James Herbert

Co-director @ Effective Altruism Netherlands
1533 karmaJoined Working (6-15 years)Amsterdam, Netherlands
effectiefaltruisme.nl

Bio

Participation
1

I'm currently a co-director at EA Netherlands (with Marieke de Visscher). We're working to build and strengthen the EA community here.

Before this, I worked as a consultant on urban socioeconomic development projects and programmes funded by the EU. Before that, I studied liberal arts (in the UK) and then philosophy (in the Netherlands).

Hit me up if you wanna find out about the Dutch EA community! :)

Comments
210

Thanks! Yeah, I thought maybe this was what Larks was referring to. Putting to one side the question of whether that was a valuable discussion or not, I wouldn't put that in the same category as OP's post. The Manifest discussion was about whether an organisation such as Manifest should give a platform to people with views some people consider racist, OP's post is an analysis of the policy platform of a leading candidate in what is arguably the world's most important election. I wouldn't describe the former discussion as 'political' in the same way that I would describe the OP's post. But perhaps others see it differently?

I think it’s unfortunate that critiques of EA are sometimes dismissed because they seem superficial or misinformed. While this might be true in many cases, it’s still important for us to observe—and perhaps even engage with—these criticisms.

Why? 

  1. It’s beneficial for people to have an accurate understanding of what we’re doing.
  2. We are partly responsible for ensuring this is the case.
  3. When critiques are inaccurate, they reveal how others perceive us, giving us an opportunity to improve our communication.
  4. Therefore, reading and considering these critiques can help us refine our approach and better convey our work.

If you're looking for the meta organisations Ben is talking about, you can see all of the city and national groups funded by the Centre for Effective Altruism's Community Building Grants programme under the 'Groups' tab on this page. This is probably one of the bigger groupings of meta organisations (in terms of longterm stable funding). You also check Marieke's mindmap for a bunch of other meta organisations.  

That’s an interesting point, and it does seem impactful when organisations succeed in introducing new talent to the EA/impact space, especially when it leads to long-term contributions. Isn’t this a key focus for most community building organisations, though? Or is there a nuance in the approach you’re describing that perhaps I’m missing?

Great stuff! Many thanks to the team and whoever commissioned this! Looking forward to future research in this direction. 

So you think so far it's mostly been OK? If that's the case, and if it's plausible that high-quality discussions about politics would be valuable, shouldn't we lean towards loosening the policy and seeing what happens? 

Best case, good discussions happen and the forum does a better job of meeting its objective. Worst case, bad discussion happens, but then it should be pretty simple to tighten the policy up and no lasting harm would be done. 

Which posts? (you don't need to list them, just briefly describe them so I can find them myself)

FWIW my impression is that EAG events are not generally considered to be a good fit for election discussion.  

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