Rationality asks the question “How to think clearly”. For many people who start to think more clearly, this leads to an update of their goals toward the question “How we can do as much good as possible (thinking rationally)”, and acting on the answer, which is effective altruism.
Effective altruism asks the question “How we can do as much good as possible, thinking rationally and based on data?”. For many people who actually start thinking about the question, this leads to an update “the ability to think clearly is critical when trying to answer the question”. Which is rationality.
Obviously, this is an idealization. In the real world, many people enter the EA movement with a lot of weight on the “altruism” and less on the “effective”, and do not fully update toward rationality. On the other hand it seems some people enter the rationality community, get mostly aligned with EA goals in the very abstract, but do not fully update toward actually acting.
The simple answer is this:
Rationality asks the question “How to think clearly”. For many people who start to think more clearly, this leads to an update of their goals toward the question “How we can do as much good as possible (thinking rationally)”, and acting on the answer, which is effective altruism.
Effective altruism asks the question “How we can do as much good as possible, thinking rationally and based on data?”. For many people who actually start thinking about the question, this leads to an update “the ability to think clearly is critical when trying to answer the question”. Which is rationality.
Obviously, this is an idealization. In the real world, many people enter the EA movement with a lot of weight on the “altruism” and less on the “effective”, and do not fully update toward rationality. On the other hand it seems some people enter the rationality community, get mostly aligned with EA goals in the very abstract, but do not fully update toward actually acting.