Elitism and Effective Altruism
Many criticize Effective Altruists as elitist. While this criticism is vastly overblown, it does have some basis, not only from the outside looking in but also within the movement itself, including some explicitly arguing for elitism.
Within many EA circles, there are status games and competition around doing “as much as we can,” and in many cases, even judging and shaming, usually implicit and unintended but no less real, of those whom we might term softcore EAs. These are people who identify as EAs and donate money and time to effective charities, but otherwise lead regular lives, as opposed to devoting the brunt of their resources to advance human flourishing as do hardcore EAs. To be clear, there is no definitive and hard distinction between softcore and hardcore EAs, but this is a useful heuristic to employ, as long as we keep in mind that softcore and hardcore are more like poles on a spectrum rather than binary categories.
We should help softcore EAs feel proud of what they do, and beware implying that being softcore EA is somehow deficient or simply the start of an inevitable path to being a hardcore EA. This sort of mentality has caused people I know to feel guilty and ashamed, and led to some leaving the EA movement. Remember that we all suffer from survivorship bias based on seeing those who remained, and not those who left - I specifically talked to people who left, and tried to get their takes on why they did so.
I suggest we aim to respect people wherever they are on the softcore/hardcore EA spectrum. I propose that, from a consequentialist perspective, negative attitudes toward softcore EAs are counterproductive for doing the most good for the world.
Why We Need Softcore EAs
Even if the individual contributions of softcore EAs are much less than the contributions of individual hardcore EAs, it’s irrational and anti-consequentialist to fail to acknowledge and celebrate the contributions of softcore EAs, and yet that is the status quo for the EA movement. As in any movement, the majority of EAs are not deeply committed activists, but are normal people for whom EA is a valuable but not primary identity category. Still, they are quite radical in their positive impact for the world by comparison to people who don't give to effective charities.
Additionally, if we add up the amount of resources contributed to the movement by softcore EAs, they will likely add up to substantially more than the resources contributed by hardcore EAs. For instance, the large majority of those who took the Giving What We Can and The Life You Can Save pledges are softcore EAs, and so are all the new entrants to the EA movement, by definition. In a follow-up post, I will use the Guesstimate app to provide some Fermi estimates to give some numbers backing up this claim.
All of us were softcore EAs once - if you are a hardcore EA now, envision yourself back in those shoes. How would you have liked to have been treated? Acknowledged and celebrated or pushed to do more and more and more? How many softcore EAs around us are suffering right now due to the pressure of expectations to ratchet up their contributions?
I get it. I myself am driven by powerful emotional urges to reduce human suffering and increase human flourishing. Besides my full-time job as a professor, which takes about ~40 hours per week, I’ve been working ~50-70 hours per week for the last year and a half as the leader of an EA-themed meta-charity. As all people do, when I don’t pay attention, I fall unthinkingly into the mind projection fallacy, assuming other people think like I do and have my values, as well as my capacity for productivity and impact. I have a knee-jerk pattern as part of my emotional self to identify with and give social status to fellow hardcore EAs, and consider us an in-group, above softcore EAs.
These are natural human tendencies, but destructive ones. From a consequentialist perspective, it weakens our movement and undermines our capacity to build a better world and decrease suffering for current and future humans and other species.
More softcore EAs are vital for the movement itself to succeed. Softcore EAs can help fill talent gaps and donating to effective direct-action charities, having a strong positive impact on the outside world. Within the movement, they support the hardcore EAs emotionally through giving them a sense of belonging, safety, security, and encouragement, which are key for motivation and mental and physical health. Softcore EAs also donate to and volunteer for EA-themed meta-charities, as well as providing advice and feedback, and serving as evangelists of the movement.
Moreover, softcore EAs remind hardcore EAs of the importance of self-care and taking time off for themselves. This is something we hardcore EAs must not ignore! I’m speaking from personal experience here.
Effective Altruism, Mental Health, and Burnout: A Personal Account
About two years ago, in February 2014, my wife and I co-founded our meta-charity. In the summer of that year, she suffered a nervous breakdown due to burnout over running the organization. I had to - or to be accurate, chose to - take over both of our roles in managing the nonprofit, assuming the full burden of leadership.
In the Fall of 2014, I myself started to develop a mental disorder from the strain of doing both my professor job and running the organization, while also taking care of my wife. It started with heightened anxiety, which I did not recognize as something abnormal at the time - after all, with the love of my life recovering very slowly from a nervous breakdown and me running the organization, anxiety seemed natural. I was flinching away from my problem, not willing to recognize it and pretending it was fine, until some volunteers at the meta-charity I run – most of them softcore EAs – pointed it out to me.
I started to pay more attention to this, especially as I began to experience fatigue spells and panic attacks. With the encouragement of these volunteers, who essentially pushed me to get professional help, I began to see a therapist and take medication, which I continue to do to this day. I scaled back on the time I put into the nonprofit, from 70 hours per week on average to 50 hours per week. Well, to be honest, I occasionally put in more than 50, as I’m very emotionally motivated to help the world, but I try to restrain myself. The softcore volunteers at the EA-themed meta-charity I run know about my workaholism and the danger of burnout for me, and remind me to take care of myself. I also need to remind myself constantly that doing good for the world is a marathon and not a sprint, and that in the long run, I will do much more good by taking it easy on myself.
Celebrating Everyone
As a consequentialist, my analysis, along with my personal experience, convince me that the accomplishments of softcore EAs should be celebrated as well as those of hardcore EAs.
So what can we do? We should publicly showcase the importance of softcore EAs. For example, we can encourage publications of articles that give softcore EAs the recognition they deserve, as well as those who give a large portion of their earnings and time to charity. We can invite a softcore EA to speak about her/his experiences at the 2016 EA Global. We can publish interviews with softcore EAs. Now, I’m not suggesting we should make most speakers softcore EAs, or write most articles, or conduct most interviews with softcore EAs. Overall, my take is that it’s appropriate to celebrate individual EAs proportional to their labors, and as the numbers above show, hardcore EAs individually contribute quite a bit more than softcore EAs. Yet we as a movement need to go against the current norm of not celebrating softcore EAs, and these are just some specific steps that would help us achieve this goal.
Let’s celebrate all who engage in Effective Altruism. Everyone contributes in their own way. Everyone makes the world a better place.
P.S. Look for a follow-up post with Fermi estimates of the value of softcore and hardcore EAs
Acknowledgments: For their feedback on draft versions of this post, I want to thank Linch (Linchuan) Zhang, Hunter Glenn, Denis Drescher, Kathy Forth, Scott Weathers, Jay Quigley, Chris Waterguy (Watkins), Ozzie Gooen, Will Kiely, and Jo Duyvestyn. I bear sole responsibility for any oversights and errors remaining in the post, of course.
EDIT: added link to post explicitly arguing for EA elitism
The terms 'softcore EAs' and 'hardcore EAs' are simply terrible. I strongly urge people to use other words to talk about these groups.
Yeah, they're not my favorite either, but I couldn't think of anything better, and they were already coming into broad use because of Ozy's really good post about them. I'd love to hear some different ideas!
At the same time, there are many who actually embrace the term softcore, as it gives them the language to embrace an identity as an EA, which they were previously reluctant to do. I have both heard this in personal conversations with many EAs who responded to my article, but also some who have publicly posted about this, so I feel comfortable sharing this link to one response.
More broadly, we need to think about how to address this problem of EA being perceived as too lofty to embrace unless there is a more humble identity. As I talked about above, articles about EAs consistently celebrate deeply committed EAs, such as Julia
This is great for getting word about the movement out there, but what kind of an image does that create for people? It creates what I heard many describe as a "general unspoken feeling of 'you're not doing enough unless you meet our high expectations'" which is one reason many folks don't get involved in the movement. Again, I heard this in many personal exchanges, which inspired me to write about this topic, but also some people chose to share this publicly, such as Taryn in her Facebook comments here or Kaj here.
This is why I think there is a high need for a distinction between EA identities. This should not be a binary distinction, but one that describes two poles of EA involvement regarding contribution of time and resources. There should be freedom and flexibility to move between those poles based on life circumstances, and without judging or shaming of those who choose to move. This will result in optimizing the numbers of value-aligned people contributing to the EA movement, as well as good PR for the movement, which I think is what we want to achieve.
I totally agree, came here to make the same comment.
Yep, I came to ask whether people could brainstorm alternatives. Any ideas? Ideally these wouldn't contain value judgements - the terms that people first encounter are bad places for value judgements anyway. "Dedicated" vs. "highly dedicated" is a very nice idea, but sounds a little too artificial and 'PC' to catch on.
Perhaps EA leader vs just EA, without an adjective? That way, there is an especially positive associated with a higher commitment, and somewhat positive with just being an EA participant.
Oh, I find 'leader' much more off-putting and elitist! EA already puts a lot of people off with status hierarchies, fanboyism and hero worship. 'Part-time' and 'full-time' are the most popular suggestions from the other thread, and are better.
Ok, I see your point, full-time and part-time is good. We might want to do a FB poll in the EA FB group once we get a number of options.
Yes, I agree. I mentioned this privately before. I meant to bring it up with Gleb when I was reviewing this document, but I don't think I did in the end, so this is partially my fault. "Dedicated" vs. "highly dedicated" is one possibility that was brought up by Will, not painting the distinction with labels at all is another (which is my recommendation).