The Nonlinear Library EA - On Owning Our EA Affiliation by Alix Pham
Aug 5, 2024
06:14
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: On Owning Our EA Affiliation, published by Alix Pham on August 5, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Someone suggested I name this post "What We Owe The Community": I think it's a great title, but I didn't dare use it...
Views and mistakes my own.
What I believe
I think owning our EA affiliation - how we are inspired by the movement and the community - is net positive for the world and our careers. If more people were more outspoken about their alignment with EA principles and proximity to the EA community, we would all be better off. While there may be legitimate reasons for some individuals to not publicly identify as part of the EA movement, this can create a "free-rider problem".
If too many people choose to passively benefit from EA without openly supporting it, the overall movement and community may suffer from it.
Why I think more people should own their EA affiliation publicly
I understand why one doesn't, but I'd probably not support it in most cases - I say most cases, because some cases are exceptional. I'm also not necessarily saying that one needs to shout it everywhere, but simply be
transparent about it.
The risks
These are the risks - actual or perceived - that I mostly hear about when people choose not to publicly own their EA identity:
People don't want to talk to you / take you seriously because you are affiliated with EA
You won't get some career opportunities because you are affiliated with EA
And I get it. It's scary to think two letters could shut some doors closed for some potentially incorrect reasons.
A prisoner's dilemma
But I think it hurts the movement. If people inspired or influenced by EA are not open about it, it's likely that their positive impact won't get credited to EA. And in principle, I wouldn't mind. But that means that the things that EA will get known for will mostly be negative events, because during scandals, everyone will look for people to blame and draw causal paths from their different affiliation to the bad things that happened.
It's much less attractive to dig out those causal paths when the overall story is positive. I'd believe this is a negative feedback loop that hurts the capacity of people inspired by the EA movement to have a positive impact on the world.
Tipping points
It seems to me that currently, not publicly affiliating with EA is the default, it's normal, and there's no harm in doing that. I'd like that norm to change. In Change: How to Make Big Things Happen, Damon Centola defines the concept of "tokens", e.g. for women:
[Rosabeth Moss Kanter] identified several telltale signs of organizations in which the number of women was below the hypothesized tipping point. Most notably, women in these organizations occupied a "token" role. They were conspicuous at meetings and in conferences, and as such were regarded by their male colleagues as representatives of their gender. As tokens, their behavior was taken to be emblematic of all women generally.
They became symbols of what women could do and how they were expected to act.
We need more people to own their affiliation, to represent the true diversity of the EA identity and avoid tokenization.
On transparency
On a personal level, I think transparency is rewarded, in due time. On a community level, one will get to be part of a diverse pool of EAs, which will contribute to showing the diversity of the community: its myriad of groups and individuals, that all have their own vision of what making the world a better place means. It would solve the token problem.
An OpenPhil-funded AI governance organization I am in contact with has chosen a long time ago to always be transparent about their founders' EA affiliation and its funding sources. Long-term, they benefited from proving high-integrity for not leaving out some details or reframing them.
After the OpenAI...
Someone suggested I name this post "What We Owe The Community": I think it's a great title, but I didn't dare use it...
Views and mistakes my own.
What I believe
I think owning our EA affiliation - how we are inspired by the movement and the community - is net positive for the world and our careers. If more people were more outspoken about their alignment with EA principles and proximity to the EA community, we would all be better off. While there may be legitimate reasons for some individuals to not publicly identify as part of the EA movement, this can create a "free-rider problem".
If too many people choose to passively benefit from EA without openly supporting it, the overall movement and community may suffer from it.
Why I think more people should own their EA affiliation publicly
I understand why one doesn't, but I'd probably not support it in most cases - I say most cases, because some cases are exceptional. I'm also not necessarily saying that one needs to shout it everywhere, but simply be
transparent about it.
The risks
These are the risks - actual or perceived - that I mostly hear about when people choose not to publicly own their EA identity:
People don't want to talk to you / take you seriously because you are affiliated with EA
You won't get some career opportunities because you are affiliated with EA
And I get it. It's scary to think two letters could shut some doors closed for some potentially incorrect reasons.
A prisoner's dilemma
But I think it hurts the movement. If people inspired or influenced by EA are not open about it, it's likely that their positive impact won't get credited to EA. And in principle, I wouldn't mind. But that means that the things that EA will get known for will mostly be negative events, because during scandals, everyone will look for people to blame and draw causal paths from their different affiliation to the bad things that happened.
It's much less attractive to dig out those causal paths when the overall story is positive. I'd believe this is a negative feedback loop that hurts the capacity of people inspired by the EA movement to have a positive impact on the world.
Tipping points
It seems to me that currently, not publicly affiliating with EA is the default, it's normal, and there's no harm in doing that. I'd like that norm to change. In Change: How to Make Big Things Happen, Damon Centola defines the concept of "tokens", e.g. for women:
[Rosabeth Moss Kanter] identified several telltale signs of organizations in which the number of women was below the hypothesized tipping point. Most notably, women in these organizations occupied a "token" role. They were conspicuous at meetings and in conferences, and as such were regarded by their male colleagues as representatives of their gender. As tokens, their behavior was taken to be emblematic of all women generally.
They became symbols of what women could do and how they were expected to act.
We need more people to own their affiliation, to represent the true diversity of the EA identity and avoid tokenization.
On transparency
On a personal level, I think transparency is rewarded, in due time. On a community level, one will get to be part of a diverse pool of EAs, which will contribute to showing the diversity of the community: its myriad of groups and individuals, that all have their own vision of what making the world a better place means. It would solve the token problem.
An OpenPhil-funded AI governance organization I am in contact with has chosen a long time ago to always be transparent about their founders' EA affiliation and its funding sources. Long-term, they benefited from proving high-integrity for not leaving out some details or reframing them.
After the OpenAI...