@Elizabeth and I recently recorded a conversation of ours that we're hoping becomes a whole podcast series. The original premise is that we were trying to convince each other about whether we should both be EAs or both not be EAs. (She quit the movement earlier this year when she felt that her cries of alarm kept falling on deaf ears; I never left.)
Audio recording (35 min)
Some highlights:
- @Elizabeth's story of falling in love with, trying to change, and then falling out of love with Effective Altruism. That middle part draws heavily on past posts of hers, including EA Vegan Advocacy is not truthseeking, and it’s everyone’s problem and Truthseeking is the ground in which other principles grow
- I told Elizabeth that I would also have left when she did (if I had had her experience).
- I claimed that EA is ready for a Renaissance.
- We both agreed that I should 'check the integrity of Hogwarts' by challenging EA to live up to my standards of integrity, and that I should also leave the movement if I give up on EA meeting that challenge (as Elizabeth did).
If you like the podcast or want to continue the conversation, tell us about it in the comments (or on LW if you want to make sure Elizabeth sees it), and consider donating toward future episodes.
Thanks for the interesting conversation! Some scattered questions/observations:
I doubt that Elizabeth -- or a meaningful number of her potential readers -- are considering whether to be associated with anti-vegan advocates on Facebook or any movement related to them. I read the discussion as mainly about epistemics and integrity (these words collectively appear ~30 times in the transcript) rather than object-level harms.
I recognize there may be object-level disagreement here as to whether a given presentation is false, misleading, or poses a risk of meaningful harm.
Yes, I would even say that the original comment (which I intend to reply to next) seems to suffer from ends-justify-the-means-logic as well (e.g. prioritizing "shutting up and multiplying" such as "shipping resources to the best interventions" over "being honest about health effects").
I like the distinction of cause-first vs member-first; thanks for that concept. Thinking about that in this context, I'm inspired to suggest a different cleavage that works better for my worldview on EA: Alignment/Integrity-first vs. Power/Impact-first.
I believe that for basically all institutions in the 21st century, alignment should be the highest priority, and power should only become the top priority to the extent that the institution believes that alignment at that power level has been solved.
By this splitting, it seems clear that Elizabeth's reported actions are prioritizing alignment over impact.
Would you sometimes advocate for prioritizing impact (e.g. SUM shipping resources towards interventions) over alignment within the EA community?
I believe that until we learn how to prioritize Alignment over Impact, we aren't ready for as much power as we had at SBF's height.
Thanks for this; I agree that "integrity vs impact" is a more precise cleavage point for this conversation than "cause-first vs member-first".
Unhelpfully, I'd say it depends on the tradeoff's details. I certainly wouldn't advocate to go all-in on one to the exclusion of the other. But to give one example of the way I think, I'd currently prefer the marginal 1M be given to EA Funds' Animal Welfare Fund than used to establish a foundation to investigate and recommend improvements to EA's epistemics.
It seems to me that I think the EA community has a lot more "alignment/integrity" than you do. This could arise from empirical disagreements, different definitions of "alignment/integrity", and/or different expectations we place on the community.
For example, the evidence Elizabeth presented of a lack of alignment/integrity in EA is that some veganism advocates on Facebook incorrectly claimed that veganism doesn't have tradeoffs, and weren't corrected by other community members. While I'd prefer people say true things to false things, especially when they affect people's health, this just doesn't feel important enough to update upon. (I've also just personally never heard any vegan advocate say anything like this, so it feels like an isolated case.)
One thing that could change my mind is learning about many more cases to the point that it's clear that there are deep systemic issues with the community's epistemics. If there's a lot more evidence on this which I haven't seen, I'd love to hear about it!
I might say kidney donation is a moral imperative (or good) if we consider only the effects on your welfare and the effects on the welfare of the beneficiaries. But when you consider indirect effects, things are less clear. There are effects on other people, nonhuman animals (farmed and wild), your productivity and time (which affects your EA work or income and donations), your motivation and your values. For an EA, productivity and time, motivation and values seem most important.
EDIT: And the same goes for veganism.
What do you mean by moral imperative?
I notice that I "believe in" minimum moral standards (like a code of conduct or laws) but not what I call moral imperatives (in X situation, I have no choice if I want to remain in good moral standing).
I also don't believe in requiring organ donation as part of a minimum moral standard, which is probably related to my objection to the concept of "moral imperative".
Thank you for sharing this Timothy. I left a long comment on the LW version of the post. I'm happy to talk about this more with you or Elizabeth — if you're interested, you're welcome to reach out to me directly.