Hmm ok yea I see your point more now, I think maybe what reconciles our viewpoints is that "clarity" in my mind also means intuitive, at least when it comes to PR. Counterintuitive ideas take more time to understand, and people have a limited attention span for paying attention to ideas, so they're more likely to dismiss ideas that take longer to understand.Â
Yea I do agree that the "people hate philosophers" framing doesn't explain all of the unique dislike EA gets, I think the correlation between influence and EA hate mostly comes from the encroachment on personal freedoms. For example, there seems to be a sentimental current right now of "I never consented to big tech changing my life in this way", because it's kinda impossible to opt out of big tech if you want to live a normal life. But back when Big Tech adoption was seem as more voluntary (you didn't need a phone or internet or social media presence to survive in the world), I feel like their reputation also looked better.Â
In my personal model of the world, a lot of the current dislike for EA is also because of the blowback of Big Tech, making everyone more cynical of "people changing the world". But my impression is that even without this blowback, people would still dislike EA the same way people dislike philosophers (my friends who didn't know about EA's associations with SV still felt icky when hearing about the basic idea).
I'm not really sure why you think the refusal to decouple can't co-exist with people wanting clarity?
And I'm also not sure why you think philosophers hating EA means people don't hate EA the same way they hate philosophers? I think a lot of philosophers hate each other as well, and those same people get hated on by outsiders for philosophy-vibes reasons. Unfortunately hatred is not a zero-sum game.
I think so much of the PR problem EA has just comes down to people hating EA for the same reason people hate philosophers:
people want clarity in a chaotic world, but philosophers often poses more questions than answers (like how EA itself is an open question)
populism is really popular right now, but philosophers are technocrats in ivory towers (like the memetic associations EA has with ivy league educations, silicon valley, etc.)
there's a lot more noise about what EA thinks rather than what EA does, aligning with the stereotype that philosophers don't do anything to apply their ideas in the real world.
(edit) philosophers are seen as making basic ideas more profound than it actually is, which is my impression of what people also think when they hear the basic idea of EA (e.g. yea duh we should help people more efficiently? obviously we should use reason?)
I think the solution here is to just keep hammering in what EA has done, rather than engaging on what EA thinks. Most people's only knowledge of what EA has done is SBF, because that's all that gets talked about. Anecdotally, my friends' impressions of EA were most improved by learning that:
EA did a lot of pandemic risk preparation before COVID, and is part of the reason why the COVID vaccine came out as quickly as it did (Also really good if people start asking about why EA is investing in AI safety)
EA has gotten people to donate >2 billion to save >300k lives through GiveWell alone
(for leftist friends) EA supports a lot of direct money transfers to people in the global south, allowing for local entrepreneurship
(depends on the audience) EA is one of the reasons why so many countries are now emphasizing cage-free eggs, so chickens don't die in their own feces
It seems like EAs care a lot about defining EA, but it's not clear to me what the purpose of defining EA is. A lot of social movements are ill-defined, either because the people inside the movement disagree (i.e. socialism), or because the people outside the movement disagree (i.e. zionism, or feminism).Â
If the definition is meant for PR reasons, then it strikes me as weird why most definitions are either long or not immediately understandable. PR seems to heavily favor processing fluency (how easy it is to understand something; happy to cite my sources if needed), and most definitions of EA seem like they're more catered towards philosophical ponderings than spreadable messages that someone can understand in <10 seconds.
If the definition is meant for marketing reasons (marketing is attracting people into EA, PR is managing what people say about EA on the outside), then the current array of definitions seems to further encourage only philosophically-inclined people to get into the movement (which isn't a problem, tbh, if you don't weigh ideological diversity highly).
If the definition is meant for gaining clarity as a community on what the community is about, then it seems strange that people are presumably unsatisfied enough with previous definitions that new posts trying to define EA and its direction keeps on popping up. Some of it is justified by evolutions in the movement, for sure, but I think part of it is also just that people keep trying to explain EA to their non-EA friends, and most of the current defintions don't land very well (anecdotally, n > 30).
Thank you so much for writing this Julian! I'm Cat, the operations lead at Rethink Wellbeing. Mental health does seem like a huge issue in the AI safety field right now, and we've been trying to tailor our CBT Lab program to fit with the most common things EAs/AIS report struggling with (burnout, work related stress, etc.). Our previous cohorts with a general EA/ambitious altruist audience have suggested that mental health support (via our program) can potentially increase productivity by 4-8 hours per week, which does seem to corroborate the claim that the AIS ecosystem could benefit from mental health support.
We're planning to make the broader AI Safety space one of our highest-priority targets for our next cohort (tentatively scheduled starting early/mid November) and we have been floating the possibility of officially partnering with organizations to provide mental health support as a employee benefit (and some plans for evidence-based team-building programs as well). Thankfully, since we're currently funded by the EAIF, we're able to offer this support for free. However, we're currently being bottlenecked by our reach. We primarily promote our programs on the forums, various Slack channels, and through organizations where we have warm connections. But it can be hard to reach organizations where we don't have warm connections, and from informal chats I've had with other EAs, it seems like there's a lot of dedicated EAs/AIS people who could benefit from the program but simply don't hear about it since they don't frequent the forums/slack channels! If anyone has ideas for how to reach AI Safety people/organizations better, we would love to hear them. Similarly, if you run an AIS/EA organization and would like free peer-support CBT programs as an employee benefit, please reach out to me or [email protected]!
Rethink Wellbeing has opened up applications for our Summer 2026 CBT Lab cohort!
If you've been navigating burnout, anxiety about doing "enough," or just a hard stretch, this might be a fit: • 8 weekly online sessions, small peer groups of 5–7 people • Free if you're employed at a high-impact org; subsidized for participants based in LMICs • ~24% average reduction in depression symptoms across 160+ participants since 2023
You mention not tracking people longitudinally as a limitation, but I imagine this is mostly a limitation for workshops and crisis callers, since I assume a suicide at an outreached school would be news and you would be made aware. Maybe you can compare the regional average to the school's suicide rates as a weak check against reality?Â
I think something that may help donors feel like they're actually doing something and could be cool is a GiveWell-ran but kickstarter aesthetic website for charities. Charities set their moonshots, breaks it down to manageable bitesize pieces and establishes goals based on them. Different promises are made to donors for different goals of donation reached. Donors also have different tiers based on how much they donate.
E.g. We want to distribute malaria vaccines to everyone in Nigeria. For $x donated, we'll distribute vaccines to all children under 5 in the state of Ondo in Nigeria, and send stickers out to all donors. If we reach $x + y, we will expand to the neighboring state of Eikiti as well and all silver+ tier donors will get a handwritten card. Donating $(x * 0.001) grants you bronze tier, $(x * 0.005) grants you silver, etc.
With the right UI design, I think donors could feel much more like they're really contributing because of the relative tiers, and their ability to see the project get closer to pre-established goals specifically due to their donation. There's also a much cleaner feedback cycle when donating $z -> you get letters/videos/whatever else emotionally appeals to donors. And I imagine you could also add a lot of community incentives and gamification elements to something like this.
Hmm ok yea I see your point more now, I think maybe what reconciles our viewpoints is that "clarity" in my mind also means intuitive, at least when it comes to PR. Counterintuitive ideas take more time to understand, and people have a limited attention span for paying attention to ideas, so they're more likely to dismiss ideas that take longer to understand.Â
Yea I do agree that the "people hate philosophers" framing doesn't explain all of the unique dislike EA gets, I think the correlation between influence and EA hate mostly comes from the encroachment on personal freedoms. For example, there seems to be a sentimental current right now of "I never consented to big tech changing my life in this way", because it's kinda impossible to opt out of big tech if you want to live a normal life. But back when Big Tech adoption was seem as more voluntary (you didn't need a phone or internet or social media presence to survive in the world), I feel like their reputation also looked better.Â
In my personal model of the world, a lot of the current dislike for EA is also because of the blowback of Big Tech, making everyone more cynical of "people changing the world". But my impression is that even without this blowback, people would still dislike EA the same way people dislike philosophers (my friends who didn't know about EA's associations with SV still felt icky when hearing about the basic idea).
I'm not really sure why you think the refusal to decouple can't co-exist with people wanting clarity?
And I'm also not sure why you think philosophers hating EA means people don't hate EA the same way they hate philosophers? I think a lot of philosophers hate each other as well, and those same people get hated on by outsiders for philosophy-vibes reasons. Unfortunately hatred is not a zero-sum game.
I think so much of the PR problem EA has just comes down to people hating EA for the same reason people hate philosophers:
I think the solution here is to just keep hammering in what EA has done, rather than engaging on what EA thinks. Most people's only knowledge of what EA has done is SBF, because that's all that gets talked about. Anecdotally, my friends' impressions of EA were most improved by learning that:
It seems like EAs care a lot about defining EA, but it's not clear to me what the purpose of defining EA is. A lot of social movements are ill-defined, either because the people inside the movement disagree (i.e. socialism), or because the people outside the movement disagree (i.e. zionism, or feminism).Â
If the definition is meant for PR reasons, then it strikes me as weird why most definitions are either long or not immediately understandable. PR seems to heavily favor processing fluency (how easy it is to understand something; happy to cite my sources if needed), and most definitions of EA seem like they're more catered towards philosophical ponderings than spreadable messages that someone can understand in <10 seconds.
If the definition is meant for marketing reasons (marketing is attracting people into EA, PR is managing what people say about EA on the outside), then the current array of definitions seems to further encourage only philosophically-inclined people to get into the movement (which isn't a problem, tbh, if you don't weigh ideological diversity highly).
If the definition is meant for gaining clarity as a community on what the community is about, then it seems strange that people are presumably unsatisfied enough with previous definitions that new posts trying to define EA and its direction keeps on popping up. Some of it is justified by evolutions in the movement, for sure, but I think part of it is also just that people keep trying to explain EA to their non-EA friends, and most of the current defintions don't land very well (anecdotally, n > 30).
Thank you so much for writing this Julian! I'm Cat, the operations lead at Rethink Wellbeing. Mental health does seem like a huge issue in the AI safety field right now, and we've been trying to tailor our CBT Lab program to fit with the most common things EAs/AIS report struggling with (burnout, work related stress, etc.). Our previous cohorts with a general EA/ambitious altruist audience have suggested that mental health support (via our program) can potentially increase productivity by 4-8 hours per week, which does seem to corroborate the claim that the AIS ecosystem could benefit from mental health support.
We're planning to make the broader AI Safety space one of our highest-priority targets for our next cohort (tentatively scheduled starting early/mid November) and we have been floating the possibility of officially partnering with organizations to provide mental health support as a employee benefit (and some plans for evidence-based team-building programs as well). Thankfully, since we're currently funded by the EAIF, we're able to offer this support for free. However, we're currently being bottlenecked by our reach. We primarily promote our programs on the forums, various Slack channels, and through organizations where we have warm connections. But it can be hard to reach organizations where we don't have warm connections, and from informal chats I've had with other EAs, it seems like there's a lot of dedicated EAs/AIS people who could benefit from the program but simply don't hear about it since they don't frequent the forums/slack channels! If anyone has ideas for how to reach AI Safety people/organizations better, we would love to hear them. Similarly, if you run an AIS/EA organization and would like free peer-support CBT programs as an employee benefit, please reach out to me or [email protected]!
Rethink Wellbeing has opened up applications for our Summer 2026 CBT Lab cohort!
Apply: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSemKtBLXzb6yEN_Gn9O7FvFvQMAhKYMl-g23sb0BoLMBa-MEg/viewform
If you've been navigating burnout, anxiety about doing "enough," or just a hard stretch, this might be a fit:
• 8 weekly online sessions, small peer groups of 5–7 people
• Free if you're employed at a high-impact org; subsidized for participants based in LMICs
• ~24% average reduction in depression symptoms across 160+ participants since 2023
Happy to answer questions — DM me or email [email protected].
You mention not tracking people longitudinally as a limitation, but I imagine this is mostly a limitation for workshops and crisis callers, since I assume a suicide at an outreached school would be news and you would be made aware. Maybe you can compare the regional average to the school's suicide rates as a weak check against reality?Â
GivingDirectly & StrongMinds <3
I think something that may help donors feel like they're actually doing something and could be cool is a GiveWell-ran but kickstarter aesthetic website for charities. Charities set their moonshots, breaks it down to manageable bitesize pieces and establishes goals based on them. Different promises are made to donors for different goals of donation reached. Donors also have different tiers based on how much they donate.
E.g. We want to distribute malaria vaccines to everyone in Nigeria. For $x donated, we'll distribute vaccines to all children under 5 in the state of Ondo in Nigeria, and send stickers out to all donors. If we reach $x + y, we will expand to the neighboring state of Eikiti as well and all silver+ tier donors will get a handwritten card. Donating $(x * 0.001) grants you bronze tier, $(x * 0.005) grants you silver, etc.
With the right UI design, I think donors could feel much more like they're really contributing because of the relative tiers, and their ability to see the project get closer to pre-established goals specifically due to their donation. There's also a much cleaner feedback cycle when donating $z -> you get letters/videos/whatever else emotionally appeals to donors. And I imagine you could also add a lot of community incentives and gamification elements to something like this.