There should be a clear separation between funding of cause areas and people working on specific cause areas to avoid conflicts of interest that inevitably affects people’s judgements. For contentious cause areas it may be better to commission a broad group of expert stakeholders with a diversity of knowledge, background and opinions to assess the validity of a cause area based on EA criteria. There are currently some cause areas that seem very ideologically driven by some highly regarded folks in EA. These folks seem to both generate the material that is the main source material that supports the cause area as well as are the ones steering funding. This asymmetry in power and funding undoubtedly influences the cause areas that end up becoming and staying prominent in EA.
There should be a clear separation between funding of cause areas and people working on specific cause areas to avoid conflicts of interest that inevitably affects people’s judgements. For contentious cause areas it may be better to commission a broad group of expert stakeholders with a diversity of knowledge, background and opinions to assess the validity of a cause area based on EA criteria. There are currently some cause areas that seem very ideologically driven by some highly regarded folks in EA. These folks seem to both generate the material that is the main source material that supports the cause area as well as are the ones steering funding. This asymmetry in power and funding undoubtedly influences the cause areas that end up becoming and staying prominent in EA.