I want to share a deeply personal and painful journey I've had with the EA movement. It’s not an easy story to tell, but I believe there's value in presenting this side of the coin. I really want to protect my anonymity, so I'd ask you to please be respectful of my wish and to not reach out to me.
Not so long ago, I became wholeheartedly committed to the EA cause. I left a good job after receiving funding to pursue work that resonated with the movement's principles. My belief was so strong that I relocated to another city, eager to make a meaningful impact. A lot of promises were made. A lot of enthusiasm surrounded EA future.
Then, the unexpected: my main source of funding collapsed. With its downfall, my life spiraled. I felt deserted by the very community I'd given so much to. Nobody reached out; nobody seemed to care. It was a profound isolation I had never anticipated.
This experience plunged me into a severe major depressive episode, one so grave I've grappled with all sorts of dark thoughts. I've now sought treatment for this, but every day is a struggle. For years, I sidelined personal pursuits, including forming meaningful personal and romantic relationships outside the movement, dedicating myself to issues like the potential AI apocalypse and other matters that now seem distant and abstract, when compared to the day-to-day struggles of non-Anglo-American privileged and gifted youngsters. In prioritizing these concerns, I lost sight of the spontaneous, daily realities that give life its texture and meaning.
My experience has also left me deeply disillusioned with EA's principles and strategies. I've become nihilistic, doubting if the movement's approach to the world, as noble as it might seem, is genuinely grounded in reality. There's a detachment I've observed, where some of the most crucial elements of our shared human experience, like the importance of spontaneous everyday moments, seem to get lost.
In sharing this, my hope isn't to condemn or vilify the EA movement but to highlight the dangers of over-commitment and the risk of losing oneself in a cause. While it’s commendable to be passionate, it's essential to remember our humanity, the very thing we’re trying to help and protect.
Yeah… I've been part of another community where a few hundred people were scammed out of some $500+ and left stranded in Nevada. (Well, Las Vegas, but Nevada sounds more dramatic.) Hundreds of other people in the community spang into action within hours, donated and coordinated donation efforts, and helped the others at least get back home.
Only Nonlinear attempted something similar in the EA community. (But I condemn exploitative treatment of employees of course!) Open Phil picked up an AI safety prize contest, and I might miss a few cases. I was very disappointed by how little of this sort happened. Then again I could've tried to start such an effort myself. I don't have the network, so I'm pretty sure I would've failed. I was also in bed with Covid for the first month.
I suppose it really makes more sense to model EA not as a community but as a scientific discipline. I have a degree in CS, but I wasn't disappointed that the CS community didn't support their own after the FTX collapse because I never had the expectation that that is something that could happen. EA seems to me is better understood within that reference class. (Unfortunately – not because there's something wrong with scientific disciplines but because I would've loved to be part of a real community too.)
Oh true! I was only thinking of financial support for struggling projects and project developers, but those kinds of support are also super valuable!
Rethink Wellbeing is definitely on board with mental health for EAs being an important cause area.
I don't think personal identity makes too much sense, so preventing the extinction of EA-related values (or maybe even some wider set of prosocial, procivilizational values) could be an underexplored cause area. Some sort of EA crisis fund could be a way to achieve that, but also archival of important insights and such.