Pitfalls in Diversity Outreach

I think anybody wanting to raise a potentially divisive or negative discussion should think carefully about how likely a given discussion is to be self-defeating, or to yield negative results that outweigh the benefits.

The setting matters a lot to this: if you post on Facebook, the discussion gets published in lots of people's feeds in a manner that posters don't control (I find 'likes' on comments I make in the EA FB group from friends I know are not members of that group). Also, the FB policy of only allowing 'upvoting' means that the degree to which people's statements are well or badly received is not well reflected. Finally the listing of threads by order of most recent comment keeps pile-ons in the current discussion.

(This also creates an important asymmetry: those who don't care about the discussion being damaging are more likely to continue it, while those who disagree might avoid voicing their disagreement in the hopes that the thread will die away.)

This forum doesn't suffer any of those drawbacks, so I believe it is a better arena for raising these issues for discussion if you reasonably believe there is something important at stake.

For the record, this happens enough on, e.g., social media without headway being made in the debate I don't believe the most influential or well-connected effective altruists pay mind to these discussions, or expect them to make new insights. Since, e.g., CEA or EA Global conferences are unlikely to discuss effective altruism and diversity issues in a damaging way, I doubt these conversations will cause outsized damage to the community's potential at large. I do believe it would pay off, though, to be as courteous as possible in these cases, even if people disagree with each other. This is not likely an enforceable policy, though. For us, Rivka, I believe the best we can do is that when we witness or participate in these conversations, we translate opposing viewpoints into charitable interpretations of the other side on behalf of debaters, steelman positions when possible, and promote civility as much as possible. Seeing there are other stewards in effective altruism who are just as willing not to accommodate, but see eye to eye and empathize with other perspectives, as others are to bash the worldviews of would-be effective altruists, is the best we can do to show a divisive opinion only represents one individual, and doesn't imply what effective altruism as a whole thinks.

There have been debates on purely intellectual grounds about how if one doesn't favor a specific cause, acting on another because of a difference of value constitutes a monstrous failure to do good. Effective altruism has and is surviving and becoming more robust against such debates which would otherwise threaten to break effective altruism as a union and an alliance. Sociopolitical movements have thrived on pluralism and diversity. Just look at how successful, e.g., Obama's presidential (re-)election campaign went, relative to his Republican rivals, who didn't as much make explicit how much they would try to welcome others regardless of their creed, disposition, or ethnicity. Effective altruism can be that too.

On the object-level subject of religion and effective altruism, here are my takes:

• Religiosity is compatible with effective altruism. Effective altruism is about practical prescriptions or recommendations for ethical behavior, controlling for the vast majority of presently popular ethical worldviews. This includes religion. While effective altruism does borrow assessment tools from utilitarianism, and thus effective altruism has a large contigent of secularists, avowed atheists, other non-religious persons, and utilitarians, effective altruism borrows just as many tools from social science and normative rationality, which have little to do with philosophical precepts for ethics. What effective altruism borrows from pure philosophy is mostly just that: tools for thinking, not absolutes which would preclude religion.

• A religious person with "horribly divergent sexist Stone Age values" may likely have those values on the basis of religious arguments and evidence, which effective altruism doesn't consider. There are just as many, if not more, religious people on Earth who consider lessons taken science, philosophy, politics, and other ideologic frameworks as think lessons for how to behave in the world can only come from their religion. The former group will naturally accommodate effective altruism in their lives, not by pulling effective altruism in the direction of their religious doctrine, but by perceiving how the imperative of effective action is consistent with the moral intuitions they already hold, as the rest of us currently do. I expect belligerent religious persons will be turned of from effective altruism. Not because those of us already here would be pernicious, or unwelcoming, or uncharitable, but because we simply ask them questions to demonstrate the effectiveness of adopting their methods and values. I believe in being unable to answer such questions without relgious evidence, they would find effective altruism isn't compatible with their particular interpretation of their own religion. Thus, the sort of religious persons hardline atheists or secularists wouldn't want in effective altruism are also the sort of religious persons who will self-select themselves to not join. Thus, I think it's unnecessary and ill-advised for any effective altruist to bash religious peoples' general involvement with effective altruism.

• The Effective Altruism Survey results confirm effective altruists are by and large a liberal and pluralist bunch, who personally and politically, are likely to reject advances of allegedly "horribly divergent sexist Stone Age values", all else equal. This and the above consideration ensure it's unlikely the most belligerent religious persons would become even a significant minority of effective altruism, let alone a major force or any other belligerent class of persons.

• There are religious discussion groups for effective altruism, such as the Christian effective altruism group on Facebook. It's got over 100 people, if I recall correctly. I think engaging more religious effective altruists is best left to organizations who explicitly have a goal of growing the community, such as Giving What We Can, and the Centre for Effective Altruism, and the general community of already religious effective altruists. The rest of us simply don't have the nuanced take or comparative advantage of assessing the issue of religion and effective altruism, without also shooting ourselves in the foot.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs idea points to the same conclusion if you figure EA is a form of self-actualization. I suspect some EAs would be more effective in the long run if they focused on EA less and focused on meeting prerequisite needs in the hierarchy more.

No, sorry, they are not. And not all of these are pitfalls I've witnessed specifically in EA outreach - the atheist/skeptic community and campus conservative/libertarian groups are where I watched a lot of these mistakes get made.