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 Makes Outreach to Progressives Hard, published by Cullen_OKeefe on the effective altruism forum.

This post summarizes some of my conclusions on things that can make EA outreach to progressives hard, as well as some tentative recommendations on techniques for making such outreach easier.

To be clear, this post does not argue or assume that outreach to progressives is harder than outreach to other political ideologies.[1] Rather, the point of this post is to highlight identifiable, recurring memes/thought patterns that cause Progressives to reject or remain skeptical of EA.

My Background (Or, Why I am Qualified to Talk About This)

Nothing in here is based on systematic empirical analysis. It should therefore be treated as highly uncertain. My analysis here draws on two sources:

Reflecting on my personal journey as someone who transitioned from a very social-justice-y worldview to a more EA-aligned one (and therefore understands the former well), who is still solidly left-of-center, and who still retains contacts in the social justice (SJ) world; and

My largely failed attempts as former head of Harvard Law School Effective Altruism to get progressive law students to make very modest giving commitments to GiveWell charities.

Given that the above all took place in America, this post is most relevant to American political dynamics (especially at elite universities), and may very well be inapplicable elsewhere.[2]

Readers may worry that I am being a bit uncharitable here. However, I am not trying to present the best progressive objections to EA (so as to discover the truth), but rather the most common ones (so as to persuade people better). In other words, this post is about marketing and communications, not intellectual criticisms. Since I think many of the common progressive objections to EA are bad, I will attempt to explain them in (what I take to be) their modal or undifferentiated form, not steelman them.

Relatedly, when I say "progressives" through the rest of this post, I am mainly referring to the type of progressive who is skeptical of EA, not all progressives. There are many amazing progressive EAs, who do not see these two ideologies to be in conflict whatsoever. And many non-EA progressives will believe few of these things. Nevertheless, I do think I am pointing to a real set of memes that are common—but definitely not universal—among the American progressive left as of 2021. This is sufficient for understanding the messaging challenges facing EAs within progressive institutions.

Reasons Progressives May Not Like EA

Legacy of Paternalistic International Aid

Many progressives have a strong prior against international aid, especially private international aid. Progressives are steeped in—and react to—stories of paternalistic international aid,[3] much in the way that EAs are steeped in stories of ineffective aid (e.g., Playpumps).

Interestingly, EAs and progressives will often (in fact, almost always) agree on what types of aid are objectionable. However, we tend to take very different lessons away from this.

EAs will generally take away the lesson that we have to be super careful about which interventions to fund, because funding the wrong intervention can be ineffective or actively harmful. We put the interests of our intended beneficiaries first by demanding that charities demonstrably advance their beneficiaries' interests as cost-effectively as possible.

Progressives tend to take a very different lesson from this. They tend to see this legacy as objectionable due to the very nature of the relationship between aid donors and recipients. Roughly, they may believe that the power differential between wealthy donors from the Global North and aid recipients in developing countries makes unobjectionable foreign aid either impossible or, at the very least, extr...