One thing I'd really like to see is more experimentation inside the community.

For example, there was some discussion about democratic control of funding decisions. This isn't something we need to centrally decide, you can just... start doing it. Start a fund that makes decisions democratically! I bet you'd get funding from the EAIF even.

Got a great idea for how to set up codes of conduct to make diverse people feel welcome? Try them in your local group and report back on how they work!

I wish people felt more empowered to do this kind of thing. That's how we got our existing organisations and institutions: someone just went ahead and started doing it. They weren't created when Dustin Moskovitz arose out of the sea on a shell. Maybe e.g. the EAIF could explicitly call out experimentation as something it wants to fund.

Of course, this argument only applies to stuff you can do differently. If you don't like the way other people behave and just don't want to be associated with them, that's harder to reconcile.

I feel like discussions about what we'd like social norms to be  and (relatedly) how to react to "scandals" have an inherent dynamic that increases polarization. This often goes like this:

There's a scandal or the possibility of a scandal and there's a tradeoff to make with respect to several things of importance. (E.g., creating a welcoming and safe environment vs. fear that this devolves into a culture where 99% of people will end up cancelled eventually with no chance of redemption for increasingly less severe transgressions.) Many people have some opinion on where they would set this tradeoff, but different people would set the weights in different places. (And some people may just say things that they expect will be received well, increasing the momentum that the pendulum is currently swinging.) Moreover, people operate in different parts of the EA community and have widely different day-to-day experiences filtered by their personality, standing in the movement, preferred ways of socializing, things like gender or ethnicity, and so on. So, even if two people in some sense agreed that the ideal norms for the movement would set the tradeoff in one specific way, they may disagree, based on the different glimpses of the movement they catch,  about where the pendulum is currently at.

Now, since people often care really strongly about what the norms should be, it can be quite distressing if someone wants the pendulum to be at a 60 degree angle and thinks it's currently at a 120 degree angle, and then a person who wants it to be at the 120 angle comes and talks as though it's already at the 60 degree angle. While these two people only differ by 60 degrees (one wants it at 60, the other at 120), it seems to them as though they differ by 120 degrees (they both think the pendulum is currently far away from them). This impression of vast differences will cause them to argue their case even more vehemently, which further amplifies the perceived difference until it feels like 180 degrees – total opposition.

I'm not sure what to do about this. One option could be to debate less where the pendulum is exactly in a movement-wide sense (since that's impossible to begin with, given that the answer will be different for different parts of EA – both geographically and in terms of more subtle differences to what people see and experience – and also because no one should be confident about it given the limited glimpses that they catch). Instead, we could say things like "I think the pendulum is too far to the left in such and such situations (e.g., Bay area community house x)." Or, alternatively, we could focus more on what the movement should ideally look like. (E.g., maybe write down the reaction you'd like to see instead of focusing on why you don't like other people's reactions.) People will still disagree on these things, but maybe the disagreements will feel more like the 60 degrees rather than the doubled 120 degrees?

To make clear that one is making statements about where one wants the pendulum to be instead of where it's currently at, I think it's  also useful to simply acknowledge all the values at stake in the tradeoff. This makes clear to others that you at least see where they're coming from. It also makes clear that you're not engaged in frantic pendulum-pushing where you think the pendulum has to move in a specific direction at all costs without worrying about how far it already went in some places.

Lastly, maybe it would be good if people thought about what sort of viewpoints they disagree with but still find "defensible." I think it makes total sense to regard some viewpoints as indefensible and try to combat them and so on, but if we resort to that sort of reaction too quickly, then it becomes really difficult to coordinate on anything. Therefore, I often find it refreshing when people disagree in a way that makes clear that other perspectives are still heard and respected. 

If a sub-faction of EA thinks that the movement as a whole is unwelcoming to them or no longer represents their beliefs/values, it could make sense for them to schism into a movement that does represent them rather than to just leave slowly over time and form nothing. 

Avoiding a schism requires active work by the community to ensure that everyone feels welcome, valued, and respected. 

Effective Altruism as a movement is relatively brand new - we can't afford major schisms or we may not continue as a relevant cultural force in 10-20 years.

If the next year looks anything like the last six months, I do not feel bullish about EA being a relevant (and positive) cultural force in 2033. I hate to say that, but I think it's important for us to be clear-eyed about the current status of the movement—and its likely trajectory—in figuring out how to move forward.

Sometimes when playing chess, it becomes clear you can't win, and your goal shifts from winning to avoiding a loss. So when you say "we can't afford major schisms," my reaction is that we may not be in a place where we can afford the best option (i.e., not schisming), or to put this in more EA terms, sometimes the most cost-effective interventions are unaffordable.

Since reading this comment, I've been thinking about what it would look like for EA to be dying. After all, billions of dollars are committed to EA, many people consider themselves to be EAs, and there are lots of organizations aligned with the movement. Given that, how could EA die? To me, EA dying might look like: (1) limited new funding being committed to EA (or funding that was committed disappearing), (2) the number of people who identify as EAs decreasing, and (3) EA organizations failing. I think we have some evidence for 3; from conversations with people, I am guessing we'll start to see (2); and I'm worried that EA is going to have an increasingly hard time finding new funding (plus the demise of FTX alone constitutes (1)). So I'm really worried that EA (as we know it) is dying.

To perhaps bend this metaphor to its breaking point, unless you think EA definitely isn't dying, it's still sensible to have an advanced directive and organ donation plan in place. In other words, I think it's worth considering what a productive schism would look like—and what the likely trajectory of EA sans-schism is—before we rule out the "divide and conquer" approach, even if schisming is an outcome we could ideally avoid.

One thing I remain steadfastly optimistic about is the creativity, brilliance, and motivation of EAs. People in this community really want to improve the world, and I believe we can, but we should take a really hard look at whether our current approach—one of being unified under the EA umbrella—will be the best one going forward.

I see your point and upvoted, but schism is a pretty loaded word. Not all breakups are schisms, and it's plausible that an amicable parting would allow people to work in a movement where they will be more effective. Sometimes the kids are happier in a fairly good divorce than in a turbulent marriage.

There are costs to a unified movement. Given the most likely fault lines for a split, what would people would need to compromise on, and do you think they are willing?

To me, some kind of federalism seems worth thinking about as a way to take stress off some of the fault lines. You can choose to live in Alabama or California while still being American. You can be Baptist or Catholic and still be Christian.

Ok, I mostly agree with you, but let's reframe as a devil's advocate: what if "EA" is a shaky concept in the first place (doesn't carve reality at joints)? Would you then agree that borders should be redrawn to have a more coherent mission, even if that ends up cutting out some bits of the "old EA"?

Something which I think is sometimes lost in community building discussions is that the stakes we're playing for are extremely high. My motivation to join EA was primarily because I saw major problems in the world, and people that were extremely dedicated to solving them. We are playing for the future, for the survival of the human race. 

Yeah, thanks for this post. I got a bit invested in some of the recent discussions here. Then I looked on my "EA to do list" (which is long, has very little to do with the recent situation, and certainly nothing to do with sh*tstorming on the forum) and I realized I lost focus. 

So I don't know if we are going to split or not, I'm leaving it to community builders, it's not my focus area. Yes or no, my "to do list" stays the same. 

Wil - this is perfectly reasonable, and generally true. 'Avoid schisms' is prudent for movement-building.

However, let me try to steel-man a possible counter-argument. In modern culture, we see many examples of woke activists taking over movements and organizations from the inside, by making ideologically motivated demands, playing various victim cards, demanding more 'diversity and inclusion', and trying to nudge the movement/organization in partisan political directions. Ever since the 'long march through institutions' (1967) and Rules for Radicals (1971), this has been refined into an extremely  common and effective tactic, and it has arguably had very negative effects in academia, media, corporations, and governments. 

Movements and organizations often find it difficult to protect themselves from woke takeover, because they don't understand what's happening, they don't have good counter-arguments, they're too guilt-prone and easily shamed, and they're too conflict-averse.  All too often, the movement/organization feels like they face a dilemma: either (1) give in to the woke activists, submit to all their demands, and take the movement in partisan politicized directions, or (2) accept a schism in which the woke get to take over the larger portion of the original movement, and a minority of anti-woke, ornery, heterodox contrarians go off and start their own movement (which is what we're currently seeing in American academia, media, corporations, and state governments).

I hope EAs see what's happening here, and understand the clear and present dangers of a woke takeover of the EA movement. We need to find a third option between accepting a woke takeover, and falling into a woke-versus-antiwoke schism. IMHO, that third option needs to be grounded in a radically honest discussion of what's really been happening in the EA movement over the last few months.   I don't know what the optimal solution would be. But it might involve making it clear to the minority of woke activists in EA that their ideological values are simply not consistent with EA ethical and epistemic values -- just as many other kinds of political, religious, and ideological values are not consistent with EA values.

having a major schism is one of the worst things we could do for our impact

I definitely agree. For EA to follow the lifecycle of 'New Atheism' would be one of the worse outcomes for the movement. Thinking about some reasons why there would be a schism:

1. Irreconcilable differences in belief between members of the EA Community and a zero-sum mentality about the resources that ought to go to different subgroups/causes in EA
2. A breakdown of trust / perceived legitimacy between EAs leaders / institutionals / power holders and a significant section of the EA Community - especially if the latter holds little formal power
3. Lack of belief by the community that EA can achieve its goals, or that its goals are wrong
4. The emergence of a new powerful social movement that appeals to similar demographics as EA does

Of these 4, I think that 2 is clearly the biggest threat. I think 1 can be overcome with a commitment to pluralism, though obviously some beliefs will fall outside of EA.

In order to avoid 2, I think EA needs to take these questions of community power seriously. The positive impact of EA is a function of its ideas and people yes, but it is also a function of its organisations and institutions - be they formal or informal. Personally, I see a lot of real value in Carla Cremer's suggestion that EA have an institutional turn - and not only think about improving the institutional decision-making in EA cause areas, but also within EA itself!

(As a historical aside, I think the Sunni-Shia split is actually an interesting counterexample to what you raise here. Despite the initial series of battles and conflicts around succession from the Prophet, this didn't stop the Umayyad Caliphate from becoming one of the world's largest empires afterwards, and Islam becoming the world's second largest religion!) 

We are playing for the future, for the survival of the human race. We can't afford to let relatively petty squabbles divide us too much!

I think this is the sort of reasoning that has a) possibly contributed to some of the recent damaging behaviour by EAs and b) almost certainly contributed to the failure to take that behaviour seriously enough.

Everything is "relatively petty" when compared to the survival of the human race, but I don't think that's the relevant comparison here.

Thanks for a post that I disagree with! I want to see more heretical factions form splinter groups, "EA is wrong about xyz and here's how we're going to fix it", etc. Barring a long discussion of the reference classes of social change and whether EA is closer to "feminism"/"environmentalism" or "the rockefeller foundation", I think it's deeply plausible that cohesion is actually a threat to our goals. 

• Institutions like to preserve themselves at the expense of their goals (I halfway tongue in cheek invoke "the soviet union" to reason about this, sometimes) 
• Groupthink. In AI alignment, researchers who don't deep down understand the threatmodels they're ostensibly trying to solve make bad research outputs, but social pressures might pressure them to try working in areas they don't really believe in. 
• Peter Wildeford crushed it 7 years ago with a post about "the meta trap", I think cohesion exacerbates the meta trap. 
• A wider attack surface for more vulture-related problems. 
• To me, a corollary of Holden's emphasis on asskicking is that we want to cultivate uncorrelated skillsets. We want to make bets on expertises that could come in handy in unpredictable ways. (CoI: I'm making one such bet myself as we speak!). I think cohesion could lead to underemphasizing this. 

Related: I think some EAs target massive conversion rates, which I think is wrong. 

Interesting discussion, but I suggest in part going back to basics. I feel it would be helpful to mentally divide the nature of what is being discussed and at times hastily tossed into this forum into three general  topics:

A. intellectual diversity and an interesting debate space , which helps us all look deeper into  the real issues EA was initiated to try to address.

B. Governance failures and personnel misconduct : financial and legal red cards and suspicions, personnel scandals, examples of bad and very bad behaviour within or on the fringes of a work environment , paid or unpaid..  

C. Your very personal lives,  and your emotional state today and particularly the minute before you hit the Submit button.

Subject A.  is tricky to simultaneously encourage and keep manageable. Approaches (to vigorous debate, intellectual diversity etc..) that have a good track record are group facilitation, membership guidelines, ethics committees etc.

Subject B is addressed routinely in the rest of the world, through fairly replicable governance measures: rules, sanctions and behavioural norms. Equally applicable to  a thinktank or a construction site.  This approach is needed even more, and legally required, when it comes to managing money.  So for example, having a clear and real separation of roles to avoid a financial conflict of interest in spending donor funds  is not a schism - it is an obligation.

Subject C, in my opinion, does not really belong on a publicly accessible forum, now probably being regularly mined for journalistic content and ammunition for spoilers. Maybe it is needed, but just take it offline into a private forum with the relevant people.

The author is right to point the trend and risk of schism.  We should all be allowed to contribute in territory A - the bigger and more diverse the group the better. Debates on fundamental direction and strategy etc..can improve the outcomes.  It would be a pity if a break up happens simply because of insufficient understanding of the rationale for separation of the three topics noted above. In summary, A is what we are all here for, an investment in B enables this to continue, and C is possibly not really forum business.....

I think this post falls short of arguing compellingly for the conclusion.

• It brings 1 positive example of a successful movement that didn't schism early one, and 2 examples of large movements that did schism and then had trouble.
  • I don't think it's illegitimate to bring suggestive examples vs a system review of movement trajectories, but I think it should be admitted that cherry-picking isn't hard for three examples.
• There's no effort expended to establish equivalence between EA and its goals and Christianity, Islam, or Atheism at the gears level of what they're trying to do. I could argue that they're pretty different.
• I seriously do not expect that an EA schism would result in bloodshed for centuries. Instead, it might save thousands of hours spent debating online.
• The argument that "EA is too important" proves too much. I could just as easily say that because the stakes are so high, we can't afford to have a movement containing people with harmful beliefs, and therefore it's crucial that we schism and focus fresh with people who have True Spirit of EA or whatever. 

This is not something I fault this post for not arguing about , but I'm personally inclined to think that "longtermist" EA should not have tried to become a mass movement (which is what the examples described are), and instead should have stayed relatively small and grown extremely slowly. I suspect many people are starting to wonder whether that's true, and if so, people who want a smaller, more focused, weirder, "extreme" group of people collaborating should withdraw from the people who aspire for a welcoming, broadly palatable mass-movement, and each group will get out each other's way. 

There are historical reasons for why things developed the way that did, but I think it is clear there are some distinct cultural/wordlview clusters in EA that have different models and values, and aren't united by enough to overcome that. I think that splitting might allow both groups to continue rather than what would likely happen is one group just dissolving, or both groups dissolving except for a core of people who want to argue indefinitely.

What would convince me against splitting is if no, really, everyone here is united very strongly by some underlying core values and world beliefs, and we can make enough progress on the differences en masse. I'm skeptical, but it's good to say what might convince you.

 

I consider myself an active EA, but you provide very little factual information in your introduction, to me almost zero anchoring as to what proto-schisms are you referring to..? Some candidates seems long termism vs. confidently/obviously good charity operations; s-risks × x-risks or hierarchical vs. decentalized ops. I have no clue if/which of those you find painstaking or risky for the continuation of the community.–?