Notes on Effective Altruism (EA): michaelnotebook.com/eanotes/
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Really enjoyed this!
Noodling: say we take the stance that the totalizing version of EA is troubled, but on the margin, as a *lens* to add to one's repertoire, it leads to interesting ideas and inspiring behavior.
Is it possible to make strong institutions based on that stance?
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Like many strong institutions, EA's strength in recruiting young people, inspiring high-cost actions, fundraising, etc seems to depend on making crisp, strident, highly legible claims: shut up or multiply!
Is a "metarational" institution doomed to seem milquetoast by comparison?
This seems like a much weaker attractor: "the mutilitarians try to figure out what's best by weighing a well-balanced zoo of considerations, always sensitive to the individual and the context." Can you build a movement out of that?
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One way to look at this is: this sort of reduces to what traditional large philanthropies do! They have some semi-illegible set of values and processes; they make decisions on causes in a way that's sort of patterned and sort of idiosyncratic.
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