“My disagreements with CEA’s approach to stewarding EA” by hbesceli

About this episode

hbesceli discusses disagreements with CEA's approach to stewarding the EA community.

[Cross posted from my substack] In their EA Forum post last year, CEA described their ‘principles-first approach to stewardship of the EA community’. I'm a big fan of principles-first stewardship in principle. I think EA needs a steward, and I think that stewardship should be organised around EA's core principles. But I think CEA's particular growth-centric approach to principles-first stewardship is stewarding EA in the wrong direction. I think that: The key question for principles-first stewardship should be "Is EA a place that embodies and nurtures EA principles?" I think there are serious reasons to worry that it isn't such a place - that EA has become more ideological and less truth-seeking over time, and that growth focused approaches to community building like CEAs are a big part of the reason why. A summary of my main points: It seems to me that EA is dying. I’m less concerned here about growth metrics, and more concerned about the health of EA as a community and a moral/ intellectual project. It seems to me that EA is losing its question-nature, and also has become something that people are less and less willing to stand behind or participate [...] --- Outline…

People in this episode

Host: EA Forum Team

Guest: hbesceli

Topics covered

• effective altruism
• community building
• principles-first stewardship
• growth metrics
• truth-seeking

Keywords

• effective altruism
• CEA
• stewardship
• community health
• ideological concerns

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: CEA

Books & works: EA Forum

More episodes of EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

• “Coming Around To Political Donations” by Jeff Kaufman 🔸 · June 12, 2026 · 4 min
• “animal welfare has an evidence problem” by matthes · June 6, 2026 · 27 min
• “After making sure we don’t all die, this should be the first priority” by Yaqi Grover · May 31, 2026 · 6 min
• “Donating 80% While It Still Counts” by Jeff Kaufman 🔸 · May 27, 2026 · 12 min
• “Why now might be the best time ever to start an animal charity” by Aidan Alexander, Aaron Boddy🔸, Ambitious Impact · May 26, 2026 · 8 min
• “Announcing the Rethink Priorities Cross-Cause Fund” by Rethink Priorities · May 22, 2026 · 33 min