For all EA’s globalist ambitious, there is this assumption that people who are actually in a low-middle income country aren’t a part of the conversation
Come on, the assumption of the writers is “people looking to us for philanthropy advice are predominantly living in the First World,” and that assumption is correct. (And it’s not a self-fulfilling prophecy, either).
The problem isn’t the phrasing, of course, it’s what the phrasing indicates about the writer.
OK, then how do you know that it doesn’t merely indicate that the writer is good at writing and marketing?
You can’t just assume that your solidarity group is the most effective way to do things. Someone still has to do an impact evaluation on your social movement and the flow of talent and resources through that movement, including the particular activities of any particular organization enacting that movement.
More evaluations and analyses are always nice (and some EA orgs have done that kind of thing, I believe). But their value can be dubious and it may just be a fruitless meta trap. You may think that an EA organization is under-allocating time and money for meta evaluations, but other people are going to disagree, and the reasons for such disagreement need to be properly addressed before this kind of thing can be used as a general criticism.
No one has a monopoly on critiquing people merely for having unexamined assumptions. If you start it, it turns into a game of whataboutism and petty status-seeking where no actually useful progress is made to help with important efforts in the real world. Drop the methodology wars and focus on making actual progress.
I think that’s a little unfair. It wasn’t just have an “unexamined assumption”, he just declared that solidarity was the best way and named some organizations he liked, with no attempt at estimating and quantifying. And he’s critiquing EA, an ideology whose claim to fame is impact evaluations. Can an EA saying “okay that’s great, I agree that could be true… but how about having a quantitative impact evaluation… of any kind, at all, just to help cement the case” really be characterized as “whataboutism” / methodology war?
(I don’t think I agree with your first paragraph, but I do think it’s fair to argue that “but not all readers are in high income countries” is whataboutism until I more fully expand on what I think the practical implications are on impact evaluation. I’m going to save the discussion about the practical problems that arise from being first world centric for a different post, or drop them, depending on how my opinion changes after I’ve put more thought into it.)
Come on, the assumption of the writers is “people looking to us for philanthropy advice are predominantly living in the First World,” and that assumption is correct. (And it’s not a self-fulfilling prophecy, either).
OK, then how do you know that it doesn’t merely indicate that the writer is good at writing and marketing?
More evaluations and analyses are always nice (and some EA orgs have done that kind of thing, I believe). But their value can be dubious and it may just be a fruitless meta trap. You may think that an EA organization is under-allocating time and money for meta evaluations, but other people are going to disagree, and the reasons for such disagreement need to be properly addressed before this kind of thing can be used as a general criticism.
No one has a monopoly on critiquing people merely for having unexamined assumptions. If you start it, it turns into a game of whataboutism and petty status-seeking where no actually useful progress is made to help with important efforts in the real world. Drop the methodology wars and focus on making actual progress.
I think that’s a little unfair. It wasn’t just have an “unexamined assumption”, he just declared that solidarity was the best way and named some organizations he liked, with no attempt at estimating and quantifying. And he’s critiquing EA, an ideology whose claim to fame is impact evaluations. Can an EA saying “okay that’s great, I agree that could be true… but how about having a quantitative impact evaluation… of any kind, at all, just to help cement the case” really be characterized as “whataboutism” / methodology war?
(I don’t think I agree with your first paragraph, but I do think it’s fair to argue that “but not all readers are in high income countries” is whataboutism until I more fully expand on what I think the practical implications are on impact evaluation. I’m going to save the discussion about the practical problems that arise from being first world centric for a different post, or drop them, depending on how my opinion changes after I’ve put more thought into it.)