EA - What we talk about when we talk about community building by James Herbert

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: What we talk about when we talk about community building, published by James Herbert on June 27, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.These are my views, they are not necessarily the views of Effective Altruism Netherlands. Thanks to those people who provided comments on a draft of this post.SummaryIn this post I introduce a set of terms that could be useful for discussing EA community building strategy.I take as a starting point the claim that broadly speaking, effective altruism is an attempt at social change.There are four different approaches to social change: Social Movement Support, Field Building, Network Development, and Promoting the Uptake of Practices by Organizations. The post illustrates these approaches using different historical examples:The Civil Rights Movement mainly used Social Movement SupportThe field of Public Health primarily focused on Field BuildingThe United Nations emphasized Network DevelopmentThe Fair Trade movement concentrated on Promoting the Uptake of Practices by OrganizationsI then take a stab at describing EA’s current approach. Something like: Field Building (40%), Network Development (35%), Movement Support (20%), and Promoting the Uptake of Practices by Organizations (5%).I also suggest a re-balancing: Field Building (50%), Movement Support (25%), Network Development (15%), and Promoting the Uptake of Practices by Organizations (10%). This shift would make EA more engaged with society and more focused on its core mission, while spending less time in its own bubble.Finally, I have a few questions for you, the reader:Do you agree that, broadly speaking, EA is an attempt to bring about social change?Is there something missing from the set of social change approaches I’ve described?What do you think EA’s current social change portfolio is?What do you think it ought to be?How should we inform the above decision? Historical case studies? Something else?IntroductionEffective altruism has been called many things. MacAskill defines it as follows:(i) the use of evidence and careful reasoning to work out how to maximize the good with a given unit of resources, tentatively understanding ‘the good’ in impartial welfarist terms, and(ii) the use of the findings from (i) to try to improve the world.(i) refers to effective altruism as an intellectual project (or ‘research field’); (ii) refers to effective altruism as a practical project (or ‘social movement’).CEA's outward-facing website (effectivealtruism.org) uses a similar definition: “Effective altruism is a research field and practical community that aims to find the best ways to help others, and put them into practice”. Wikipedia also: “Effective altruism is a philosophical and social movement that advocates ‘using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis’”.I think these definitions are broadly correct. However, to speak in more abstract terms, I think EA is an attempt to bring about social change. By social change I mean the not-insignificant alteration of society. For example, changes in social institutions, social behaviours, or social relations. Examples of other attempts at social change include: building the field of public health, the fair trade movement, the civil rights movement, and the development of the UN.Following MacAskill’s definition, the social change that EA is aiming for is something like: building effective altruism as a research field and helping people use its findings when making decisions about their donations, careers, etc. The assumption being that, by doing this, you’re pursuing one of the most effective strategies for doing good and, in the words of CEA, you’re helping to build a radically better world, a world in which humanity has solved a range of pressing global pro...