Deference Culture in EA — EA Forum

As has been noted by other writers, the EA (Effective Altruism) movement has a pretty strong deference culture. In many ways this makes sense as lots of EAs come from a background of reading about and being compelled by organizations like GiveWell. These organizations are built on the assertion that charity evaluation is hard and benefits from a full-time team doing it. A typical donor has the most impact by deferring to this research. This culture of deference has become pretty strong in EA, I pretty frequently have conversations with highly involved EAs who are still deferring on major topics (e.g. cause area, career choice) without investigating them personally. On the one hand, it is impossible to be an expert in everything, and making hard decisions around doing good is no different. On the other hand, a culture that is too high in deference or defers using the wrong metrics can become homogenized and lead to great opportunities being missed. Often, pieces written about deferral e

Deference Culture in EA — EA Forum Hide table of contents Deference Culture in EA by Joey🔸 Jun 7 2022 6 min read 23 154 Community Epistemic deference Effective altruism culture Rationality Frontpage Deference Culture in EA High deference - New EA High deference - Experienced EA 23 comments As has been noted by other writers, the EA (Effective Altruism) movement has a pretty strong deference culture. In many ways this makes sense as lots of EAs come from a background of reading about and being compelled by organizations like GiveWell . These organizations are built on the assertion that charit

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