Do you think that some of the people who would have been attracted to effective philanthropy in the past now just join effective altruism?
Some, sure. EA seems to be a lot more mainstream now than it was even 3-4 years ago, so that’s probably the main reason.
While I think EP has been influential, I just didn’t find the work from CEP and similar places as intellectually engaging as what EA puts out (or as important overall).
I think the main thing EA has going for it over EP is that it has a much better track record of taking ideas seriously. EP explored a lot of promising directions and anticipated a number of things that EA organizations ended up doing (e.g., incorporating expected value estimates into grantmaking). But in my view the key players, in trying to optimize for elite credibility at the same time as intellectual rigor, didn’t give themselves enough weirdness points to work with. As a result, they both failed to pursue their best ideas to their logical conclusion and didn’t do enough to distinguish between transformative ideas and mediocre ones.
Some, sure. EA seems to be a lot more mainstream now than it was even 3-4 years ago, so that’s probably the main reason.
I think the main thing EA has going for it over EP is that it has a much better track record of taking ideas seriously. EP explored a lot of promising directions and anticipated a number of things that EA organizations ended up doing (e.g., incorporating expected value estimates into grantmaking). But in my view the key players, in trying to optimize for elite credibility at the same time as intellectual rigor, didn’t give themselves enough weirdness points to work with. As a result, they both failed to pursue their best ideas to their logical conclusion and didn’t do enough to distinguish between transformative ideas and mediocre ones.