Comments
Just a point on inclusiveness: throughout this post, you implicitly assume that the average effective altruist is a heterosexual man-- the sort of person who would find a girlfriend at EA Global, has Will MacAskill as his competition, and who might tell cute girls about the drowning child thought experiment. That kind of thing tends to be really alienating to women and LGBT+ people reading! It's the same way you would feel kind of alienated if you read a post assuming that you are a woman and you'd be getting a boyfriend at EA Global. One easy way you can make posts like this more inclusive is by gender-swapping things: for example, you might keep your drowning child example, but say "social skills to find a boyfriend at EA Global." (Will MacAskill should probably be kept as it is, because for better or for worse calling prominent men dreamy is much less socially laden than calling prominent women dreamy.)
Believe it or not, you're not the first person to think about this. There's an EA dating site made years ago called reciprocity.io, although I'm not sure it gets much use anymore.
Some arguments I've seen in favor of this:
Some arguments against:
Personally, I feel a bit icky about actively encouraging inter-EA dating, as it feels a bit culty to me, and I think it further insulates us from the rest of the world (which I think is bad, but I think others might disagree with me on). But, at the same time, a lot of different subcultures have their own dating apps and mingling events, and I don't think those are culty, so maybe my concerns aren't well-founded.
Another against:
I also find it very helpful to be very close to people who share a lot of core values but are not entirely aligned/identities aren't too similar. You end up with diversity of thought in your own life. Plus, it's a lot better to bounce off and model the general population when you have people near and dear to you who think differently.
Strongly upvoted. This is an approach I've taken to dating outside the EA community. Most of my dating is typically outside the EA community. I've not found success in long-term romance. I'm pretty confident that's due to factors in my private life unrelated to this specific approach to dating EA community members can take. I'd recommend more in EA try it as well.
For what it's worth, my guess is that this is a larger concern for dating EAs than for dating non-EAs.
Summary: Concerns about apparent or actual cultishness are serious but ought to be worked through in a more rational way than is typical of popular discourse about cults. EA pattern-matches to being a small, niche community on the fringe of mainstream society, which is also a common characteristic and tell of a cult. Yet there is widespread cognitive dissonance in society at large about how social structures involving tens of millions of people also have harmful, cult-like aspects to them as well. It's perhaps the majority of people in even more diverse societies that marry and raise families within their own religion, culture or ethnic group.
That many of us in EA are strongly inclined to spend our lives with those who share our own way of life doesn't distinguish as problematic from the rest of society. One could argue that almost all cultures are cult-like and EA should aspire to be(come) a super-rational community free of the social problems plaguing all others. That would seem to me to be molehill mountaineering that can be disregarded as vain attempts to impel EA to be(come) quixotically perfect.
Regarding 'culty-ness,' I feel like too many subcultures or countercultures play into the hands of the paranoid accusations of a generic and faceless public. Several years ago, when I was both aware of evidence-based definitions of cults and was in extreme disagreement with mainstream societies, I thought accusations of being a cult levelled at movements that weren't unambiguously cults ought to be disregarded. I no longer feel this way, as I now recognize that a degree of cultishness in an organization or community can exist on a spectrum. Ergo, some public accusations of appearing to or actually being a cult ought to be taken very seriously.
EA is a small, niche community on the fringes of society. Putting that way may seem to stigmatize EA as pattern-matching to those fringe movements that pose a serious threat to society at large. That's not what I meant. I just pointed out that this is a crucial function between society at large and subcultures which may begin alienating themselves to the point of falling down the rabbit hole of becoming a cult.
Yet it seems there are mass groups in all mainstream societies that if they were a small, fringe group would be labelled cults, but only are not because they've been normalized over several decades. Such groups can constitute tens or even hundreds of millions of people. I believe such groups are often whole religions, or social structures similar to religions, which as they transform into mainstream institutions are sanitized in a way that makes them less harmful per individual than small, niche cults like the Church of Scientology.
Nonetheless, they often cause significant harm. So, much of humanity has severe cognitive dissonance about what is and isn't a cult, and why all kinds of mainstream institutions shouldn't be considered just as harmful as cults. This should cause us to take concerns of being culty with a grain of salt when it comes from a source that is selective in its opposition to cult-like groups. What I've never understood is, if some in EA are concerned that EA may seem like or take on actual cult-like tendencies, why none of us try assessing this for ourselves. As a movement that aspires to be scientific, we in EA ought to be able to assess to what extent our community is like a cult by reviewing the scientific research and literature on the subject of cults.
With all this in mind, we can put in context the concern some features in EA might make it appear like a cult to the rest of the world. While optics matter, they aren't everything. Of all the things EA has been accused of being a cult for, that those in EA tend to form relationships with one another isn't a frequent one. It's perhaps the majority of people in diverse societies that tend to date, marry or start families with those from their own ethnic, religious and cultural background. Most people don't call them cults. That's because there's a common understanding that individuals are drawn to spend their lives with those who share a common way of life. Outsiders to most ways of life understand that, even if they don't totally understand a respective way of life itself.
One lingering concern for some in EA might be that we ought to aspire to be far better in how we conceive of and do good things than the rest of the world. That might include being less cult-like than even entire cultures which themselves aren't technically cults. There are freethinking, cosmopolitan atheists who would call all religions and most cultures cults. Such accusations may cite that intermarriage between members of one culture because they are the same culture only occurs to irrationally preserve and perpetuate that culture, and its traditions and institutions.
I don't totally disagree with such freethinkers myself but I wouldn't take that criticism to heart to the point of discouraging relationships among those in EA. Relationships within the EA community are imperfect in their own ways, as is the case with all kinds of relationships inspired by a particular way of life. Yet I've seen dozens if not hundreds in EA personally flourish and enhance the good they're doing by being in relationships with other community members. Taking every naysayer to heart won't free us of problems. After all, we in EA are only human (and, I'll postulate, will be imperfect even in light of potentially becoming post-human super-beings in the future).
Some more considerations:
This is very similar to the comment I was going to make.
I admit that it has crossed my mind that even a moderate EA lifestyle is unusually demanding, especially in the longterm, and therefore could make finding a longterm partner more difficult. However, I do resonate with that last bit – encouraging inter-EA dating also seems culty and insular to me, and I’d like to think that most of us could integrate EA (as a project and set of values) into our lives in way that allows us to have other interests, values, friends, and so on (i.e., our lives don’t have to entirely revolve around our EA-esque commitments!). I don’t see why an EA and a non-EA who were romantically compatible couldn’t find comfortable ways to compromise on lifestyle questions – after all, plenty of frugal people find love, and plenty of vegan people find love, whose to say a frugal vegan couldn’t find love?
I responded to Marisa with this comment which pushes back on the notion that inter-EA dating is a particularly culty and insular phenomenon. Upshots:
Yes. Basically the answer to "Should EAs date each other?" is "If they feel like it", but they answer to "Should we think more about EAs dating each other?" is "No".
Summary: There are multiple reasons why, in my opinion, we in EA should not encourage intra-community dating beyond how it arises organically in the community. Yet that's not the same thing as not thinking about it. A modicum of public discussion about intra-community dating is probably not 'culty' compared to much of what the EA community already engages in regardless. One solution may be for those of us who are personal friends with each other in EA to make greater effort to provide support to each other in our mutual pursuits of romantic partners amenable to an EA lifestyle, especially including outside the EA community as well.
I agree the EA community should not systematically think about us dating each other. By "systematically," I mean that I don't think the EA community ought to try seeking a programmatic way for us to date each other. There are multiple reasons I expect doing so would be a poor choice for the EA community. The concern we've discussed in this thread in that is that it could make EA look 'culty,' which I agree is a legitimate concern. One issue I've got with how the EA community tends to think about brand management and public relations, or whatever the social movement equivalent for those concepts are, is that we tend to reflexively care about it only when it comes up at random, as opposed to thinking about it systematically.
That's relevant because, relative to much more significant aspects of EA, whether we openly "think about dating each other" is not that 'culty.' There is some op-ed in a semi-popular magazine, print and/or online, about how communities concerned about AI alignment as an existential risk amount to doomsday cults. Much of the population perceives veganism as a cult. I've met a lot of people over the years who have told me that the phenomenon of widespread adoption of common lifestyle changes among community members still makes it gives off 'culty' vibes. Meanwhile, plenty of cultures within global society publicly and systematically encourage dating within their cultures. It seems like doing this along lines of national or religious identity is more publicly acceptable than doing so along racial lines. Like with what form it would likely take in EA, plenty of subcultures and movements that lend themselves to particular ways of life have online dating websites dedicated to their communities.
Thus, I think the other downsides to systematically encouraging dating within the EA community, such as the skewed gender ratio perhaps quickly resulting in the system failing to satisfy the needs of most involved individuals, are greater than EA appearing 'culty.' It's important to distinguish why I think we shouldn't systematically encourage intra-community dating because I also expect it would be wrong for us to "not think about" each other's dating needs at all. For example, I don't think it's a negative thing that this EA Forum post and all these discussions in the comments are publicly taking place on the EA Forum. It seems to me the majority of community members never check the EA Forum with a frequency approaching a regular basis, never mind the millions of people who hear about EA but never become part of the movement. I think the solution is for us to extend private offers as peers in the same community to talk about each other's efforts to find romantic partners who spend our lives with also fits with living the EA-inspired lives we each want to live out.
I do think you could compromise, but I worry that some EAs won't want to. If you take Peter Singer's drowning child thought experiment seriously you may not want to placate your non-EA girlfriend by going on that holiday abroad.
Taking that thought experiment seriously for many people really will entail a high degree of demandingness without much room for compromise.
I see the underlying idea here that everyone involved in EA is a "frugal vegan". I haven't been able to find any data, but my impression is that less than half of people involved in EA are vegan.
Similarly, you talk about not wanting to compromise on your spending habits, but the job you do and where you live probably make more of an impact than whether or not you eat cheese or go on holiday. If you meet someone at EA Global and end up taking foreign holidays to visit them in their country or moving to be with them, how is that more "right" than taking your non-EA girlfriend on a holiday?
All this to say that whether or not your girlfriend is an "Effective Altruist", you'll need to respect her beliefs and preferences and make some major compromises to have a healthy relationship.
I didn't mean to make it seem that the underlying idea is that everyone in EA is a frugal vegan, that was meant to be a somewhat humorous example to illustrate a point. I think my core idea is that a significant proportion (but not all) EAs are sufficiently different to the average non-EA person as to make dating outside EA difficult (but not impossible).
I actually am someone who can compromise to a certain extent, for example I went to Singapore for my friend's wedding in January, but I am thinking of those who don't feel they can. I accept that one can more than make up for going on a holiday by doing good in their job, but taking a Singerian view seriously still means not going on that holiday in the first place and will probably entail aiming to find a girlfirend who lives nearby and not one who you have to fly to to visit.
Absolutely agree. My point is that if two similar EAs are dating these compromises may be less likely to seriously conflict with core ethical beliefs. Of course there will always be more personal compromises to make.
My point about the girlfriend in a different country is that the majority of EAs don't live in your city, so if you decided to use an online dating service you'd be disproportionately likely to meet someone who lives a plane ride away.
Fair point. Overall I think I'm more positive about singles events / speed dating than a dating website. But I accept concerns over being able to find the right numbers and coming off as slightly cultish
I appreciate this informative comment. I've got a couple of relevant points to add.
1. As a community coordinator for EA, a few years ago I was aware more in EA were interested in dating others in the community. I shared a link to reciprocity.io around in EA Facebook groups like EA Hangout. This got a few more hundred people to get on reciprocity. I talked to Katja Grace, who originally had the idea.
Reciprocity.io was written to support the much smaller Bay Area rationality community, which had the time had over 100 people but not too many more than that. So many in EA getting on reciprocity.io caused it to crash. The code wasn't particularly worth saving and at the time Katja suggested that if someone wanted, it might be better to make a newer, better site from scratch.
2. As far as I'm aware, LGBTQ+ people are significantly overrepresented in the EA community relatve to the background population. I don't know how much of this is determined by feeder communities for EA, i.e., how much the communities people find EA from are themselves disproportionately representative of the LGBTQ+ community. Feeder communities for EA include:
Caveats: I don't know more specifically than that how the representation for LGBTQ+ folks in EA skews. By representation I mean statistical representation, not representation of LGBTQ+ as identities. Neither am I suggesting that anyone ought to infer anything else about the experiences and status of LGBTQ+ folks in the EA community based just on the fact they're overrepresented in the EA community.
I haven't put any thoughts into how this otherwise impacts the gender ratio of the EA community or dating prospects for individual community members therein. I just offer the info in case it inspires others' insights about intra-community dating and relationships.
Thanks for your response which seems to have resonated with others. Skewed gender ratio is a difficulty, although it is possible to equalise the number of men and women at singles events by making them ticketed. I am also not taking into account LGBTQ+ here, but in theory you could have LGBTQ+ EA events.
It may feel culty and that may well be a valid reason not to pursue it. I do wonder if this will still be a concern when EA has grown further. We tend not to think of vegan events as culty (well I suppose a lot of people do...). Perhaps EA is just a bit too small at this moment in time to make encouraging EA-dating viable, but when it has become more mainstream it may be a natural progression for the movement.