Against segregating EAs

+1 for 'Dedicated EAs' and 'EAs'. I think 80k internally could describe all it wants to describe in simple English using those terms. It's naturally a continuum. If you really really need to describe people who are into EA but not that dedicated then 'less dedicated' is fine. "Committed" could work too. (I understand 'dedicated' to mean: how highly someone scores on the product of 'into effectiveness' and 'into altruism'.)

-1 for 'full-time' and 'part-time', I don't think it conveys what we mean (at least, doesn't to me; I'd be confused when I first heard it) and I'd personally find it annoying to be described as 'part-time'.

+10000 for ditching 'hardcore' and 'softcore'

First off, a comment I left on Facebook on this:

"I would also strongly advocate for describing the "softcore" EAs as simply 'EAs' or 'effective altuists' and then inventing a new term for the more 'hardcore' among us (how many of us are there anyway? Can't we all just agree to use a code word when talking to each other and otherwise not worry about this issue?). Fears of being judged or looked down on because they aren't 'hardcore' enough in some form or other are still the most common reasons I hear for people who basically agree with EA staying at a distance from the movement. I wish I could more easily to communicate to those people just how terrible a job most EAs do of living up to their ideals."

So yeah, I don't like the word 'softcore'. In fact, because I expect 80%+ of EAs and rising to be 'softcore' for the foreseeable future I don't see the point in having a word for them at all. They're the baseline and don't need a special descriptor.

It would be useful to have a descriptor for those who make EA large part of their 'life's work' in some way. I actually don't mind 'hardcore' here. Hardcore is already used in this context in many other movements (hardcore socialists, hardcore environmentalists, hardcore fan of X) and has weak negative connotations, which I consider desirable here because I would like there to be more distance between perception of the movement and perception of its most committed members (for why I care about that, see the comment).

However, there are other terms that could hit these points, e.g. 'dyed in the wool', 'extreme'. 'Full-time' was already suggested below and has the benefit of being most self-explanatory given what I want to describe.

Practical arguments:

• I once spent 30 minutes debating EA recruitment techniques with someone and we spent the entire time talking past each other. Two days later these terms came out and we realized he was talking softcore and I was talking hardcore. Having those terms available would have made it a much more productive discussion because the techniques and best targets are completely different.

• The advice is different. 80k hours' advice for EA global participants is almost opposite its public advice (e.g. flipping the emphasis on direct work vs. donating). I advise people on the street to give to AMF, my statistician father to donate to GiveWell, "softcore" EAs to OPP, and "hardcore" to donate to metacharities, unproven new ideas, or to nudge charities to be more effective.

• At a certain point of income and what someone's time produces for the world, donating to even the most effective charity is net negative to the world, because freeing up their time or brain has more impact. Having a socially acceptable way to mark that and reverse the pressure to donate seems really useful.

These aren't 100% correlated- by definition the people who shouldn't donate shouldn't donate to metacharities. And we need better words. But I think the concept is useful enough to keep.

In thinking about terminology, it might be useful to distinguish (i) magnitude of impact and (ii) value alignment. There are a lot of wealthy individuals who've had an enormous impact (and should be applauded for it), but who correctly are not described as "EA." And there are individuals who are extremely value aligned with the imaginary prototypical EA (or range of prototypical EAs) but whose impact might be quite small, through no fault of their own. Incidentally, I think those in the latter category are better community leaders than those in the former.

Edit: I'm not suggesting that either group should be termed anything; just that the current terminology seems to elide these groups.

So perhaps it makes sense to see involvement with effective altruism as a continuum rather than a two-category division.

Yes, very much agreed about the continuum, I made the same point in my earlier post on this topic.

Do other types of movements make this distinction? Political parties include a wide spectrum of people from those who simply vote, to those who campaign for particular causes or candidates, to those who hold office and spend their entire careers to their party.

There is a quite strong distinction drawn between simple voters, to donors, to activists who campaign and donate, to party politicians, etc. There are highly differentiated reward systems for each. I am concerned about the negative impacts of similar dynamics for the EA movement, which have already been proposed. I don't think this serves your argument well.

Even if we introduce these terms with the goal of reducing stigma, “softcore” is always going to sound a bit insulting.

There are many who actually embrace the term softcore, as it gives them the language to embrace an identity as an EA, which they were previously reluctant to do. I have both heard this in personal conversations with many EAs who responded to my article, but also some who have publicly posted about this, so I feel comfortable sharing this link to one response.

That being said, I'm not wedded to these terms, they're not my favorite either, but I couldn't think of anything better, and they were already coming into broad use because of Ozy's really good post about them. I'd love to hear some different ideas!

More broadly, we need to think about how to address this problem of EA being perceived as too lofty to embrace unless there is a more humble identity. As I talked about in my earlier post, articles about EAs consistently celebrate deeply committed EAs, such as Julia :-)

This is great for getting word about the movement out there, but what kind of an image does that create for people? It creates what I heard many describe as a "general unspoken feeling of 'you're not doing enough unless you meet our high expectations'" which is one reason many folks don't get involved in the movement. Again, I heard this in many personal exchanges, which inspired me to write about this topic, but also some people chose to share this publicly, such as Taryn in her Facebook comments here or Kaj here.

This is why I think there is a high need for a distinction between EA identities. This should not be a binary distinction, but one that describes two poles of EA involvement regarding contribution of time and resources. There should be freedom and flexibility to move between those poles, as Julia wisely notes, based on life circumstances, and without judging or shaming of those who choose to move. This will result in optimizing the numbers of value-aligned people contributing to the EA movement, as well as good PR for the movement, which I think is what we want to achieve.

The only way to get people to stop using these terms is if we have an alternative way of indicating how much someone is likely to sacrifice in the pursuit of helping others.

It seems like we really don't know whether a more hierarchical structure is good for EA or not. Some types of organizations/institutions have hierarchies (most religions, governments, companies), and some (like more social movements, communities, friend groups) don't, or have extremely informal and loose ones.

At best, the hierarchies provide valuable information about merit and dedication level, facilitate coordination, and incentivize high-quality work. At worst, they fuck everything up completely.

I don't think we have good information about what structure would be best for EA. The idea that other social movements don't seem to have hierarchies isn't particularly convincing to me, because I doubt they're using the optimal structure, and especially doubt that they're using the optimal structure for a movement like EA. But I don't know and it seems like no one else does. I don't like the terms "hardcore" and "softcore" but haven't seen a convincing argument about whether these sorts of distinctions in general increase or decrease movement impact.

Thanks for this post Julia.

I know lots of people have been seeking alternatives to the 'hardcore vs softcore' terms that seem to have sprung up, and I agree that alternative terms are preferable to those two for many reasons. However I think you've addressed a much more important issue, that any binary categorisation is artificial and likely to be counterproductive.

Hi Julia - I wholeheartedly agree with your semantic point: the words "hardcore" and "softcore" seem potentially harmful.

However, I wonder if the stronger thesis is true: "Having strictly defined categories of involvement doesn’t seem likely to help."

It seems plausible, but I can think of worlds in which categories of involvement actually do play an important role. (For instance, there is a reason galas will do things like sort donors into silver, gold, and platinum levels based on their level of contribution.) Since one could see strong arguments for both sides, it seems like the sort of hypothesis that benefit from a mechanism posit, as talked about in my last post: http://effective-altruism.com/ea/sn/a_call_for_mechanistic_thinking_in/

My guess is that, for example, the distinction between priests and parishioners does play a socially useful function. Since the labels are non-normative (unlike "hardcore" and "softcore"), they seem to establish healthy attractors at two different levels of dedication. On the macro-level, I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't a distinction which contributed to Christianity being able to maintain relative social equilibrium for many centuries. It seems like EA is going to need a similar degree of social equilibrium to achieve its most ambitious goals - e.g., a stable piece of culture that helps us continue to figure out what to do and then do it for many many years.

What do you think? =)

I'm interested to see people phrasing their arguments in terms of distinguishing how much sacrifice people make.

Personally, I'm sympathetic to distinguishing between how much impact people have, but thinking too hard about who sacrifices the most (except inasmuch as it's correlated with the former) seems like it's against the spirit of EA. It's about how much good you do, not how much you give up to do it!

If you're living on $10k and donating $90k, then donating your marginal $10k is WAY more of a sacrifice than if you're living on $90k and donating $10k. But it doesn't do any more good! I have a lot of respect for people who donate/sacrifice up to that margin, but it's the same kind of respect I have for, like, Wim Hof.*

(Of course, a lot of those people are also doing really important/awesome things, and I have EA-respect for them because of that. But the EA-respect isn't because they live on small amounts of money or spend every waking hour thinking about EA. It's what they actually get done!)

*the man who holds the world record for longest time spent immersed in an ice bath.

Do other types of movements make this distinction? Political parties... “Environmentalists”...religious traditions.

Yes, these terms (or their cognates) are routinely applied to all these examples, and more, because the concepts are indispensable. The clergy/leity distinction is orthogonal to this: we certainly distinguish between the most devout, diehard, extreme, hardcore Christians and the soft, liberal, nominal, softcore vaguely Christian.

Having strictly defined categories of involvement doesn’t seem likely to help.

I've not seen any strictly defined categories. That seems impracticable more than harmful. The terms are vague, continuous, context-sensitive and clearly non-binary.

A separate point:

One of the things I love about effective altruism is that it demonstrates how small changes...can lead to big impacts. I would hate to see these kinds of changes minimized as “soft.”

On the other hand, some construe Effective Altruism as necessarily being about doing the most good you can do, even emphasizing explicitly in more or less these exact words "it's not merely about giving somewhere that will do a lot of good, but where will do the most good." That implies a certain degree of maximizing and aspiration to do better.

I'm against segregating EAs, and if we ever have separate water fountains or bus seats for different classes of EA, I will protest. (EDIT: Looking back on this, I was using something of a strawman here. I apologise. My intent was to distinguish between segregation and categorisation.)

Categorisation, however, is something that we inevitably do and which is sometimes useful to do.

If categorisation makes people feel minimised or relegated to second class status, it's a problem. In line with some other comments here, I'm in favour of a term such as hardcore or dedicated where it applies, but no term for others, apart from "EA". When the strategists at CEA are hashing out their strategies, they can easily use a term such as "non-hardcore". "Non-hardcore" has the advantage that it's awkward and not likely to enter common usage.

"Non-dedicated" would bother me more than "non-hardcore" – suggesting that the person is not dedicated enough. For that reason, I prefer "hardcore" to "dedicated".

Retracted for gratuitous snarkiness.