With a career sat at the intersection between social impact and global health, I have developed an allergy to expressions like ‘democratising access to X’ and ‘blockchain-enabled solutions to *insert social injustice here*’. My teeth have been cut by the UN, Think Tanks, Corporate Philanthropy and a range of advocacy groups, so I know how empty such language can really be. Value signalling, buzzword bingo and CorporateSpeak are all examples of the ways in which our careful choice of words can give the impression of impact, of common cause, while deflecting attention and scrutiny.
When we agree to the ways in which we speak we are, to an extent, agreeing on the ways in which we are allowed to think. By adopting a shared lexicon, we dull our analytical thinking and trade our agency for a thin sense of camaraderie or in-group identity. As any self-help guru can tell you, with strength in numbers it becomes easier to dress up common sense as the profound. That’s why I was so suspicious when I was introduced to Effective Altruism, worrying these new key terms would be just as vapid as the boardroom mantras I already had tattooed to the tip of my tongue and the pit of my stomach. But I’m here, writing on the EA Forum after a whirlwind weekend at EAGxBerlin. So clearly something must have gone right.
My conference experience was, I’m sure, fairly typical: over-caffeinated, under-slept and socially saturated, but I know I’ve caught the EA bug. Although I wouldn’t allow myself to use words I didn’t fully understand or believe in just to fit in, the sincerity of those I met combined with the hard logic of the premises at play were enough to see this social justice warrior parley with the best of them. That said, while I may have tried the Kool-Aid, I’m certainly not drunk on it. There were aspects of the conference that I felt were lacking and some conversations that left me cold. The thing which concerned me most, however, was the intellectual homogeneity I saw. Scout versus soldier mindsets aside, I didn’t come across that many delegates who really had their boots on the ground. I looked around to find software developers, scientists, researchers, policy-makers and other trutlenecked pontificators, but a very poor showing from the creative world.
This is to EA’s detriment. We learn as much from fiction, from art, as we do from instruction and rebellion is found in the literary world or the fresco long before it hits the debating floor. So where are our radicals? Where are our writers? Our artists? Our poets? Our anarchists? Unless EA changes its positioning soon, it is so obvious to me that this well-meaning platform will remain a sparring ground of ideas, of ivory towers, and not of grassroots or picket lines.
We need these trailblazers. The march of human progress – okay the cha-cha slide of human progress – is defined by the coupling of the radical with the practical. Be it the tandem influence of Martin Luther King and Malcom X for civil rights, or of the Suffragettes and Suffragists for women’s suffrage, one cannot make headway on social injustice without the counterbalance of the other. The radicals are there to stir up the public frenzy that threatens power into action while making the moderates seem reasonable enough to hold the pen. Without them, attempts to evoke change from the inside would only suffocate.
In the remit of EA, radical actors are now a necessity; they lend the energy, the direction, and the credibility it needs to win over a broader public and not just the choir it preaches to. The world of social justice is not so easily swayed as Silicon Valley, we do not iterate, and we certainly do not ‘fail fast’. Such concessions cost lives. This doggedness is something EA sorely lacks at present: its principles are more fluid, more congenial to the power structures that cause the existential threats it rails against. Such flexibility may make us more effective collaborators, but not necessarily more effective influencers. The direction provided by political or ideological weathervanes does not hold its ground in changing winds. Instead, by appealing to the social justice warrior, EA targets become non-negotiable and our politic more steadfast and demanding.
But EA Principles do little to endear themselves to social justice. Strict rationalism and Pascal-Wager-like calculations for doing good feel false, contrived, and a far cry from the wildfire of activism. Longtermism is abhorrent to the advocate. Indeed, for those surrounded by subsistence, corruption, exploitation and torture, the hypothetical - the far future - represents a luxury holiday and not an international emergency. They cannot afford to indulge in a worldview that overshoots far beyond present dangers. Instead, like a patient in a car crash, first aid must be performed before surgery. Moreover, the moral value of future lives is a viewpoint many in social justice have seen weaponised against them. My own work to promote reproductive freedom in women and access to abortion comes up against this argument daily, for example. All this breeds a fundamental distrust between the actors on the ground and the castles in the sky that EA conjures. Urgent work is therefore needed to see EA principles embraced by the marginalised and those mobilised to support them directly.
I offer three initial routes to making headway here. Firstly, it is essential that we find common ground to work from, reconciling our theory and our language with the real-world experience of advocates. We are not so different, and we need to prove that. We need to demonstrate how what can come off as fixed narratives and frameworks are completely complimentary to the goals and methods of social justice. We need to seek out consultation with these groups, diversifying our policy stream to include the tip-of-the-spear actors good policy is inspired by. We will need to get creative with the bridges that we build, however, looking for rebellion in the arts, community collectives and affinity groups as well as the well-worn path to not-for-profits. Second, we must diversify where we publish; features in The Economist and big wins in academic journals will not exactly bring us to the beating heart of changemaking. We need to move away from these old guard outlets and find spaces where we make ourselves open to criticism and co-creation. Finding vanguard collaborators will be key to this. Thirdly, we need to consider introducing advocacy-specific prizes, funds or scholarships within EA, investing in the work and the people that can make our ideas not just palatable for gamechangers, but downright inspiring.
By prioritising diversity in thought, we will naturally make progress on wider ambitions to improve the inclusivity of EA; a quick look at leading posts on the Forum makes it clear I am hardly the first to have noticed where representation in EA must improve. A pyramidical hierarchy capped with white men will not change the world. Instead, this agenda must be incorporated and cherished as a means of future-proofing our ambitions. By welcoming both radical action and creative spirit, we move from virtue-signalling to virtuous action while also addressing the blind spots that are the blight of likeminded minds. We must seek out wisdom wherever we find it and be held to account by those fighting for the future in the here and now and not just the there and then.
I'm a bit confused by this post. You start off by relating your frustration with "vapid" rhetoric (and its epistemic costs in "dull[ing] our analytical thinking"), but then seem to advocate that EA pivot towards embracing vapid social justice rhetoric? Maybe I've misunderstood what you're suggesting.
I also worry that the post assumes that SJWs (rather than, say, policy-makers who read The Economist) constitute "the beating heart of changemaking". But (insofar as I have a grasp on what that even means) that doesn't seem accurate to me.
Doesn't stubborn failure to iterate or swiftly identify & learn from mistakes risk costing even more lives? I think this point illustrates the risks of leading with rhetoric. It's really important to first work out what's true, not just what sounds good.