I also donāt know of any single place where most EA policy work is gathered together for easy reference, and Iād be grateful to anyone who compiled such a resource.
To the extent the systemic change criticism of EA is correct, EA should internalize this criticism, and should effectively change socioeconomic systems better than leftists ever expected from us.
I maintain that I donāt think the criticism is ācorrectā in any meaningful sense. Past EA efforts to examine possibilities for systemic change generally concluded that doing so wasnāt worthwhile given the limited resources at our disposal (one notable exception is Open Phil, which has more available resources than any other organization in EA).
Iām in favor of more work on figuring out policy strategy from an effectiveness perspective, but I donāt know that āEAā is responsible for that workāit has to be done by individuals, and helped along by organizations who provide incentives to those individuals, but there are reasonable incentives in place already (at least for some areas of policy). Are there specific actors within EA who ought to be doing more, but arenāt?
(I often see arguments like āEA should do Xā, but rarely āorg Y should do Xā or āindividuals in group Z should do Xā, even though arguments of the latter types seem more useful.)
Yet I donāt think weāve done our diligence to check that is in fact the case, or there is a kind of effective systemic socio-political/āsocio-economic change we should participate in.
What would this due diligence look like? Is there a certain thing you wish someone had created that no one has? Have people created the kinds of things you want, but in a low-quality fashion?
Iām in favor of more work on figuring out policy strategy from an effectiveness perspective, but I donāt know that āEAā is responsible for that work
I agree. Itās my habit for the sake of argument in casual and generic discussions in EA to treat āEAā as a unitary blob of resources. I agree if weāre seriously trying to getpoliy specific, it doesnāt make sense to talk about EA as a whole unit, but the individual actions of particular actors in and around the EA ecosystem.
Are there specific actors within EA who ought to be doing more, but arenāt?
I havenāt thought about this enough to name specific organizations. There appear to be blocs within EA who support policy reform in particular areas, which may or may not be shared with the Open Philanthropy Project. However, unlike Open Phil, the most a bloc of supporters for a particular kind of policy reform in EA appear to organize themselves into is an informal association that is all talk, no action. When I think of EA-connected policy work, the following comes to mind:
Open Phil, through their grants.
The NGOs Open Phil grants to, which usually either predate EA, or are largely independent of the community aside from their relationship with Open Phil.
A number of academic/āresearch policy institutes focused on global coordination, AI alignment, and other x-risks, launched in tandem with some of the worldās leading research universities, such as UC Berkeley, Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge.
In other words, these are all orgs that probably would have gotten off the ground, and could achieve their goals, without the support of EA, except for Open Phil as an EA-aligned org. And by āOpen Philā, itās more like just Good Ventures and a handful of program officers. So if we subtract their efforts from the rest of the policy work the EA community can take credit for, there isnāt much left.
Collectively combined, the rest of the EA community is several thousand people with a decade of experience through dozens of independently launched NGOs/āNPOs and tens of millions of dollars at their disposal who, for all we talk about public policy, havenāt done much about it. I believe some EA associations in Europe have done some policy consulting, yet, for example, in the United States, the most significant policy work that Iām aware has ever been tried in EA independent of Open Phil was EA Policy Analytics, which didnāt go very far.
What would this due diligence look like? Is there a certain thing you wish someone had created that no one has? Have people created the kinds of things you want, but in a low-quality fashion?
Iād like to see more comprehensive responses to individual critiques of EA in history, and also to the body of criticism of EA in general. I think the series of more informal blog posts different EAs have written as responses to such critiques over the years have been okay, but they havenāt really moved the dial. My impression EA, and our leftist critics, have reached a stand-still/āimpasse, but this is unnecessary. A systematic review of leftist criticism of EA is something Iām working on myself, though it isnāt at the top of my priority list to finish it in the near future.
I also donāt know of any single place where most EA policy work is gathered together for easy reference, and Iād be grateful to anyone who compiled such a resource.
I maintain that I donāt think the criticism is ācorrectā in any meaningful sense. Past EA efforts to examine possibilities for systemic change generally concluded that doing so wasnāt worthwhile given the limited resources at our disposal (one notable exception is Open Phil, which has more available resources than any other organization in EA).
Iām in favor of more work on figuring out policy strategy from an effectiveness perspective, but I donāt know that āEAā is responsible for that workāit has to be done by individuals, and helped along by organizations who provide incentives to those individuals, but there are reasonable incentives in place already (at least for some areas of policy). Are there specific actors within EA who ought to be doing more, but arenāt?
(I often see arguments like āEA should do Xā, but rarely āorg Y should do Xā or āindividuals in group Z should do Xā, even though arguments of the latter types seem more useful.)
What would this due diligence look like? Is there a certain thing you wish someone had created that no one has? Have people created the kinds of things you want, but in a low-quality fashion?
Also, I expect GiveWellās upcoming policy change work (and ongoing work by orgs like J-PAL that have GiveWell funding) to generate a lot of systematic change per dollar spent. Have you looked at J-PALās Innovation in Government Initiative at all?
I agree. Itās my habit for the sake of argument in casual and generic discussions in EA to treat āEAā as a unitary blob of resources. I agree if weāre seriously trying to getpoliy specific, it doesnāt make sense to talk about EA as a whole unit, but the individual actions of particular actors in and around the EA ecosystem.
I havenāt thought about this enough to name specific organizations. There appear to be blocs within EA who support policy reform in particular areas, which may or may not be shared with the Open Philanthropy Project. However, unlike Open Phil, the most a bloc of supporters for a particular kind of policy reform in EA appear to organize themselves into is an informal association that is all talk, no action. When I think of EA-connected policy work, the following comes to mind:
Open Phil, through their grants.
The NGOs Open Phil grants to, which usually either predate EA, or are largely independent of the community aside from their relationship with Open Phil.
A number of academic/āresearch policy institutes focused on global coordination, AI alignment, and other x-risks, launched in tandem with some of the worldās leading research universities, such as UC Berkeley, Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge.
In other words, these are all orgs that probably would have gotten off the ground, and could achieve their goals, without the support of EA, except for Open Phil as an EA-aligned org. And by āOpen Philā, itās more like just Good Ventures and a handful of program officers. So if we subtract their efforts from the rest of the policy work the EA community can take credit for, there isnāt much left.
Collectively combined, the rest of the EA community is several thousand people with a decade of experience through dozens of independently launched NGOs/āNPOs and tens of millions of dollars at their disposal who, for all we talk about public policy, havenāt done much about it. I believe some EA associations in Europe have done some policy consulting, yet, for example, in the United States, the most significant policy work that Iām aware has ever been tried in EA independent of Open Phil was EA Policy Analytics, which didnāt go very far.
Iād like to see more comprehensive responses to individual critiques of EA in history, and also to the body of criticism of EA in general. I think the series of more informal blog posts different EAs have written as responses to such critiques over the years have been okay, but they havenāt really moved the dial. My impression EA, and our leftist critics, have reached a stand-still/āimpasse, but this is unnecessary. A systematic review of leftist criticism of EA is something Iām working on myself, though it isnāt at the top of my priority list to finish it in the near future.
I havenāt. Iāll check them out. I wasnāt aware of these developments, so thanks for bringing them to my attention.