Yes, totally. The next post was going to consist of some ideas about the critics true rejections and how to deal with it.

The question about what would be a healthy EA ecosystem is really interesting and worth exploring. Somebody should write more about it. I may eventually do it.

My current intuition is that we need more people from diverse fields of knowledge and with diverse skills, since they can contribute to EA in unique ways, apart from donating. To gain this benefit, I think that it's worth losing a bit in other regards if we have to. I will think more about it though.

This comment is very smart and important. You made me think a lot.

In the case of science, I think the example isn’t good for your point, but your point is perfect nonetheless. I will simplify, but the reason that I think that the example doesn’t work is because science has lost its battle with religion (warm language) for centuries, and only started gaining ground because it started producing really useful things. Religion produces very little and it still manages to put up a fight against Science. Science is successful despite the fact that it’s ''cold'' and counterintuitive, simply because it’s so useful. (In fact, science becomes more "persuasive" for the general public when popular intellectuals like Dawkins, Tyson or Feynman add a warm poetic spin to it).

“An analysis that argues for using more warm words needs to make a more precise claim about why we should use warmth, in particular if warmth is often hard to combine with authority, ambitiousness and objectivity (as other commenters have noticed).”

The reason that I argue in favor of using a warmer language, without giving up on rationality, is because some of our ideas can make us seem cold, while usually the opposite is true. I think that seeming heartless is a specific weakness of the EA movement, for some of the reasons that I elaborated on the article. There are a lot of critiques of effective altruism that constantly imply that effective altruists are cold.

We can cover this weakness by putting a greater effort in communicating our feelings and showing our enthusiasm. I don’t think we lose anything important by doing this, but I’m really open about it. It would be problematic if it draws undesirable people, but by retaining our emphasis in rationality that problem would be mostly solved.

All your concerns are very interesting and important, and I would definitely like to see more discussion about this topic. We are in a stage in which It’s really important to get these things right.

Edit: Thanks to this comment, I’ve been thinking more and more about the importance of showing strength, consistency and determination to achieve our goals. This was something that I really liked about Yudkowsky’s texts: He makes a great effort to transmit how important his goal is to him and why we should keep pushing forward and improving.

Thanks :)

I’m still thinking about what is the best public for effective altruism, what should be the size of the movement and so on. But the first thing that comes to mind based on many recent discussions is that we need more people doing Earning to Give and doing good Outreach. People that aren’t like us can also do those things really well, so It’s seems good to reach out to them using a language that is slightly different than the one we normally use.

We should never stop talking about rationality. It’s a really important component of effective altruism.

“Combining empathy and rationality to have a greater positive impact” seems like a decent slogan for effective altruism. I think It's desirable for EA to be automatically associate with both “empathy” and “rationality”. I think there aren’t many drawbacks to this, but I’m really open about it.

:) I agree with this.

I was drawn to EA because of people that combine compassion and rationality. Brian Tomasik and David Pearce come to mind. They often speak warmly. Even when they don't, it’s easy to tell that they are moved by strong feelings of empathy.

We should keep talking about evidence and rationality with all the audiences, but I think that making an effort to transmit our feelings to the general public is important and useful. A lot of the things that we promote are unusual and counter-intuitive, so we can easily be misunderstood.

I think that sometimes smart people avoid saying warm words because they don’t want to be underestimated. They want to signal that they are intelligent, so they limit themselves to a very formal language.

Formal language is perfect when we are doing theory, but when we want to communicate with a general audience, I think we should transmit our arguments carefully and rationally while connecting with the audience from the heart. For example, I wrote a text in Spanish that started by talking about the lives of the extreme poor. I wanted to make it real. I wanted to make people feel why solving this matters. Once they feel it, It's much easier to explain that rationality is necessary to solve important problems.

Most of us cried while thinking about all the suffering in the world. I’m not ashamed of it, and I think people will understand me more if I express it. I like talking openly about the enthusiasm that I feel for all that we can accomplish to improve the world.

Of course, each person has It's own style. Some aren't comfortable with talking about their feelings too much, and that is perfect.