There was a recent post (last few months) about the risks of too much focus on movement building. Something along the lines movement building create more EAs who go into movement building to create more EAs but no one ever does anything of impact. That’s probably a gross oversimplification. I thought it might have been by AppliedDivinityStudies, but I couldn’t find anything they had written recently that seemed right. It’s possible it was posted off-forum somewhere but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t at least a linkpost here - though my searches have all been in vain. It’s possible that it’s something older that I stumbled across, or perhaps it wasn’t the main topic of the post. Any ideas are much appreciated!
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this post isn't what you're after since it's much older than a few months, but it seems like it may be of interest. maybe searching for "meta trap" will help you find what you're looking for?
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I think that this is the post being referenced, forgive me if I am wrong.
For those interested, I have pasted the parts that seemed most relevant below. If I have selected the wrong part/post please let me know and I'll edit this comment to point to the right one!
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Access to Power and Money
In my model, one should be deeply skeptical whenever the answer to ‘what would do the most good?’ is ‘get people like me more money and/or access to power.’ One should be only somewhat less skeptical when the answer is ‘make there be more people like me’ or ‘build and fund a community of people like me.’ The more explicitly and centrally this is what one is doing, the more skeptical one should be. The default reasons people advocate for such things are obvious, regardless of how conscious or intentional such paths might or might not be.
The art must have an end other than itself. By its fruits ye shall know it, the shining city on a hill. Power corrupts, if you gaze into the abyss it gazes into you, we are who we pretend to be and our virtues are that which we practice. If we are functionally about seeking power and money then we’ll turn into the same thing as everyone else who is about seeking power and money. Be wary of anyone saying “only I can fix it.” And all that. The more EA funds are giving to other EA funds and those funds are about expanding EA, the more one should worry it’s a giant circle of nothing.
These could be split into a few categories.
Some organizations focus on access and influence. If you can get people with power to listen to you and adopt your ideas, that’s valuable. The best example of this was what is now known as the Center for Long Term Resilience, and at the time was called Alpenglow@CEA. They had a solid case that they were successfully getting meaningful access for people who would use that access in ways that matter.
This was kind of the best case scenario for this sort of thing, where there was relatively less danger of corruption or wasted money compared to the potential for tangible benefit. The bar for such efforts should be quite high. I still think we overfunded because there are others out there and I think SFF overpaid versus its ‘fair share’ here, but that’s not the biggest mistake. I wish we knew how to do such things ‘safely’ in terms of keeping ourselves intact in the process. Until then, I’ll continue to be deeply uncomfortable in such waters.
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Parts of it sound familiar, but not all. Perhaps someone quoted it. In any case. Very helpful, thanks!