Against Onion Rings (Failed Post)
Background
This is a failed post.
Basically, I noticed that if you combined the ideas inner ring (from CS Lewis’ essay The Inner Ring) and onion test (from EA Forum Post The Onion Test for Personal and Institutional Honesty) , then you get onion ring. I found this hilarious, and so I started writing a post about it.
However, whilst conducting painstaking research for the post I told about 5 of my friends and none of them were familiar with both the concepts of the inner ring and of the onion test.
This was quite upsetting. The joke was already pretty thin on the ground, and now I’ve discovered that the approximate target audience for this joke (the intersection of people who have read The Inner Ring have read The Onion Test for Personal and Institutional Honesty and have a good sense of hummus) is approximately me.
To make matters worse, after spending a while writing about onion rings I started to think that I actually had a serious point to make, and started trying to turn the post into a compelling criticism of the EA community and its status dynamics.
Anyway, whilst I’ve basically abandoned the endeavour, I also have spent a lot of time on it and so I’m sharing it anyway.
Summary of sections
A: I talk about the inner ring. Starts off a bit slow, but get to some good images at the end.
B: This is where the post really hits it’s stride, especially the bit about onions.
C: Here I try halfheartedly to pull the different parts of the post together into a coherent overall question. As noted in the body of the text, it is mostly word salad.
D: Continous going downhill again, but we do get some nice images.
E: This just says ‘I rest my case’
A
Proto EA community building theorist CS Lewis has an essay called ‘The Inner Ring’.
To quote more or less directly from his essay:
Within social groups and communities, there are inner rings, which is where the cool people are and where the cool shit happens. However within the inner rings there are even innerer rings, which is where the really cool shit happens, and so on add infinite.
People want to be part of the inner and innerer rings, but this is impossible because of the infinite aspect and also leads them to become a scoundrel. Also, Narnia.
What does any of this have to do with EA? I’m glad you asked. Please look at the following images of effective altruism and see if you notice anything about their topographical structure.
That’s right, inner and innerer rings everywhere in effective altruism.
'Ok, this is all circumstantial' you might say. 'You haven't proven anything, you've pasted some images - where's the reason and evidence and bayesianism?'
This is a valid point. However, luckily for me I have actually left EA and am now a post-EA which means I’m no longer restricted by oppressive notions like validity and mostly base my epistemology on felt senses and asking the opinions of people inside me and internet images.
B
So according to Lewis, social groups and communities contain, and perhaps are even constituted by, a series of inner and innerer rings, and EA is a hotbed of corruption.
And from herbology, we know that another thing that is constituted by a series of inner and innerer rings is an onion.
And also, following on from The Onion Test for Personal and Institutional Honesty, we know that the onion test is a test of personal and institutional honesty.
You (or your organization or your mission or your family or etc.) pass the “onion test” for honesty if each layer hides but does not mislead about the information hidden within.
To better understand the onion test, it’s worth going through a number of worked examples.
The onion: The onion passes the onion test. It is an onion all the way down, if you bite into an onion and are disgusted, you only have yourself to blame. It is also translucent - enabling it to simultaneously hide what’s underneath but not mislead about it. Also, the first letters of ‘onion’ predict the later letters, and these could be repeated in a long pattern eg. ‘onionionionionionion…’ which also speaks to it’s honesty. Whilst onions may not be particularly appealing in and of themselves, they do at least wear their hearts on their sleeves.
The onion ring: The onion ring fails the onion test - it is a fundamentally dishonest food. It lures you in with the golden batter outside, and then you bite in, and you get a mouthful of onion which is a disgrace, and then you are told that you can’t return it because it has a bite out of it and apparently it’s exactly what you ordered. Toffee apples are similar in this way. (Important note: Interestingly, battered halloumi does in fact pass the onion test. This is because although batter and halloumi are different foods, they are in fact the same kind of food - delicious carb. Similarly, if you wrappen an onion inside a cabbage this would also pass the onion test, though would obviously be disgusting. For a more thorough discussion of this point I recommend reading Andy Clark’s Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action and the Embodied Mind).
Kellog’s Crunchy Nut Clusters: Recently I finished a box of Kellog’s Crunchy Nut Clusters, (which those of you familiar with the world of cereal will recognise as the pinnacle of gastronomical human achievement) and I asked my mum to buy me another box. However, she didn’t want to do this because she thought that they were too expensive, and new that there was a similar and cheaper (though drastically inferior) brand called Jordan’s Country Crisp Chocolate. So she kept the original packaging for the Crunchy Nut Clusters, bought the Country Crisp, and then placed the Country Crisp inside the Crunchy Nut Clusters packaging. Of course I saw through this cynical ruse immediately and was livid. (This is a true story) This explains my personal interest in the topic as well as my ongoing trust issues. (In fact now that I’m writing this, it occurs to me that this is part of a larger pattern. She also used to buy low salt and sugar Heinz tomato ketchup, and then pour it into the normal Heinz ketchup bottle so as to deceive me, which then meant that I would have to manually readd the salt and sugar so as to ensure it tasted ok).
C
Warning, the exegesis gets rather technical in this section, and to be honest is mostly word salad.
So we know that
The EA community is composed of inner rings
The Onion test is a test of institutional transparency
This begs the question, does the EA community pass the onion test? Are the inner rings in EA like the rings of an onion (fundamentally transparent) or like onion rings (fundamentally deceptive).
I believe the latter.
D
So imagine the following, let’s say you care about being tall. And you are wandering round your University Fresher’s Fair and you see a massive onion ring, which is 10 metres tall. Also, they are stood on top of the onion ring. And they say:
Hey, do you care about being tall? We also care about being tall. Come and join us and you’ll be tall as well. Also here’s a t-shirt which says ‘tall’ on it and a book about being tall. Also, maybe make a pledge.
And you’re like hmmmk and you climb the onion ring.
Once you get on top of the onion ring, you see that there’s another onion ring, on top of the first onion ring, and this onion ring is 10x bigger. And someone says:
Hey, do you care about being tall? If yes, come join us up here it’s really tall up here. All you need to do is get a job in these areas, which are the tall areas.
And you’re like… erm… wait a minute. I thought I already was tall?
And they say:
Well yes, that’s right you are already tall. Gosh how tall you are, well done. But here’s the thing, you look particularly promising, like you could go a long way. Like you could be really really tall, like us. Gargantuan in fact. You could be at least an order of magnitude taller over here, and how tall you are now basically rounds to zero.
And you’re like… hmmm… I guess I did always suspect that I had a lot of potential, and this expected tallness reasoning sure does sound compelling.
And then it’s 5 years later and all of your friends are in an onion ring and you smell of onions but there’s still another onion ring in front of you which you are trying to climb and because of that you still don’t feel tall.
Importantly, if you view it from the right angle, the layers of onion rings of increasing height will look like a pyramid.
And pyramids, after circles, are effective altruism’s favourite shape.
E
I rest my case.
Ha, I loved it!