As many of us have seen there has recently been a surge in discourse around people in the community with different views. Many of this underlying tension has only been brought about by large scandals that have broken in the last 6 months or so.
I've seen a few people using language which, to me, seems schismatic. Discussing how there are two distinct and incompatible groups within EA, being shocked/hurt/feeling rejected by the movement, etc. I'd like to urge us to try and find reconciliation if possible.
Influential Movements avoid Early Schisms
If you look through history at any major religious/political/social movements, most of them avoid having early schisms, or if they do, it creates significant issues and tension. It seems optimal to let movements develop loosely over time and become more diverse, before starting to draw hard lines between what "is" a part of the in group and what isn't.
For instance, early Christianity had some schisms, but nothing major until the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. This meant that Christianity could consolidate power/followers for centuries before actively breaking up into different groups.
Another parallel is the infamous Sunni-Shia split in Islam, which caused massive amounts of bloodshed and still continues to this day. This schism still echos today, for instance with the civil war in Syria.
For a more modern example, look at the New Atheism Movement which in many ways attracted similar people to EA. Relatively early on in the movement, in fact right as the movement gained popular awareness (similar to the moment right now in EA) many prominent folks in New Atheism advocated for New Atheism Plus. This was essentially an attempt to schism the movement along cultural / social justice lines, which quickly eroded the cohesion of the movement and ultimately contributed to its massive decline in relevance.
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.
Getting Movement Building Right Matters
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. We can't afford to let relatively petty squabbles divide us too much!
Especially with advances in AGI, I know many people in the movement are more worried than ever that we will experience significant shifts via technology over the coming decades. Some have pointed out the possibility of Value Lock-in, or that as we rapidly increase our power our values may become stagnant, especially if for instance an AGI is controlled by a group with strong, anti-pluralistic values.
Overall I hope to advocate for the idea of reconciliation within EA. We should work to disentangle our feelings from the future of the movement, and try to discuss how to have the most impact as we grow. My vote is that having a major schism is one of the worst things we could do for our impact - and is a common failure mode we should strive to avoid.
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.
Great comment. I agree that the best way forward is acknowledging that different parts of EA have different values, and making sure community organizers/high status people in the movement are aware and sensitive of that sort of thing.
For instance in my local group, I think if an EA from SF came and started propositioning people for dates/discussing polyamory, that would seriously break our norms. Perhaps having more intentional communication between group organizers could help?
For instance maybe a mandatory meeting once or twice a year for all paid organizers in a nation where people can get and idea of what is kosher where. What are your thoughts here?