Regarding deference, I think that it’s important to make clear that this holds mostly for the EA community, rather than the EA network.
When someone who is not actively involved in the EA community but is nevertheless working on a specific recommended cause, especially a more established cause, it may well be the case that their view on the matter has less impact than their career success.
An academic working on some specific aspect of welfare policies who is funded by EA orgs, need not think about whether this is the most important thing they can do, but instead make sure to do the best job possible at at both research and it’s dissemination.
Someone working on animal advocacy should pay close attention to the current opinion on animal welfare and research coming out of faunalytics, even if that contradicts their intuition, unless they have spent a lot of time thinking these stuff through.
This is relevant to movement building. Work that aims at outreach can involve more deferential point of view when seeking to inform people who might be interested in paths in the EA network, or more inquisitive activities aimed at people who might consider themselves as part of the EA community.
Regarding deference, I think that it’s important to make clear that this holds mostly for the EA community, rather than the EA network.
When someone who is not actively involved in the EA community but is nevertheless working on a specific recommended cause, especially a more established cause, it may well be the case that their view on the matter has less impact than their career success.
An academic working on some specific aspect of welfare policies who is funded by EA orgs, need not think about whether this is the most important thing they can do, but instead make sure to do the best job possible at at both research and it’s dissemination.
Someone working on animal advocacy should pay close attention to the current opinion on animal welfare and research coming out of faunalytics, even if that contradicts their intuition, unless they have spent a lot of time thinking these stuff through.
This is relevant to movement building. Work that aims at outreach can involve more deferential point of view when seeking to inform people who might be interested in paths in the EA network, or more inquisitive activities aimed at people who might consider themselves as part of the EA community.