Denis
Posts 4
Comments134
There may have been a time when EA's should have stayed out of politics. This isn't it.
There may been times when we should separate our EA discussions from political opinions - even if we feel strongly about political questions, we should keep those opinions away from our EA discussions.
Today, we do not have that luxury. We need to get our hands dirty.
Many of us care deeply about the world, yet for fear of being called "partisan" do not dare to point out the obvious FACT that there is one party which currently is standing for everything that EA's oppose.
I have written this before, and I got a lot of downvotes, but I will say it again.
By far the most effective, impactful think the EA movement could do would be to find a way to stop Donald Trump and his cronies destroying so much.
I fully accept that EA's should include and listen to both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. But Republicans, even more than Democrats, should be putting their necks on the line to stop Trump destroying their party in addition to destroying the US.
There is no coherent way that anyone could be an EA and a Trump supporter.
Stopping Trump destroying the US, destroying AI Governance, destroying global aid, destroying climate-action, ... is the single most important task in the world right now.
Those of us outside the US need our US colleagues, EA's and non-EA's, to do what you can. We need to push our own politicians not to be such pathetic walk-over appeasers too, and we're working on that.
So yes, we need to start engaging in politics, at least until this emergency is over.
As someone who considers myself both an EA and a socialist (by the normal definition), I am confused by this post :D.
Socialists believe in things like social safety nets, universal health care, equal opportunity education, respect for minorities - essentially, they believe that all humans deserve respect and the chance of a healthy, happy life, regardless of their circumstances of birth.
I think most EA's believe something similar.
Furthermore, if adopting what you describe as socialist thinking were the best (most effective) way to bring about change, EA's would support that.
But I don't think you've described socialist thinking, but rather Marxist philosophy.
And so, what you have described is not an attempt to turn EA's into socialists, but rather an attempt to turn them into Marxists.
The problem with Marxism, as perfectly captured by Bertrand Russell, is that it is a very negative, hate-filled philosophy. It is a bit like MAGA - it is defined by who it hates (the Bourgoisie), it is focused on cutting them down.
EA, on the other hand, is driven by love. It is about helping people, helping animals, helping avoid existential risks. EA's do not focus on "who are the people we want to hurt?" as Marxists do, but rather on who can we help, and how best can we help them.
In my experience, most socialists (as distinct from Marxists) have a similar philosophy.
I love this post. In the past week I have had a few eye-opening moments which strongly support this way of thinking:
1. I was speaking to a junior EU official, like under 30, less than 3 years in his role. He mentioned that people underestimate the influence people at his level can have in a big organisation. We all know that it is the politicians and very senior officials who decide the budget for important interventions, anything from Developmental Aid to AI Safety. What we often overlook is that it's often very junior people who execute these instructions, and this often means that they get to decide (or at least suggest) how the money the politicians have approved should be spent at a granular level. People who take the time to learn about this process and then look for the appropriate roles can find themselves deciding which charity should get millions of euros, or which initiative to support. People put massive effort into debating policy (how big is the budget) and in this arena, we tend to have very little influence against all the big players. But if we were to focus on how specifically a part of the budget is spent (e.g. ensuring it supports evidence-based, effective interventions), we could have much more impact. And yet, very few of us do this.
2. I've been following Rutger Bregman for a while now, and one of the things he keeps emphasising is the importance of actually doing something tangible. I also read the following provocative quote from Cate Hall (Useful Fictions) : "Ideas are cheap and easy to find; execution is everything. Effective altruists would be a lot more effective if they internalized this."
When we do tangible things, we tend to need tangible, boring skill-sets. The ability to parse long legal documents or study financial spread-sheets. A deep understanding of arcane areas of law and precedent - e.g. tax-law, liability law as it relates to tobacco companies, etc. for two of Rutger's initiatives. We all have great theories about how the world should be and those are important visions to keep in mind, but it isn't for the want of these visions that progress is so slow.
People who work in politics already understand this. The movements which succeed don't just have big visions, they also have thousands of volunteers who study the precise rules of vote-counting, who look at the logistics of getting their voters to the polling stations, who (if they're in the GOP anyway) look for rules that might enable them to prevent likely opponents from voting or even from running as candidates. The boring tedious stuff.
How much of the tragedy of the past 25 years would have been avoided if some Democrat 2000 had spent a few hours studying the legal details of hanging chads and found a way to just count those votes before the whole drama even started? If someone had done that, we would never have known their name or what they did, nobody would write poems about them, but they might have prevented multiple wars and millions of deaths.
Felicitations Jen et Romain!
This is fantastic progress for year 1, and augurs very well for the future. All of us starting new EGI's have a lot to learn from what you have done, and what worked well and didn't work. So really appreciate you writing this article and sharing. The Effective Giving community is just wonderful for sharing resources and wisdom, almost that alone makes it worth being part of.
At Effective Giving Ireland, we're about a year behind you, but looking to deliver something good for Giving Season 2025. We'll definitely take your experience into account, and probably pester you guys with questions ...
Good luck, and continue the fantastic progress!
I love this post. I don't necessarily agree with everything, but I love that you are willing to say something provocative, to stick your neck on the line and say what probably a lot of people are thinking.
I am in exaclty this situation. I am not a vegan, and I donate to a great charity, FarmKind. I believe that my net impact on animal welfare is positive. But I also agree that this is largely part of my privilege of being able to donate without much hardship.
This post, more than anything else I've read or seen on this topic, made me pause and question my own ethics. Any post that has that effect is a good post, we can all do with having our ethical assumptions challenged every now and then.
There are complex arguments about the value and necessity of being vegan, I am not expert enough to add new value to that debate.
My one observation, from someone living in a world where if you mention EA, people respond "what's that?" - if they've heard of it, it's because of SBF. And in this world, especially in Europe, veganism is sometimes seen (absolutely without justification!) as something that people do to impress others, rather than necessarily as virtuous. (look at all the jokes about vegans). So I'm not sure how much the showing virtue argument works outside areas where veganism is already popular. But it surely doesn't hurt - more vegans will lead to even more vegans ...
So thanks for a great post !!
PS I really hope the people to gave it an X also replied or commented, I think when someone presents a coherent argument, and you disagree with it enough to give it an X, you should explain what exactly you disagree with.
An interesting way to think about this is that when you donate money to a good cause, nobody can ever take that away from you. Not the tax-man, not Trump, not a recession or a stock-market collapse. You will forever have that "credit" in your account.
The idea of this post is so obviously correct that anything else just doesn't make sense. If it's a competition for who has earned / inherited the most money - which sadly for some people it is - then why shouldn't money voluntarily given away be part of the total?
Right now, rich-lists are a contest to find the greediest humans, people who amass but do not share huge fortunes. Maybe calling the the "Forbes Greed list" would help change this??
People who have devoted more time and energy to EA and have a deeper grasp of it should have a bigger role in defining what is or isn't worth other people reading. It's not just judgment (is it right or wrong), it's also originality - is this a new opinion for EA's to think about? is this a topic which EA's haven't really engaged? It's hard for a new person to make these calls.
Karma is a reasonably good indicator of meaningful engagement with the EA forum - as good as any other that can be quickly and fairly calculated.
I would add one caveat: to use a more powerful supervote, a person should be required to add a comment. From personal experience, I am very happy to have dissenting opinions and arguments against my posts, but it's frustrating to get downvotes without any explanation.
Yes, in many circles the EA brand is toxic.
But sometimes we stick our heads in the sand as if that were something we couldn't control.
Or maybe some EA's kind of like this feeling of being outsiders and being the minority. I don't know.
Every other group I've ever worked with accepts that PR is part of the world. Companies know that they will get good press and bad press, and that it won't always reflect reality, but they hire people to make it as positive as possible. Politicians are the same. They run focus groups and figure out what words to use to share their message with the public, to maximise support.
Too often we act like we're above all that. We're right and that's enough. If people can't accept that, that's their loss.
But it's not their loss. It's our loss. it's the world's loss.
Public perception of EA's outside the EA community is often "a bunch of 'rationalist' tech guys who like to argue about abstract concepts and believe that AI should have rights," or something along those lines. This is totally at odds with vast majority of EA's who are among the most generous, caring people in the world, who want to help people and animals who are suffering.
A world run by EA's, or on EA principles, would be so wonderful. This should be our vision if we're truly sincere. But if we want to make this happen, we need to be willing to get our hands dirty, do the PR, challenge the newspaper articles that mis-characterize us, learn to communicate in 15 second tweets as well as 22222222243 word essays so that more people can be exposed to EA ideas rather than stereotypes.
If you ask anyone outside the EA community to name an EA, they probably only have heard of SBF. If you push them, they might wonder if Elon Musk is also an EA. It's no wonder they don't trust EA's. But it's up to us to proactively change that perception.