I have noticed the following distasteful motivations for my interest in EA surface within me from time to time. I'm disclosing them as they may also be reasons why people are suspicious of EA.
- I feel guilty about my privilege in the world and I can use EA as a tool to relieve my guilt (and maintain my privilege)
- I like to feel powerful and in control, and EA makes me feel I am having an impact on the world. More lives affected = more impact = I feel more powerful. I'm not so small and insignificant if my effective actions can have outsized impacts
- Affiliation with EA aligns me with high-status people and elite institutions, which makes me feel part of something special, important and exclusive (even if it's not meant to be)
- If I believe that other people's suffering can be reduced I believe that there is hope for my own potential suffering to be reduced too
- I'm fragile and EA makes me feel that other people are more fragile by drawing attention to all of the suffering in the world. I must be stronger than I feel if I'm in a position to be an EA, so it makes me feel good about myself
- EA helps satisfy my need to feel like what I do matters and that an almighty judge would pat me on the back and let me in to heaven for my good deeds and intentions (despite being an atheist I was socialised with Christian values)
- EA is partly an intellectual puzzle, and gives me opportunities to show off and feel like I'm right and other people are wrong
- It is a way to feel morally superior to other people, to craft a moral dominance hierarchy where I am higher than other people
- EA lets me signal my values to like-minded people, and feel part of an in-group
- I don't have to get my hands dirty helping people, yet I can still feel as or more legitimate than someone who is actually on the front line
It's all good -- what matters is whether we make a (the biggest possible) positive difference in the world, not how the motivational system decided to pick this as a goal.
I do think that it is important for the EA community/system/whatever it is to successfully point the stuff that is done for making friends and feeling high status towards stuff that actually makes that biggest possible difference.
Ummmm, so we say we want to do good, but we actually want to make friends and get laid, so we figure out ways to 'do good' that leads to lots of hanging out with interesting people,and chances to demonstrate how cool we are to them. Often these ways of 'doing good' don't actually benefit anyone who isn't part of the community.
This is at least the worry, which I think is a separate problem from Goodharting, ie when the cea provides money to fly someone from the US to go to an eagx conference in Europe, I don't think there is any metric that is trying to be ... (read more)