I think that the suggestions here, and most of the arguments, should apply to “Everyday EA ” which isn’t necessarily longtermistic. I’d be interested in your thoughts about where exactly should we make a distinction between everyday longtermist actions and non-longtermist everyday actions.
I agree that quite a bit of the content seems not to be longtermist-specific. But I was approaching it from a longtermist perspective (where I think the motivation is particularly strong), and I haven’t thought it through so carefully from other angles.
I think the key dimension of “longtermism” that I’m relying on is the idea that the longish-term (say 50+ years) indirect effects of one’s actions are a bigger deal in expectation than the directly observable effects. I don’t think that that requires e.g. any assumptions about astronomically large futures. But if you thought that such effects were very small compared to directly observable effects, then you might think that the best everyday actions involved e.g. saving money or fundraising for charities you had strong reason to believe were effective.
Hmm. There are many studies on “friend of a friend” relationships (say this on how happiness propagates through the friendship network). I think that it would be interesting to research how some moral behaviors or beliefs propagate through the friendship networks (I’d be surprised if there isn’t a study on the effects of a transition to a vegetarian diet, say). Once we have a reasonable model of how that works we could make a basic analysis of the impact of such daily actions. (Although I expect some non-linear effects that would make this very complicated)
I agree that quite a bit of the content seems not to be longtermist-specific. But I was approaching it from a longtermist perspective (where I think the motivation is particularly strong), and I haven’t thought it through so carefully from other angles.
I think the key dimension of “longtermism” that I’m relying on is the idea that the longish-term (say 50+ years) indirect effects of one’s actions are a bigger deal in expectation than the directly observable effects. I don’t think that that requires e.g. any assumptions about astronomically large futures. But if you thought that such effects were very small compared to directly observable effects, then you might think that the best everyday actions involved e.g. saving money or fundraising for charities you had strong reason to believe were effective.
Hmm. There are many studies on “friend of a friend” relationships (say this on how happiness propagates through the friendship network). I think that it would be interesting to research how some moral behaviors or beliefs propagate through the friendship networks (I’d be surprised if there isn’t a study on the effects of a transition to a vegetarian diet, say). Once we have a reasonable model of how that works we could make a basic analysis of the impact of such daily actions. (Although I expect some non-linear effects that would make this very complicated)