Basically, what I mean here is that EA/LessWrong has wisely not fallen for shiny political discussions and are able to stay focused on the original goal, for EA that is doing the most good, and for LessWrong it’s rationality. And there is a massive lesson for people that try to do good in the world from Robin Hanson: Pull sideways, rather than forwards or backwards in politics.
EA’s comparative advantage is in noticing and effectively dealing with important, less-discussed causes like AI, global poverty, bio-risk, x-risk more generally, and more. Another advantage EA has is that it roughly tracks the truth epistemically (within some error bars), and this matters because while you do need to, at the end, be able to put your vision into practice, you also need to be able to notice how the world actually looks like in order to do any goal well, like do-gooding. Intelligence and rationality helps every cause. And without significant changes to how humans work, politics is where we are at our most irrational, and EA has rightly found political power to be low tractability, medium-high importance, and low neglectedness. Political discussion is much much lower importance than political power. It’s a perfectly anti-effective cause area.
As for my ranking of causes, I’d say the top 5 causes of impact are:
Basically, what I mean here is that EA/LessWrong has wisely not fallen for shiny political discussions and are able to stay focused on the original goal, for EA that is doing the most good, and for LessWrong it’s rationality. And there is a massive lesson for people that try to do good in the world from Robin Hanson: Pull sideways, rather than forwards or backwards in politics.
EA’s comparative advantage is in noticing and effectively dealing with important, less-discussed causes like AI, global poverty, bio-risk, x-risk more generally, and more. Another advantage EA has is that it roughly tracks the truth epistemically (within some error bars), and this matters because while you do need to, at the end, be able to put your vision into practice, you also need to be able to notice how the world actually looks like in order to do any goal well, like do-gooding. Intelligence and rationality helps every cause. And without significant changes to how humans work, politics is where we are at our most irrational, and EA has rightly found political power to be low tractability, medium-high importance, and low neglectedness. Political discussion is much much lower importance than political power. It’s a perfectly anti-effective cause area.
As for my ranking of causes, I’d say the top 5 causes of impact are:
AI Alignment
X-risk/Longtermism
Global Health
Global Poverty
Cause X like inequality.