EA - EA is Not Religious Enough (EA should emulate peak Quakerism) by Lawrence Newport

Link to original articleWelcome 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: EA is Not Religious Enough (EA should emulate peak Quakerism), published by Lawrence Newport on October 1, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Here is a post from my blog which I'd really appreciate community thoughts on - and what it might look like if we were to seriously examine how to repeat some of the policy victories of past movements of this kind. Essentially, I believe that using examples from the past can provide us with blueprints for effective actions. This is especially true the more that EA wants to grow, and the more that longtermism implies both policy actions and longevity of the movement. Text is below (I've deleted the footnotes for slightly more readability on the forums): Pretty much every criticism of Effective Altruism has some claim that EA “is a lot like a religion”. This is a strange and useless criticism. Religion is just an example of what it looks like when people believe things. If you watch political people (or even sometimes sports fans) together in large groups, multiple aspects of their behaviour look decidedly religious - they address one another with special terms, they have chants, sing songs, have sacred texts or even sacred unimpeachable characters, they adorn themselves in signals of their beliefs, they pontificate about perfect worlds in which their policy (or victory) is fully realised and everyone lives happily ever after, and they have special beliefs built upon assumptions they protect emotionally regardless (frequently) of evidence - it doesn’t mean these are religions. However, I think EA does have a religion problem, namely, that it isn’t religious enough. Tyler Cowen argued at EAG DC that EAs should “be more Mormon”. His point was, essentially, that the historical lessons from Mormon communities showed clear upsides and thrust people in the general direction of “doing good”. In other words, the vibe of Mormonism was probably an overall good vibe and we shouldn’t spend forever analysing a priori what is best to do - we can learn from history and emulate successful groups. (I should note, he didn’t use the word vibe, but that is a good description of the approach to take to large historical trends we want to emulate). I agree with his criticism that EAs should weigh, understand and emulate suitable historical precedents and learn more clearly from them, but I strongly disagree that Mormonism, or another established church, is the right fit. Instead: EAs should emulate Quakerism. There are very good reasons for EAs to consider this history as the closest set of lessons they could learn from. Doing Longterm Good as a Minority View Quakerism, since its inception, was a reforming and productive presence. Quakerism, at its heart, is essentially a radical form of protestantism. Quakers believe that no individual has a privileged access to the word of God and thus everyone is to be listened to, heard and able to speak. It is, in many ways, more radical than evangelicals today - it takes further the concept of individual interpretation of the bible and instead moves this to individual interpretation writ-large. God speaks through everyone, and it is only through reflection, consideration and understanding of multiple views, that the Quaker community believes it can better understand what it is to do. This belief has had outsized positive effects since its inception. George Fox proposed these ideas in the English civil wars, a time period wherein radical protestants were voicing increasingly violent and concerning things. Inspired by George Fox, the Quakers arise, continue that radical protestant logic a step further, emphasising how this actually leads to a belief in toleration of views and non-violence and set about trying to convince essentially ISIS-level protestant groups that “hey, maybe you should be non-violent and actu...