The predictably grievous harms of Effective Altruism
The predictably grievous harms of Effective Altruism
The predictably grievous harms of Effective Altruism
https://blog.oup.com/2022/12/the-predictably-grievous-harms-of-effective-altruism/
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ok so couple stub sneers I thought of when reading this:
- One way to look at EA is as an extension of the middle-manager's syndrome of injecting metrics everywhere to allow them to spin up narratives of growth and improvement to justify their existence. I can't decide who I hate more!
- following on from 1, it's kind of funny that the EAs, who you could pattern match to a "high school nerd" stereotype, are intellectually beaten out by an analog of the "jock" stereotype of sports fans: fantasy league participants who understand the concept of "intangibles" that EAs apparently cannot grasp.
- it absolutely tracks that EAs, who see charities that spend money on administrating themselves as inefficient and incompetent, are dumbfounded and bereft of answers when any of their organisations implode
- following on from 1, it’s kind of funny that the EAs, who you could pattern match to a “high school nerd” stereotype, are intellectually beaten out by an analog of the “jock” stereotype of sports fans: fantasy league participants who understand the concept of “intangibles” that EAs apparently cannot grasp.
On a wider note, it feels the "geek/nerd" moniker's lost a whole lot of cultural cachet since its peak in the mid-'10s. It is a topic Sarah Z has touched on, but I could probably make a full goodpost about it.
Haven't watched Z's video, but I'd also note I'm deeply sceptical that the nerd/jock distinction was ever real past maybe the 90s.
In my own school (and those of all the people I've discussed it with), if you were in advanced classes, you almost always played a sport. Even geeky interests - like video games, some anime (Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon), and to a lesser extent comics - were incredibly popular. There were cliques, but those cliques were normally personality and friend based rather than academic vs. sport. If there were a divide, it was between those who were socially skilled and those who were not, but that didn't neatly map onto whether you were smart or not.
Even as a kid, I mostly thought of the nerd/jock stuff as being a marketing ploy, rather than reflecting my own experiences. Which isn't to say you wouldn't get people identifying as nerds or geeks, but to say that the actual social reality didn't seem to match.
Yeah, as a kid I was kinda the archetypal nerd. Short, fat, airheaded, besserwisser, straight A's,* into manga and video games. My best friend for most of primary school was the guy with even better grades, but tall, handsome and a national championship level athlete.
Then puberty hit me pretty early and suddenly I was about median height for my age, I could do pull-ups while most of my classmates couldn't, and even though I wasn't that fond of gym class, I was mostly motivated enough to get a decent grade just for trying a little.
The nerd/jock thing always felt like an American thing from an older generation that wasn't taken seriously. Maybe it was acknowledged by an overthinker like me, but to even bring up the distinction was kinda nerdy itself. It definitely wasn't the defining social divisor in my adolescent life.
*Or rather, nines and tens on the weird 4 to 10 scale Finnish primary education uses.
The nerd/jock thing always felt like an American thing
similarly, I never got to see the "school bully" thing even nearly as much as it seems to be an issue US-side. not that we didn't have (or that they didn't try with me[0] on occasion), but it seems to be quite extreme in the US?
I got some very intense, frequent bullying in 90s Latin America for being perceived as queer, before even understanding myself that I was actually queer.
I don't think there was ever anything like the jocks from US movies. Bullies tended to be troubled kids from difficult backgrounds, the kind of kid who would be themself exposed to violence and abuse at home or in their neighbourhood. A handful were from religious fundamentalist families.
There was some hostility towards children who took school too seriously or were perceived as teacher's pets, but I don't think that in itself would have inspired "slapped every day" levels of bullying. I don't remember bullying due to what today are called fandoms or geeky interests; they were just much less known.
Oh for sure. It’s probably why I feel so unmoored in today’s culture (jk)