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Does climate change deserve more attention within EA?
rviss5y10
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I would like to offer a simple personal note that my focus and energy has turned away from EA to climate change only. I now spend all of my time and energy on climate related matters. Though I still value EA's approach to charity giving, it has begun to feel like a voice from the past, from a world that no longer exists. This is how it registers with me now.

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patkelly
5y
I agree that I fall closer into this camp. Where the action tends to be towards climate change and that immediate threat, while I play intellectual exercises with EA. The focus on animal welfare and eating a vegan diet help the planet and fighting malaria are related to climate change. Other issues such as AI and nuclear war seem far fetched. It's hard for me to see the impacts of these threats without preying on my fears. While climate change has an impact on my daily life. As I said in my above post that EA taught me to ask 'what is the most pressing problem that humans face.' To me it is clearly climate change and I moved on from there. I maybe disappointed that EA has not drawn the same conclusion.
rviss7y0
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Thanks again.

I admit that I do not know how to say it more clearly than I have, and that what I have said is not enough to be convincing. The only thing I can say again is that the 50/50 split is a way of showing equal regard for myself and others in a system in which everyone is under the same obligation and is acting upon that obligation. I will probably rest my argument until I can articulate it more adequately.

You also said: If our needs are equally important to everyone else's, then surely others have an equal moral claim on the resources that we use... (read more)

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kbog
7y
I said that people have an equal claim on resources. This implies that resources ought to be distributed on the basis of need. Sure, you can say that someone has a right to meet their own needs for food and shelter. But I don't see how my own interests in unnecessary luxury spending should weigh equally against other people's interests in getting their basic needs fulfilled. You can't say that you're treating people's interests equally by splitting things half and half, when in reality you've already taken an advantage. If we're at a party and I say that I'm going to eat as much of the cake as I need to no longer be hungry, and then I split it with the hungry people after I took what I needed while continuing to eat more, I'm not sharing it fairly. I should either take what I need and then give up the rest, or I should split it equally in the first place.
rviss7y0
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kbog and Jamie_Cassidy - Thanks so much for your kind remarks, questions, criticisms and observations. I appreciate it. I'll try to address both sets of comments in this post.

Q -- "Surely, if everyone's interests are equal, then this naively implies that we ought to divide surplus resources equally among all, keeping 1/7,000,000,000 for ourselves? Why half for oneself and half for everybody else?"

A -- Though this idea may seem naive, I'm not sure that it is. Perhaps we could look at it from another perspective, from the other end of the stick, i... (read more)

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kbog
7y
Okay, but again, why? I just don't see why the fact that we should treat everyone's interests equally implies that we can keep half of our resources. If our needs are equally important to everyone else's, then surely others have an equal moral claim on the resources that we use for our basic needs, right? To say that our basic needs aren't subject to claims from others implies that our basic needs are more important than others' basic needs.
Why I left EA
rviss7y14
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Lila, what will you do now? What questions or problems do you see in the path ahead? What good things will you miss by leaving the EA community?

For some reason, I've always felt a deep sense of empathy for people who do what you have done. It is very honest and generous of you to do it this way. I wish you only the very best in all you do.

(This is my first post on this forum. I am new to EA.)

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Cornelius
7y
One thing I'm unclear on is: Is s/he leaving the EA community and retaining the EA philosophy or rejecting the EA philosophy and staying in the EA community or leaving both? What EAs do and what EA is are two different things after all. I'm going to guess leaving the EA community given that yes most EAs are utilitarians and this seems to be foundational to the reason Lila is leaving. However the EA philosophy is not utilitarian per se so you'd expect there to be many non-utilitarian EAs. I've commented on this before here. Many of us are not utilitarian. 44% of us according to the 2015 survey in fact. The linked survey results argue that this sample accurately estimates the actual EA population. 44% is a lot of non-utilitarian EAs. I imagine many of them aren't as engaged in the EA community as the utilitarian EAs, despite self-identifying as EAs. If s/he is just leaving the community then, to me, this is only disheartening insofar as s/he doesn't interact with the community from this point on. So I do hope Lila continues to be an EA outside of the EA community where s/he can spread goodness in the world using her/his non-utilitarian priortarian ethics (prioritizing victims of violence) using the EA philosophy as a guide. The "movement isn't diverse enough" is a legitimate complaint and a sound reason to leave a movement if you don't feel like you fit in. So s/he might well do much better for the world elsewhere in some other movement that has a better personal fit. And as long as she stays in touch with EA then we can have some good 'ol moral trade for the benefit of all. This trade could conceivably be much more beneficial for EA and for Lila if s/he is no longer in the EA community.