This is really interesting and I’d be happy to see a more recent statistic (though I don’t expect it to have changed by much). But even if there are more of us than I think, I find very little consideration, in EA contexts, of concrete leftist ideas, e.g. “Maybe capitalism is a problem we can and should be addressing, now that we have billions of dollars committed to EA”, or “Could charitable giving do in some cases more harm than good by shifting the perceived responsibility from the state to individuals?”.
I agree that this could apply to every other philosophical school too. I do feel, however, that coming from a mostly English speaking perspective, economically liberal ideas are already much more ingrained into the core of EA than leftist ideas are, since they are more prominent in those political systems(?). Then there are probably perspectives that are even less present, like those of people in developing countries or with backgrounds of poverty or sickness or oppression.
Ultimately, since we all share the pragmatism and the will to test different courses of action for improving the world, I think this could be less of a political debate than is found outside EA on the same ideas, and more about just expanding the classes of ideas we consider, and deciding where to look for them and who could look for them best.
This is really interesting and I’d be happy to see a more recent statistic (though I don’t expect it to have changed by much). But even if there are more of us than I think, I find very little consideration, in EA contexts, of concrete leftist ideas, e.g. “Maybe capitalism is a problem we can and should be addressing, now that we have billions of dollars committed to EA”, or “Could charitable giving do in some cases more harm than good by shifting the perceived responsibility from the state to individuals?”.
I agree that this could apply to every other philosophical school too. I do feel, however, that coming from a mostly English speaking perspective, economically liberal ideas are already much more ingrained into the core of EA than leftist ideas are, since they are more prominent in those political systems(?). Then there are probably perspectives that are even less present, like those of people in developing countries or with backgrounds of poverty or sickness or oppression.
Ultimately, since we all share the pragmatism and the will to test different courses of action for improving the world, I think this could be less of a political debate than is found outside EA on the same ideas, and more about just expanding the classes of ideas we consider, and deciding where to look for them and who could look for them best.