A qualitative analysis of value drift in EA

Abstract

About a year ago, after working with the Effective Thesis Project, I started my undergraduate thesis on value drift in the effective altruism movement. I interviewed eighteen EAs about their experiences with value drift and used a grounded theory approach to identify common themes. This post is a condensed report of my results. The full, official version of the thesis can be found here. Note that I’ve changed some of the terms used in my thesis in response to feedback, specifically “moral drift”, “internal value drift”, and “external value drift”. This post uses the most up-to-date terminology at time of posting, though these terms still a work-in-progress. Value drift is a term EAs and rationalists use to refer to changes in our values over time, especially changes away from EA and other altruistic values.We want to promote morally good value changes and avoid morally bad value changes, but distinguishing between the two can be difficult since we tend to be poor judges of our own morality. EAs seem to think that value drift is most likely to affect the human population as a whole, less likely to affect the EA community, and even less likely to affect themselves. This discrepancy might be due to an overconfidence bias, so perhaps EAs ought to assume that we’re more likely to value drift than we intuitively think we are.Being connected with the EA community, getting involved in EA causes, being open to new ideas, prioritizing a sustainable lifestyle, and certain personality traits seem associated with less value drift from EA values. The study of EAs’ experiences with value drift is rather neglected, so further research is likely to be highly impactful and beneficial for the community.