Thanks so much for this, I think it’s really valuable to have this on the forum and start a structured conversation on this.
To me, the first reason mentioned against separate field building—declining critical thinking and questioning within subfields—seems really key.
I think a subfield-oriented loose movement structure would probably lead to decline of epistemic standards and an underplaying of cause prioritization, differences in expected impact, etc as a result of groupthink and appealing to non-EA parts of these fields and I think to some degree this is already happening.
I don’t want to turn this into an argument about specific orgs because it is more of a general observation and more about incentive structures.
I have the general impression that single-cause organizations do not face the right incentives for truth seeking and cause prioritization, both in terms of epistemics (everyone working there sharing some beliefs) and organizational strategy and goals (the bar for an org saying that what they worked on has become less important seems v high, indeed fundraising incentives will always point in the other direction).
To focus more on the positive case which I find easier to talk about publicly:
Being in a team (research team at FP) where researchers are working on different causes, with different beliefs and different methodologies, brings a lot of benefits in all directions—e.g. encouraging GHD research to be more risk-neutral (not combining topical engagement with risk aversion, as GiveWell does), to work on different GCRs being more comparative, to work on climate being benchmarked against other risks, etc.
This is not an all-things-considered view, all I am really saying is that I think this argument against sub-field building seems quite important.
Thanks so much for this, I think it’s really valuable to have this on the forum and start a structured conversation on this.
To me, the first reason mentioned against separate field building—declining critical thinking and questioning within subfields—seems really key.
I think a subfield-oriented loose movement structure would probably lead to decline of epistemic standards and an underplaying of cause prioritization, differences in expected impact, etc as a result of groupthink and appealing to non-EA parts of these fields and I think to some degree this is already happening.
Where would you say this is already happening?
I don’t want to turn this into an argument about specific orgs because it is more of a general observation and more about incentive structures.
I have the general impression that single-cause organizations do not face the right incentives for truth seeking and cause prioritization, both in terms of epistemics (everyone working there sharing some beliefs) and organizational strategy and goals (the bar for an org saying that what they worked on has become less important seems v high, indeed fundraising incentives will always point in the other direction).
To focus more on the positive case which I find easier to talk about publicly: Being in a team (research team at FP) where researchers are working on different causes, with different beliefs and different methodologies, brings a lot of benefits in all directions—e.g. encouraging GHD research to be more risk-neutral (not combining topical engagement with risk aversion, as GiveWell does), to work on different GCRs being more comparative, to work on climate being benchmarked against other risks, etc.
This is not an all-things-considered view, all I am really saying is that I think this argument against sub-field building seems quite important.