Hey I'm wondering what you mean by "leave EA" exactly here? First its not clear to me what you mean practically by "leave" exactly? Second FWIW I call myself an Effective Altruist and I don't feel like I need to sign up to the extent/standards you do to carry that label.

I call myself an EA because I'm committed to "Finding the best way to help others" and "Turning good intentions into impact" (love these from the CEA website). In addition I've been impressed by the character and heart of EAs I have met who do Global Development things, and I appreciate the forum development discourse (although there is less material year on year).

I feel like people will have diverse reasons for identifying as an "EA" from your nice list, whether that's community, the mindset, the online discourse or a combination of them all. Some might have vaguer reasons which is all good too. 

Also I suspect I'm just in far less deep than you were here, so its harder for me to identify with your experience. I can also imagine the AI/GCR community and disagreements within it are more fraught than within GHD.

Holly -- 

I think the frustrating thing here, for you and me, is that, compared to its AI safety fiascos, EA did so much soul-searching after the Sam Bankman-Fried fiasco with the FTX fraud in 2022. We took the SBF/FTX debacle seriously as a failure of EA people, principles, judgment, mentorship, etc. We acknowledged that it hurt EA's public reputation, and we tried to identify ways to avoid making the same catastrophic mistakes again.

But as far as I've seen, EA has done very little soul-searching for its complicity in helping to launch OpenAI, and then in helping to launch Anthropic -- both of which have proven to be far, far less committed to serious AI safety ethics than they'd promised, and far less than we'd hoped. 

In my view, accelerating the development of AGI, by giving the EA seal of approval to first OpenAI and then Anthropic, has done far, far more damage to humanity's likelihood of survival than the FTX fiasco ever did. But of course so many EAs go on to get lucrative jobs at OpenAI and Anthropic, and 80,000 Hours is delighted to host such job ads, that EA as a career-advacement movement is locked into the belief that 'technical AI safety research' within 'frontier AI labs' is a far more valuable use of bright young people's talents than merely promoting grass-roots AI safety advocacy.

Let me know if that captures any of your frustration. It might help EAs understand why this double standard -- taking huge responsibility for SBF/FTX turning reckless and evil, but taking virtually no responsibility for OpenAI/Anthropic turning reckless and evil -- is so grating to you (and me). 

When a lot of people (like me) say “#notallEAs” they are probably not saying it anecdotally to refer to themselves, as you are implying. They’re just pointing to the overlap. So I think that part of the post is misguided.

Even if the last question is misguided, if I, a supporter of PAI, were to consider myself an EA, why would that be? 
There are several possible reasons: I changed my career plans because of it; I work and have been working thanks to EA funding (by working at PauseAI lmao); I’ve been in the EA hotel for a bunch of months and plan to go back to it or the PauseAI Hotel (which is right next to it); I’ve attended conferences, received grants, and read a couple of books; I check out the forum here and there, agree with the philosophy, agree with the median EA in models of the world and ethics more than with any other median X; I plan to donate to EA orgs soon and want to keep engaging with the community, etc.
The list seems pretty big in contrast to “but the core funders and leaders aren’t supporting the advocacy for an AI moratorium.”

—

I also don’t think any of your arguments are good enough to justify disengaging with the EA movement if a specific person agrees with the philosophy and has only a handful of disagreements or problems with the EA median member/ movement. This applies to Rationalist spaces too, to a certain extent.

It’s not like there are better alternatives to it for people who are trying to figure out important things about the world and how to improve it.
Even if you think a lot of them have a huge bias in some specific regard, you can still interact with them with that in mind, and you are still less likely to find other biases in them than in any other big community by a large margin. You’re still much more likely to find people who are very knowledgeable + kind + smart + dedicated to doing good in EA than in any other space that I know of. People who can change your mind, fund part of your work, or help you on your path to having a better impact in the world in other ways. 

It’s really good to be mindful of the ways some groups have some control over the community and their potential biases and personal interests. But if the response to that is disengaging with the community instead of defending your disagreements here and there, then you’re giving them more power.

So I think the problem (?) is that nobody donates to EA infrastructure for the purpose of cultivating a nice community. They donate to EA infrastructure almost exclusively for the purpose of cultivating impactful actions (that are the actions they want to see)

I mean, I sure would like it if people donated to cultivate a nice community. However, I don't think I'm owed that from an explicitly EA funding pot. Why should EA-aligned donors spend cash on me and not on e.g. malaria prevention? Heck, I'm an EA-aligned donor, and I spend cash on malaria prevention that could have been spent on me.

I feel this quite a lot:

• The need to please OpenPhil etc
• The sense of inness or outness based on cause area
• The lack of comparing notes openly
• That one can "just have friends"

And so I think Holly's advice is worth reading, because it's fine advice.

Personally I feel a bit differently. I have been hurt by EA, but I still think it's a community of people who care about doing good per $. I don't know how we get to a place that I think is more functional, but I still think it's worth trying for the amout of people and resources attached to this space. But yes, I am less emotionally envolved than once I was.

I fought for EA to mean something simpler— just someone who 1. Figured out the best way to improve the world and 2. Does it— but I lost.

For what it is worth, this is not how I feel in my local EA community. There are people leading effective giving organisations and others who just go on with their usual lives with trial pledges; and I feel we are fairly non judgemental.