building efforts as mostly framed by model 1. For example EA Groups, the EA Forum (perhaps EAG/ EAGx as well, though this is less clear). It seems to me a common pattern for people to engage in these things heavily when getting involved in EA, and then when people are ‘in’ they stop engaging with them, and focus on executing at their job.
Insofar as engaging with these things (EA groups, EA Forum etc.) is a key component of what it is to engage with EA, I’m inclined to agree with the above comment—once you’ve figured out what to do there’s little reason to continue engaging with EA.
I’d like to see more community building efforts, or EA Infrastructure that’s framed around model 2 - things that give EA’s who are already ‘in’ a reason to continue engaging with EA, things that provide them with value in pursuing this project.
I don’t think model 1 and 2 necessarily have to come into conflict. Or at least, I think it’s fine and good for there to be people that see EA as mostly being relevant to a career decision process. And, for people that want to treat the EA project as more like model 2 (an ongoing process of cultivating virtues like scout mindset, effectiveness and so on, I’d be excited to see more community building, or infrastructure which is designed to support them in these aims.
What is it for EA to thrive?
EA Infrastructure Fund’s Plan to Focus on Principles-First EA includes a proposal:
The EA Infrastructure Fund will fund and support projects that build and empower the community of people trying to identify actions that do the greatest good from a scope-sensitive and impartial welfarist view.
And a rationale (there’s more detail in the post):
[...] EA is doing something special.
[...] fighting for EA right now could make it meaningfully more likely to thrive long term.
[...] we could make EA much better than it currently is—particularly on the “beacon for thoughtful, sincere, and selfless” front. [...]
Here I’m spending some time thinking about this, in particular:
What does it mean for EA to thrive?
What projects could push EA in the direction of thriving?
(I work at EAIF. These are my personal views/ thoughts. I’m not speaking on behalf of EAIF here)
Thanks for writing this up, lots of interesting ideas for retreat activities which I hadn’t previously seen/ though of!
Yes, we’re open to accepting both for either for grants covering project in which people either intend to work full-time or part-time, and for either joint or individual applications. We don’t have a strong preference for receiving any particular type of application within this.
What more can a paid organizer do?
It may be that paid organisers simply increases the scale of the things they do already—eg. putting on more discussion groups, talks, workshops etc. though it could also be that having increased capacity enables groups to test promising strategies that they wouldn’t have previously been able to.
One reason for thinking that it should be possible for organisers to increase the scale of their activities (and for this to result in an increase in the value that the group produces) is that even the largest groups seem to reach a fraction of their target audience. If groups aren’t limited by the available target audience, and the grants process means that groups aren’t limited by organiser time or funding, it seems that groups are likely to be able to increase the value they produce.
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I liked this comment and thought it raised a bunch of interesting points, thanks for writing it.
> Putting this author aside, it seems like many of the folk who talk about this stuff are merely engaging in self-absorbed obscurantism.
I had a bit of a negative reaction to this comment—it seems a bit uncharitable to me