Thank you for posting. Iâm sorry to hear that some people in the community have been made to feel excluded or ânot EA enoughâ, and agree with ideas already shared above about how the community can behave better.
I generally agree with Aaronâs comments above, and just had a few points that I donât think people have already made:
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our general countermeasure is to think long and hard about potential missed opportunities and candidates for cause-X, trying to study and map ever greater territories⌠But is it the most efficient strategy to explore the space of opportunities? I suspect that in many cases you canât really see very clearly the full utility of acting in some space until you actually try to do it.
I agree that we shouldnât just think about other cause areas, but jumping into working on them directly is sort of on the other extreme, pretty costly. I think people wanting to assess other cause areas that seem promising should research their history, accomplishments, failures, etc. and talk to some of the key people working in those areas. I hope and expect that people working on cause prioritization are in fact doing something like this.
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From the perspective of the entire EA movement, it might be a better strategy to allocate the few individuals who possess the rare âEA mindsetâ across a diverse set of causes
As new potentially high-impact causes are identified, I agree, and think that this is happening. For causes which weâre pretty sure are generally not as high impact, I think that EAs will most likely do more good by working within priority causes rather than working to âlift upâ lower priority causes. This is based on my understanding that causes can vary in effectiveness by ~100x or more. There are surely exceptions though, where a certain intervention change in a âlow priorityâ cause area could have a huge impact, and itâd be exciting if we found more of those opportunities.
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Minor point here, but:
If we are in the business of giving career advice to wider publics
FWIW, 80k is not in that business. They say, âOur advice is focused on people who have the good fortune to have options for how to spend their career, and who want to make helping the world one of their main goals. We especially focus on college students and graduates living in rich countries like the U.S. or U.K. who want to take an analytical approach to doing good.â
Thank you for writing down these good counterarguments.
About your first and second points, that itâs a wasteful to have someoneâs career dedicated to a less promising cause area, I generally agree with that, but with a few caveats (which, for the most part, just reiterate and rephrase points already made in my post):
I agree thereâs value in considering whole causes as more or less promising on average, but I think that this low-resolution view overlooks a lot of important nuance, and that a better comparison should consider specific opportunities that an individual has access to. I think it is entirely plausible that a better opportunity would actually present itself in a less-promising-on-average cause area.
The EA communityâs notion of what constitutes a promising or not-so-promising cause area could be wrong, and there is value in challenging the communityâs common wisdom. I agree with your point that itâs better to assess the effectiveness of an opportunity in question without yet dedicating your entire career to it and that itâs a good idea to take a middle-ground approach between just thinking about it on the one extreme and immediately deciding to work on it for the next 40 years of your career on the other extreme. I think that trying non-conventional ideas for a short period of time (e.g. through a one-month side project or an internship program) and then reporting back to the community could be very valuable in many cases, and could also help people learn more about themselves (what they like to do and are good at).
I would not urge people who are very cause neutral and EA-minded to work on a mainstream non-EA cause like curing cancer (but I would also not completely rule that out, mainly due to the âopportunity perspectiveâ mentioned in point #1). But for people who are not that cause neutral, I would try to be more accepting of their choice than I feel the EA community currently is. As I wrote in my discussion with Aaron, I see this post being more about âwe should be more accepting of non-EA causesâ than âwe should encourage non-EA causesâ.
About your last comment, I really appreciate 80kâs directness about what the scope of their activity is (and their being nonterritorial and encouraging of the presence of other orgs targeting populations that 80k donât see as their main target audience). As an entire community (that transcends the scopes of specific orgs) I think we totally should be in the business of giving career advice to wider publics.
Thank you for posting. Iâm sorry to hear that some people in the community have been made to feel excluded or ânot EA enoughâ, and agree with ideas already shared above about how the community can behave better.
I generally agree with Aaronâs comments above, and just had a few points that I donât think people have already made:
--
I agree that we shouldnât just think about other cause areas, but jumping into working on them directly is sort of on the other extreme, pretty costly. I think people wanting to assess other cause areas that seem promising should research their history, accomplishments, failures, etc. and talk to some of the key people working in those areas. I hope and expect that people working on cause prioritization are in fact doing something like this.
--
As new potentially high-impact causes are identified, I agree, and think that this is happening. For causes which weâre pretty sure are generally not as high impact, I think that EAs will most likely do more good by working within priority causes rather than working to âlift upâ lower priority causes. This is based on my understanding that causes can vary in effectiveness by ~100x or more. There are surely exceptions though, where a certain intervention change in a âlow priorityâ cause area could have a huge impact, and itâd be exciting if we found more of those opportunities.
--
Minor point here, but:
FWIW, 80k is not in that business. They say, âOur advice is focused on people who have the good fortune to have options for how to spend their career, and who want to make helping the world one of their main goals. We especially focus on college students and graduates living in rich countries like the U.S. or U.K. who want to take an analytical approach to doing good.â
Thank you for writing down these good counterarguments.
About your first and second points, that itâs a wasteful to have someoneâs career dedicated to a less promising cause area, I generally agree with that, but with a few caveats (which, for the most part, just reiterate and rephrase points already made in my post):
I agree thereâs value in considering whole causes as more or less promising on average, but I think that this low-resolution view overlooks a lot of important nuance, and that a better comparison should consider specific opportunities that an individual has access to. I think it is entirely plausible that a better opportunity would actually present itself in a less-promising-on-average cause area.
The EA communityâs notion of what constitutes a promising or not-so-promising cause area could be wrong, and there is value in challenging the communityâs common wisdom. I agree with your point that itâs better to assess the effectiveness of an opportunity in question without yet dedicating your entire career to it and that itâs a good idea to take a middle-ground approach between just thinking about it on the one extreme and immediately deciding to work on it for the next 40 years of your career on the other extreme. I think that trying non-conventional ideas for a short period of time (e.g. through a one-month side project or an internship program) and then reporting back to the community could be very valuable in many cases, and could also help people learn more about themselves (what they like to do and are good at).
I would not urge people who are very cause neutral and EA-minded to work on a mainstream non-EA cause like curing cancer (but I would also not completely rule that out, mainly due to the âopportunity perspectiveâ mentioned in point #1). But for people who are not that cause neutral, I would try to be more accepting of their choice than I feel the EA community currently is. As I wrote in my discussion with Aaron, I see this post being more about âwe should be more accepting of non-EA causesâ than âwe should encourage non-EA causesâ.
About your last comment, I really appreciate 80kâs directness about what the scope of their activity is (and their being nonterritorial and encouraging of the presence of other orgs targeting populations that 80k donât see as their main target audience). As an entire community (that transcends the scopes of specific orgs) I think we totally should be in the business of giving career advice to wider publics.
Agree on all points :)
And thank you, again, for bringing up this issue of acceptance.