Effective Altruism is People!
Do not forget your own goodness
I want to write a longer reflection on an interesting tweet yesterday:
I wrote a quick reply that I thought it was interesting, but that I also feel that meta-perspectives are especially overemphasized in EA community building- for example, there are not many other parts of the EA world, (if any? tell me if there are!) that are subject to CEA’s fidelity model of communications. If you take a look at the EA Forum, the number of posts critiquing community building seem to be especially represented. In short, we in community building aren’t supposed to grow too quickly, or too shallow, but at the same time need to be very careful about our appearance, can’t ruin the future of humanity by misrepresenting Effective Altruism, and for those on Community Building Grants, we are not meant to talk to the media or do interviews without passing it by CEA first.
I get a lot of this. Effective Altruism is more a particular way of thinking and of doing good than it is a cause area. It doesn’t do much for people to have membership cards if they don’t care about prioritization. I doesn’t help our fidelity, and it also does very little to improve outcomes for those people whose lives we wish to improve. We expect our members to contribute more than just a membership fee—we want them to contribute intellectually and socially as well. We also don’t need their money, which is also a good reason not to spend a lot of time recruiting.
However, I also feel that there is an incredible opportunity for helping Effective Altruism bloom into something even more wonderful if we open ourselves up to social and humanist analysis and critique.
Effective Altruism has some diversity and is quite open, wants to be right, and is willing to change. However, its methods of introspection are fairly limited to the same tools that they use to investigate the world: namely rationalism, quantitative research and academic investigation. This does not a full picture paint. Sometimes we need to also just be human.
Humans doing human things
The EA community needs to be able to see itself as not just altruists, but as humans as well. And more importantly, to not see their humanity as a weakness, but a strength and a tool to be used.
Therefore, when we look at the EA community we have to use more than the tool set that we use to look at utility or cause prioritization as they do not, in my opinion, help us develop a rich and deep image of ourselves as people and as a society.
An example of this is the current critique competition taking place on the EA forum. I think the idea is wonderful, but I also feel that they are emphasizing a particular type of critique, one that already fits a very particular and homogenous world view of EA that might help us grow incrementally, but will not help us see ourselves in a manner that might transform us.
All of the suggested formats for criticism use and support a particular method of looking at the world that is deeply embedded in the EA community and philosophy. They do not open EA to criticisms that could make EA radically richer in its perspective. Rather, it only allows for incremental improvements that do not fundamentally challenge the world view of its founders and main contributors. This sounds like a contradiction, but EA appears not to wear its rational identity especially lightly.
This is not to undermine EA, but give it life blood.
There is no reason that social analysis or literary critiques, like even “A Modest Proposal” cannot tell us something true.
I for one think EA memes are incredibly undervalued. I think it’s a vital critique and also validation of Effective Altruism. We should have more memes.
I think we should have more literature, more poems, more tiktok, more youtube, more fun, because there are other ways to express truth than through numbers. If you only believe in love when you can measure it, then I don’t know what to tell you.
I also believe that there is space for more academic social methods as well, such as sociology, anthropology and political science. We should be able to look at ourselves, the world, and even the relationship between the two in other ways that we can when using math or analytical philosophy. There is truth to be found in all sorts of places.
So I agree with acylhalide , I think there is a space for studying community more. I have even suggested writing an Ethnography or sociological history of Effective Altruism to see where we have come from and how we have developed.
I think that we will find surprising blind spots in our current map of the world, of what is good, what is bad, and who we are as a community. I think we will also find a lot of good about ourselves as well!
At the same time, I do not want to do these things as a critique; another chance to make community more careful. Community building is difficult. There are some good ideas, but there is no recipe. It is based on people and relationships. We have to have space in community building for trying things, failing, and trying some more, just like we do in EA cause areas.
We cannot be afraid of being misunderstood. I promise you, we will always be misunderstood, no matter what we say. We will also definitely be misunderstood if we say nothing at all. If people see you, and you ignore them, they will make their own opinions.
Yes there are edge cases and yes we should always be careful, but we can’t confuse patience, indecision, and a fear of being unfairly judged.
To conclude:
I am happy for more data, I think it can help Effective Altruism flourish. We try to be altruists, but no matter what we do we are human. To be human does not mean that we are just a bias machine, we also have the same intrinsic value and goodness that EA wishes to attribute to every human today and in the future. There is goodness in your intuition, beliefs, thoughts, desires, even faith. To paraphrase Daniel Dennett, competence does not require cognition! You are good even if you don’t always understand why.
However, we also do not need even more data to make us uncertain and even more careful with community building. Community building is, in my opinion, grossly overrepresented as an object for criticism in the EA community. I am sure the reason is innocent, but it is also something that we do not need to indulge. It’s important work to get on with, and I wish you all the best!