I agree with your analysis of the situation, but I wonder whether it’s possible to replace EA with anything that won’t turn into exactly the same thing. After all, the EA movement is the result of some people noticing that much of existing charity is like this, and saying “we should replace that with something very, very different”…
And EA did better than the previous things, along some important dimensions! And people attempting to do the next thing will have EA as an example to learn from, which will (hopefully) prompt them to read and understand sociology, game theory, etc. The question of “why do so many things turn into aesthetic identity movements” is an interesting and important one, and, through study of this (and related) questions, it seems quite tractable to have a much better shot at creating something that produces long-term value, than by not studying those questions.
Success is nowhere near guaranteed, and total success is quite unlikely, but, trying again (after a lot of study and reflection) seems like a better plan than just continuing to keep the current thing running.
The question of “why do so many things turn into aesthetic identity movements” is an interesting and important one, and, through study of this (and related) questions, it seems quite tractable to have a much better shot at creating something that produces long-term value, than by not studying those questions.
I agree that studying this is quite important. (If, of course, such an endeavor is entered into with the understanding that everyone around the investigators, and indeed the investigators themselves, have an interest in subverting the investigation. The level of epistemic vigilance required for the task is very unusually high.)
It is not obvious to me that further attempts at successfully building the object-level structure (or even defining the object-level structure) are warranted, prior to having substantially advanced our knowledge on the topic of the above question. (It seems like you may already agree with me, on this; I am not sure if I’m interpreting your comment correctly.)
I agree with your analysis of the situation, but I wonder whether it’s possible to replace EA with anything that won’t turn into exactly the same thing. After all, the EA movement is the result of some people noticing that much of existing charity is like this, and saying “we should replace that with something very, very different”…
And EA did better than the previous things, along some important dimensions! And people attempting to do the next thing will have EA as an example to learn from, which will (hopefully) prompt them to read and understand sociology, game theory, etc. The question of “why do so many things turn into aesthetic identity movements” is an interesting and important one, and, through study of this (and related) questions, it seems quite tractable to have a much better shot at creating something that produces long-term value, than by not studying those questions.
Success is nowhere near guaranteed, and total success is quite unlikely, but, trying again (after a lot of study and reflection) seems like a better plan than just continuing to keep the current thing running.
I agree that studying this is quite important. (If, of course, such an endeavor is entered into with the understanding that everyone around the investigators, and indeed the investigators themselves, have an interest in subverting the investigation. The level of epistemic vigilance required for the task is very unusually high.)
It is not obvious to me that further attempts at successfully building the object-level structure (or even defining the object-level structure) are warranted, prior to having substantially advanced our knowledge on the topic of the above question. (It seems like you may already agree with me, on this; I am not sure if I’m interpreting your comment correctly.)