It's Time to Fix How Effective Altruism Is Perceived

By Evan_Gaensbauer @ 2022-07-26T02:17 (+10)

User Zvi recently posted a Criticism of EA Criticism Contest. The criticism of the criticism contest was well-received in general but the criticism wasn't the most interesting part. To do anything with a theory well, including criticize it, one must understand it. 

As a participant in the rationality and long-termism communities without being so much of a participant in EA, Zvi is well-placed to be a relative outsider who has the opportunity to really understand EA like those in EA do. He analyzes EA as a paradigm with 21 assumptions based, not necessarily on how EA really is but how it is perceived to be. Zvi has done so with about as much accuracy as anyone ever has. What's more, he has essentially characterized some of the most common perceptions of EA, both true and false, hold not only outside the movement but many in it as well. 

Only a few, if any, of the principles Zvi posited as among the core assumptions of EA are false. Yet there is a lack of precision about the ways in which the analysis is wrong, the ways it's right and the ways EA must change, to the extent any of the assumption are problems. The items on Zvi's list of EA's core assumptions are not the only purported norms of EA that this sequence will evaluate but they're a solid foundation to begin from. 

The trajectory of EA depends on its members having a shared and true understanding of their own movement. Both internally and externally, EA has been dogged and restrained by over a decade for a lack of that common understanding. To publish some correction about some misunderstanding of EA but to do nothing more is an idle tactic that has almost always failed. What distinguishes this sequence is that the goal is to present an accurate representation of EA with enough force to set the record straight permanently.