There's a question about other social movements people might associate themselves with. How was the list of suggestions created? At present, the list is very left-wing:
Ordinarily this would only be a small problem, but then you ask people about their political views after you've primed them with left-wing examples.
Evangelical Christianity has aspects of a social movement, but I doubt we'd turn up any evangelicals here. Not that this is necessarily a problem if the goal is to avoid Blue/Green priming.
If we're just looking for stuff that isn't stereotypically left-wing, men's rights and free software also come to mind.
then you ask people about their political views after you've primed them with left-wing examples.
Not to mention all the implications of right-wing politics not making it to the list at all. "No, we don't think anyone can possibly believe that... What are you, a freak?" :-/
I can assure you I didn't think that - it was rather that I didn't think of any right-wing (or additional non left-wing) movements that significant numbers might plausibly belong to. But I definitely made a mistake in not trying to think of them more. If you can suggest some, I'll add them.
My predictions (linked in this comment ) did have few conservatives or libertarians. The set of EAs whose views I know contains a few libertarians and no conservatives. However that set contains disproportionately many elite university students, an unrepresentatively lefty group.
I was surprised that there weren't a few more libertarians and conservatives in the LessWrong census.
I've now checked out the survey, and have a couple of comments (which I put into the comments field and am reposting here). #1 is important, #2 less so:
On moral philosophy: "Consequentialist/utilitarian" should be broken up into something like "Utilitarian" and "Other consequentialist (not utilitarian)", because I am a consequentialist and (probably) not a utilitarian, and that disagreement is one of my main points of contention with the EA movement.
I had no idea how to answer the "political views" question. Are these positions ("left", "centre", etc.) supposed to be on the American (U.S.) political spectrum? That'd be my default assumption, but the British/Canadian spelling suggests otherwise... in any case, at least offer as many options as e.g. the Lesswrong survey did.
Taking this was an interesting feeling. In particular, being asked (even anonymously) about donations and other concrete actions in a context where donating a lot is the norm. The scene in HP:MOR where the phoenix asks Hermione who she's saved comes to mind. That is, being asked just made it very obvious that I believe I should be an effective altruist, but from my actions it doesn't look like I am one. I have reasons for that, but it's still worrying, since I don't have much evidence that I won't just change my mind once I do have money.
For what it's worth, I just set up a bunch of email reminders throughout my last semester to make sure I put some kind of donation plan in place by the time I start working (even if it's "nevermind, I was wrong about my values").
It is not clear whether non-EAs (whatever that exactly means) should participate in this survey. My first reaction was: "I'm not really an EA. Should I take the survey? Maybe not."
I'd think as many people as possible should take this survey to avoid selection biases.
EDIT: I took the survey,
Just to let you guys know: Like with the LW survey, I wouldn't have minded to fill in an optional 'extended section'. I imagine you made the survey shorter in order not to scare people off.
I'd love to hear thoughts connected to the LessWrong censuses: comparisons, lessons learnt, feedback on our survey, thoughts on how EAs and LessWrongers may differ, etc. The censuses have been going on a long time, and have a lot of data, so this would be interesting.
I predict there will be around 35% of people supporting meta and x-risk causes (like 80k, GWWC operating costs, MIRI, FHI etc).
[Thread for making and discussing predictions]
To expand on my predictions, I think that global poverty will be the most popular cause except among those who say they heard of EA through LessWrong (whose numbers I'll be interested to see). I also think that skepticism/atheism will be the other social movement with which most identify, and atheism the most popular religious position. In the link Jacy Anthis has given a full set of predictions to test his accuracy.
What qualifies one as an effective altruist for the purposes of this survey? Is it "self-identifies as an effective altruist"? Or something else?
Also:
were altruistic before becoming EAs
This phrase strongly suggests that the EA community needs to more clearly describe what it is they mean when they use the terms "altruism" and "effective altruism" (as I've commented before).
On the other hand, if someone cares only about pain and pleasure — both theirs and other peoples' — and would prefer that everyone's pleasure be maximized and everyone's pain be minimized; but this person is not a moral realist, and has no opinion on what constitutes The Good or thinks there's no fact of the matter about whether an act is right or wrong; well, then this person is not a utilitarian at all. Again, describing this person as a hedonistic or any other kind of utilitarian completely fails to match up with how the term is used in the philosophical literature.
You may be right to say that my use of "utilitarian" is different from how it's conventionally used in the literature
... though, I just looked at the SEP entry on Consequentialism, and I note that aside for the title of one book in the bibliography, nowhere in the article is the word "realism" even mentioned. Nor does there seem to be an entry in the list of claims making up classic utilitarianism that would seem to require moral realism. I guess you could kind of interpret one of these three conditions as requiring moral realism:
Universal Consequentialism = moral rightness depends on the consequences for all people or sentient beings (as opposed to only the individual agent, members of the individual's society, present people, or any other limited group).
Equal Consideration = in determining moral rightness, benefits to one person matter just as much as similar benefits to any other person (= all who count count equally).
Agent-neutrality = whether some consequences are better than others does not depend on whether the consequences are evaluated from the perspective of the agent (as opposed to an observer).
... but it doesn't seem obvious to me why someone who was both an ethical subjectivist couldn't say that "I'm a classical utiliarian, in that (among other things) the best description of my ethical system is that I think that the goodness of an action should be determined based on how it affects all sentient beings, that benefits to one person matter just as much as similar benefits to others, and that the perspective of the people evaluating the consequences doesn't matter. Though of course others could have ethical systems that were not well described by these items, and that wouldn't make them wrong".
Or maybe the important part in your comment was the part "...but this person is not a moral realist, and has no opinion on what constitutes The Good"? But a subjectivist doesn't say that he has no opinion on what constitutes The Good: he definitely has an opinion, and there may clearly be a right and wrong answer with regard to the kind of actions that are implied by his personal moral system; it's just that the thing that constitutes The Good will be different for people with different moral systems.
Consequenialism supplies a realistic ontology, since it's goods are facts about the real world, and utilitarian supplies an objective epistemology, since different utilitarians of the same stripe can converge. That adds up to some of the ingredients of realism, but not all of them. What is specifically lacking is an justification of comsequentialist ends as being objectively good, and not just subjectively desirable.
I'm pleased to announce the first annual survey of effective altruists. This is a short survey of around 40 questions (generally multiple choice), which several collaborators and I have put a great deal of work into and would be very grateful if you took. I'll offer $250 of my own money to one participant.
Take the survey at http://survey.effectivealtruismhub.com/
The survey should yield some interesting results such as EAs' political and religious views, what actions they take, and the causes they favour and donate to. It will also enable useful applications which will be launched immediately afterwards, such as a map of EAs with contact details and a cause-neutral register of planned donations or pledges which can be verified each year. I'll also provide an open platform for followup surveys and other actions people can take. If you'd like to suggest questions, email me or comment.
Anonymised results will be shared publicly and not belong to any individual or organisation. The most robust privacy practices will be followed, with clear opt-ins and opt-outs.
I'd like to thank Jacy Anthis, Ben Landau-Taylor, David Moss and Peter Hurford for their help.
Other surveys' results, and predictions for this one
Other surveys have had intriguing results. For example, Joey Savoie and Xio Kikauka's interviewed 42 often highly active EAs over Skype, and found that they generally had left-leaning parents, donated on average 10%, and were altruistic before becoming EAs. The time they spent on EA activities was correlated with the percentage they donated (0.4), the time their parents spend volunteering (0.3), and the percentage of their friends who were EAs (0.3).
80,000 Hours also released a questionnaire and, while this was mainly focused on their impact, it yielded a list of which careers people plan to pursue: 16% for academia, 9% for both finance and software engineering, and 8% for both medicine and non-profits.
I'd be curious to hear people's predictions as to what the results of this survey will be. You might enjoy reading or sharing them here. For my part, I'd imagine we have few conservatives or even libertarians, are over 70% male, and have directed most of our donations to poverty charities.