Impartial giving, a la Effective Alturism, is not a politically neutral idea (v. short)

Recently I did some research on impartiality in which I showed that, in my sample, leftwing respondents were (seemingly) more likely to display ethical impartiality. This morning, I thought of another source that could illuminate this topic: the percentage of people in the Slate Star Codex reader’s survey (2019) who identify as effective altruists by political position.

Here are the figures if we include “sortas”:

And here are the figures if we only include those who said yes:

A few things stand out here. First of all, these are big effect sizes. It’s not common to see politics so strongly associated with something as this.

Second of all, this contradicts EA’s self-image as a neutral, or perhaps centrist, outfit. I wonder if there’s a clash between the leadership and rank and file on this?

Thirdly, this result a lot of sense if my theory of the left and right is correct. I think the left and right, at least in contemporary America, are divided by their views on impartial altruism, and these results are exactly what we’d expect to see were that correct. Causation, as always, remains a mystery, but I’m not making claims about causation- merely that there is a big gap between the left and the right on these matters. Of course, I have my suspicions about causation, but I’ll leave thinking about this to the reader.

Fourthly, notice that the big differences don’t kick in until you go past the center and into the right. Past that point, they start intensifying and EA Self-ID drops rapidly. It is not, I suspect, that being leftwing makes you very inclined towards impartial altruism, but rather that being rightwing makes you reject it. The more rightwing you are, the more likely you are to reject impartiality, but intensifying leftwing sentiments aren’t accompanied by intensifying (or declining) impartiality.

Finally, I’m extremely surprised by this result, precisely because of how the discourse around EA has been structured around centrist liberalism. This data is from 2019- maybe in 2024 impartial compassion on the left would be less likely to manifest through identifying as an effective altruist, because of how Sam Bankman-Fried, etc. tarnished the ‘‘‘brand’’’.

Please let me know if you have any further data on impartiality and left-right views. Also, let me know if you’re aware of any job opportunities.