I feel that, while you went a level of meta up, this article really encapsulates why I am so hesitant about EA. I have several concerns about VNM utilitarianism applied to a global monolithic scope. My experience discussing them in the EA space is people looking at me funny and something along the lines of “How can you be against it though?”
By far the main problem I have, which I feel you pointed here elegantly, is how prone EA is to congratulate itself on being so willing to change its mind, without a broader interrogation of what that even means. (I remember Julia Galef saying something like “There was an EA forum post voicing criticism of the movement, to which others cheered on and said ‘well said, here are some more criticisms’” which I do not think is a reaction of reception)
Another concern I have is that “Effective Altruism” is eating the memetic space of “doing altruism effectively”. That is, there is more and more a conflation between the general idea of “let’s do the most good” and the set of values and memespace EA has developped. I find it makes communicating about it a lot harder.
Thank you for writing this article, if there was an effective altruism movement receptive to it, I would feel less hesitation about the whole thing
I feel that, while you went a level of meta up, this article really encapsulates why I am so hesitant about EA. I have several concerns about VNM utilitarianism applied to a global monolithic scope. My experience discussing them in the EA space is people looking at me funny and something along the lines of “How can you be against it though?”
By far the main problem I have, which I feel you pointed here elegantly, is how prone EA is to congratulate itself on being so willing to change its mind, without a broader interrogation of what that even means. (I remember Julia Galef saying something like “There was an EA forum post voicing criticism of the movement, to which others cheered on and said ‘well said, here are some more criticisms’” which I do not think is a reaction of reception)
Another concern I have is that “Effective Altruism” is eating the memetic space of “doing altruism effectively”. That is, there is more and more a conflation between the general idea of “let’s do the most good” and the set of values and memespace EA has developped. I find it makes communicating about it a lot harder.
Thank you for writing this article, if there was an effective altruism movement receptive to it, I would feel less hesitation about the whole thing