This is a special post for quick takes by Linda Linsefors. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
Comment Permalink
EA clearly don't know how to handle power dynamics, and until we figure this out, we should avoid (as much as possible) to create concentration of power. I say this in full knowledge that avoiding concentration of power is not without cost.
Some examples of broken power dynamics:
- Owen Cotton-Barratt's severe mistakes seems to be largely down steam from not understanding power dynamics.
- I don't know what's the reason behind the CEA community health team's lack of understanding for the need to be fully separate from funding conidiations, but my best guess is that a lack of understanding of power dynamics is involved.
- People not being able to trust that it's ok to post criticism of EA under their own names, seems like a break down of power relations. For the record, I think the worry is well founded. "It's not good for your career to criticise powerful people" is the default outcome if you don't put in effort to mitigate this, and I don't see such effort.
- I have had several interactions with and observations of people how are better connected with in EA than me, which have left me baffled by their lack of understanding they have of the experience of being a less connected EA. This keeps happening, but I'm no longer surprised when it does.
- A handfull of lower level community organisers who have told me in privet that their impression of CEA is that they are incompetent and/or unprofessional. But also that they have not spoken up about this because CEA is their sole source of funding.
What to do:
- Don't default to trusting CEA, 80k and other central orgs. Most of their power comes from your trust. Treat the word of high status people same as the word of any other EA.
- Don't donate to EA funds. We can't democratise billionaire money, for lots of reasons. But we can avoid centralising the money that starts out as being dis-centralised. Instead decide for your self where to donate, or donate to your local or national EA group, or join the donation lottery, or delegate your decision to someone you trust personally (not based on community stanning).
I'm not accusing specific people of specific things. My current best model is that everything we see is what naturally happens when power is centralised. This is not about specific people, this is systemic. For example it's not the fault of the central orgs that too many people defer to them too much, that's on the rest of us.
I'm also not saying that no specific person is blameworthy. I'm just not getting into that discussion at all.
For me personally, the core of Effective Altruism is "it's not about you". Everything else follows from there.
This is very much in contrast to other cultures of altruism I have encountered, which focus very much on the mental state of the giver. When you stop questioning if you are pure and have the right motives, ect, and just focus on results, that's when you get EA.
But also, don't be 100% altruistic. Some of your efforts should be about you. If you only take care of your self for instrumental reasons, you will systematically under invest in your self. So be just genuinely egoistic with some parts of your effort, where "be egoistic" just means "do what ever you want".
[Epistemic status: Mostly a ranting, but I'm also open to the possibility that I'm missing something important about how other people communicate.]
When people write "we should..." about EA. What does this mean exactly?
When ever I read this phrase I'm getting the sense that this person is confused about how EA works. But maybe I'm the one who is missing something.
There are groups that is all about coordinated actions, and for them it does make sense to make suggestions of the form "we should...". But EA is not like that. Coordinated action is not our thing, and I don't think it should be. We are not that type of movement.
I love that EA is to a large extent a do-occrasy. The way to get something done in a do-occrasy is not to suggest that "we should" but to say, "I'm starting this project. Anyone want's to join?".
The main exception where we're not do-occrasy is the funding, and everything down stream from that, which is admittedly a large part of EA. If you want funding for your project you do need to convince others to donate to you. But I don't think the path to getting funding is to write "we should..." on EA forum? Maybe I'm wrong in which case please tell me!
To avoid potential misunderstanding: I'm not any normative claims about funding in this short form!
I'm more understanding of people who write "someone should...". I've done that. It usually doesn't work, but at least I can see where that would come from.
EA Forum feature request
(I'm not sure where to post this, so I'm writing it here)
1) Being able to filter for multiple tags simultaneously. Mostly I want to be able to filter for "Career choice" + any other tag of my choice. E.g. AI or Academia to get career advice specifically for those career paths. But there are probably other useful combos too.
(Just for future reference, I think “EA Forum feature suggestion thread” is the designated place to post feature requests.)
Thanks for the feedback Linda! I believe you can accomplish this using the topic filters on our current search page, but please let me know if you run into any issues.
I just heard that CEA has a policy that they don't want events (in this case an EAGx) published to early on their webpage. If true this is absolutely idiotic. As an organiser I'd like to avoid collisions, and I naively assumed I'd be able to find the dates for upcoming EAGs and EAGxs on the EAG website, but apparently not.
I haven't verified with CEA that this in fact their policy, and that isn't just a misunderstanding. But it is the case that EAGxNordics 2025 is currently announced by EA Sweden (since at least Dec 6), but not yet CEA.
I think EA should have leadership that at minimum don't stop the the flow of information. But I don't know what to do about this. I don't expect CEA to listen. If they where the typ of org that did that, things would look different.
Hi Linda! CEA's EAGx Coordinator here. This is definitely not a policy, and I also want everyone to know about events at the earliest date so they can make arrangements to attend. It's one of my biggest goals to increase the lead-time for events, for both organizers and attendees, and I'm hoping that we'll be able to publicly announce more 2025 events soon.
Typically, we add an event to the webpage as soon as the event is "officially confirmed," which is usually as soon as the contract with the venue is signed. This contract procedure sometimes drags on and we announce before everything is complete, but this risks the possibility that the event date is moved or cancelled (which has happened before, and is obviously disruptive for anyone who has made plans).
For EAGxNordics 2025, I approved the save-the-date announcement in early December before the venue contract was signed. Since then, we've had delays in adding it to the webpage and applications opening which hopefully will be resolved shortly (in the next day or two). Sorry for any disruptions this may have caused for anyone's planning, and I genuinely appreciate this flag (it would have been very valuable information to share if true!) and the acknowledgment that it could be a misunderstanding.
Hi Linda! CEA's EAGx Coordinator here. This is definitely not a policy, and I also want everyone to know about events at the earliest date so they can make arrangements to attend. It's one of my biggest goals to increase the lead-time for events, for both organizers and attendees, and I'm hoping that we'll be able to publicly announce more 2025 events soon.
Typically, we add an event to the webpage as soon as the event is "officially confirmed," which is usually as soon as the contract with the venue is signed. This contract procedure sometimes drags on and we announce before everything is complete, but this risks the possibility that the event date is moved or cancelled (which has happened before, and is obviously disruptive for anyone who has made plans).
For EAGxNordics 2025, I approved the save-the-date announcement in early December before the venue contract was signed. Since then, we've had delays in adding it to the webpage and applications opening which hopefully will be resolved shortly (in the next day or two). Sorry for any disruptions this may have caused for anyone's planning, and I genuinely appreciate this flag (it would have been very valuable information to share if true!) and the acknowledgment that it could be a misunderstanding.