EA is full of judgment: this cause area is high impact, this event produced a lot of value, that one not so much, the future will be great in expectation, this person is promising, I’m not doing enough. And so on.
The issue is: I don’t really like judgments. In fact, I have done a lot of work to move away from them, and to move closer to actual experience, to presence, to immediacy. I enjoyed that party. I like looking at you. I tensed up when you said that. I sense some anger in you. And to be honest, that has served me incredibly well. My relationships have improved. I live life more fully. I am more in touch with myself and the world. It’s great.
So what gives? What about these EA judgments?
Especially with the judgments about people, when I bring attention to them, I do tense up. There is a bracing there as if I’m anticipating pain. It feels like being punched in the stomach. And that even holds for the positive ones. If that person is promising, what does that mean about me? What if I’m not promising? Oh, they do think I’m promising?! Wait, what if they stop believing that? Ouch.
My sense is that a lot of the judgments that aren’t directly about people are still infected with this kind of thinking, and people know. We are in fact really good at being attuned to these kinds of more subtle judgments. If this cause area is high impact, and I work on this other cause area, does that mean…? It does. You are a bad person. Or at least not really a good person. An NPC. Ouch.
Before I move on, I actually want to be with the pain of all of this. I have seen it in colleagues who have worked themselves ragged because they are just not good enough. It also shows up in the constant self-doubt of whether this is the right thing and in the countless rejections from jobs and fellowships. My housemate even got rejected from a conference. It really fucking hurts to be told these things. Sometimes over and over again. Sometimes by others, and probably even more often by ourselves.
I feel for all the young people that get sucked into this judgment vortex that makes it so tempting to turn against yourself. I regret the extent to which I have contributed to this. And there is pain in that, too. Thinking back to the times that I have sat in judgment over other people, it does feel like I have had to dissociate from my humanity to some extent to do it. Part of me goes cold when I hear the question: what do you think of that person? I’m not connected to them as a person and only connected to them as a cog in the impact machine. And that sucks.
So far, so normal for a moralistic community. EA can be particularly harsh though. For one, it grades people on a curve which can make it difficult to ever feel like you’re enough. There’s always this other person who’s higher impact. For two, not being high impact means not just feeling worthless, but also possibly losing your job, your friends, or at least their respect, and so on.
Tapping into this pain, I also become confronted with a lot of fear and intense anxiety. What if those things are true about me? Oof. I am good friends with a version of this fear. It makes me want to hide myself, become small, believe what others believe, do the safe thing. Lest I am deemed inferior, not worth investing into. Ouch.
This fear makes it hard for me to stand up for anything because all of me is on the line. Which means I better not step out of it. I worry that this structurally makes it harder for EA to pursue the truth because I’d bend it in a heartbeat if it means I can be okay. I’m okay, right?
I have certainly seen this in my own case. I’d rather defer than be proven bad. I considered posting this under a pseudonym because it means I might escape the judgment of this community. I have applied for jobs because others would think highly of me, so I can think highly of myself. Reading this back makes me tear up.
On a deeper level, all of this has contributed to disconnecting myself from my own wants. And that is probably the most tragic thing of all. To be clear, this was already an issue I had before effective altruism entered my life. But, again, I fear for all the young people who arrive in this community before they had a real chance to get to know themselves, who already have an overfunctioning mind compared to the rest of themselves, and who end up substituting an ideology and the views of others around them for what they actually care about.
To be fair, EA knows this on some level. It’s why people have written about how EA can actually be an exciting opportunity instead of an obligation and why so many love the Replacing Guilt series (including myself). However, I also get the sense that it’s underappreciated how deep the effects actually run. For instance, most posts on epistemic deferral treat it as a question of what people should do: when and how much to defer (e.g., here and here). Some briefly name social pressure as a failure mode, but I don’t think they grapple sufficiently with the fear underneath. And maybe that’s not their job, but I expect that it will be hard to change anything about the level of deferral in EA without deeply understanding the underlying reasons for it. And I expect those to be largely about fear and other emotions rather than disagreements about the optimal policy. The same could be said about other things that require you to step out of line and into the line of fire: starting new organizations and projects, advocating for a new cause area, criticizing established beliefs, and so on.
So what’s the answer? I don’t really know. I’m only now finding my own path because it’s taken me a long time to pry myself even just a little bit free from the judgmental tentacles of effective altruism.
Personally, I have found freedom in being able to see through judgments to the person behind them, in being able to see myself more clearly, and in learning to be okay without being useful or having an impact. I think all of these point toward becoming more whole, and each person has to find their own way there. Mine was through practices like Nonviolent Communication, circling, meditation, therapy, and coaching.
Over time, I have also become more excited to orient myself to truth rather than the good (whatever that is). Truth obviously can come with its own set of judgments. You should believe that, you are wrong about this, I should be better at forecasting, she is smart, he’s a bit sloppy in his reasoning. They can also make me wince in the same way, especially the judgments about people. Being with them without crumbling, on some level, still requires the ability to see through them, to see yourself clearly, and to be okay regardless. At the same time, something about them does feel different to me. They feel a little bit less sharp. I imagine they are closer to something I can see directly, or at least catch a glimpse of. They are less abstracted, less filtered through the meaning-making of another person who wants to feel okay (though there is still some of that!). I also get more of a sense that we’re on the same team somehow? Or at least that we could be. That feels less obvious to me with the judgments around the good.
And I have this fantasy that if I can just see myself and the world clearly, I will be able to discern the right actions and pursue them effortlessly and without contorting myself. But what are the right actions you ask? Surely, that requires some standard of the good. Maybe. But I am not so sure. I have come to trust more and more that there is a natural caring in me that wants to find expression, and my job is primarily to just get out of the way.
