For future submissions to the Red Teaming Contest, I’d like to see posts that are much more rigorously argued than this. I’m not concerned about whether the arguments are especially novel.
My understanding of the key claim of the post is, EA should consider reallocating some more resources from longtermist to neartermist causes. This seems plausible – perhaps some types of marginal longtermist donations are predictably ineffective, or it’s bad if community members feel that longtermism unfairly has easier access to funding – but I didn’t find the four reasons/arguments given in this post particularly compelling.
The section Political Capital Concernappears to claim: If EA as a movement doesn’t do anything to help regular near-term causes, people will think that it’s not doing anything to help people, and it could die as a movement. I agree that this is possible (though I also think a “longtermism movement” could still be reasonably successful, though unlikely to have much membership compared to EA.) However, EA continues dedicate substantial resources to near-term causes – hundreds of millions of dollars of donations each year! – and this number is only increasing, as GiveWell hopes to direct 1 billion dollars of donations per year. EA continues to highlight its contributions to near-term causes. As a movement, EA is doing fine in this regard.
So then, if the EA movement as a whole is good in this regard, who should change their actions based on the political capital concern? I think it’s more interesting to examine whether local EA groups, individuals, and organizations should have a direct positive impact on near-term causes for signalling reasons. The post only gives the following recommendation (which I find fairly vague): “Instead, the thought is: when running your utility models, factor this in however you can. Consider that utility translated from EA resources to present life, when done effectively and messaged well,[4] redounds as well on the gains to future life.” However, rededicating resources from longtermism to neartermism has costs to the longtermist projects you’re not supporting. How do we navigate these tradeoffs? It would have been great to see examples for this.
The “Social Capital Concern” section writes:
focusing on longterm problems is probably way more fun than present ones.[7] Longtermism projects seem inherently more big picture and academic, detached from the boring mundanities of present reality.
This might be true for some people, but I think for most EAs, concrete or near-term ways of helping people has a stronger emotional appeal, all else equal. I would find the inverse of the sentence a lot more convincing, to be honest: “focusing on near-term problems is probably way more fun than ones in the distant future. Near-term projects seem inherently more appealing and helpful, grounded in present-day realities.”
But that aside, if I am correct that longtermism projects are sexier by nature, when you add communal living/organizing to EA, it can probably lead to a lot of people using flimsy models to talk and discuss and theorize and pontificate, as opposed to creating tangible utility, so that they can work on cool projects without having to get their hands too dirty, all while claiming the mantle of not just the same, but greater, do-gooding.
Longtermist projects may be cool, and their utility may be more theoretical than near-term projects, but I’m extremely confused what you mean when they don’t involve getting your hands dirty (in a way such that near-termist work, such as GiveWell’s charity effectiveness research, involves more hands-on work). Effective donations have historically been the main neartermist EA thing to do, and donating is quite hands-off.
So individual EA actors, given social incentives brought upon by increased communal living, will want to find reasons to engage in longtermism projects because it will increase their social capital within the community.
This seems likely, and thanks for raising this critique (especially if it hasn’t been highlighted before), but what should we do about it? The red-teaming contest is looking for constructive and action-relevant critiques, and I think it wouldn’t be that hard to take some time to propose suggestions. The action implied by the post is that we should consider shifting more resources to near-termism, but I don’t think that would necessarily be the right move, compared to, e.g., being more thoughtful about social dynamics and making an effort to welcome neartermist perspectives.
The section on Muscle Memory Concern writes:
I think this is a reason to avoid a disproportionate emphasis on longtermism projects. Because longtermism efficacy is inherently more difficult to calculate with confidence, it can become quite easy to forget how to provide utility quickly and confidently.
I don’t know, even the most meta of longtermist projects, such as longtermist community building (or to go even another meta level, support for longtermist community building), is quite grounded in metrics and have short feedback loops, such that you can tell if your activities are having an impact – if not impact on the utility across all time, then at least something tangible, such as high-impact career transitions. I think the skills would transfer fairly well over to something more near-termist, such as community organizing for animal welfare, or running organizations in general. In contrast, if you’re doing charity effectiveness research, whether near-termist or longtermist, it can be hard to tell if your work is any good. Over time, I think that now that we have more EAs getting their hands dirty with projects instead of just earning to give, as a community, we have more experience to be able to execute projects, whether longtermist or near-termist.
As for the final section, the discount factor concern:
Future life is less likely to exist than current life. I understand the irony here, since longtermism projects seek to make it more likely that future life exists. But inherently you just have to discount the utility of each individual future life. In the aggregate, there’s no question that the utility gains are still enormous. But each individual life should have some discount based on this less-likely-to-exist factor.
I think longtermists are already accounting for the fact that we should discount future people by their likelihood to exist. That said, longtermist expected utility calculations are often more naive than they should be. For example, we often wrongly interpret reducing x-risk reduction from one cause by 1% as reducing x-risk as a whole by 1%, or conflate a 1% x-risk reduction this century with a 1% x-risk reduction across all time.
(I hope you found this comment informative, but I don’t know if I’ll respond to this comment, as I already spent an hour writing this and don’t know if it was a good use of my time.)
Thanks for the reply . Let me just address the things I think are worth responding to.
For future submissions to the Red Teaming Contest, I’d like to see posts that are much more rigorously argued than this. I’m not concerned about whether the arguments are especially novel.
Ouch. My humble suggestion: maybe be more friendly to outsiders, especially ones supportive and warm, when your movement has a reputation for being robotic/insular? Or just say “I don’t want anyone who is not part of the movement to comment.” Because that is the very obvious implication of your statement (I have no idea how much more rigorous an outsider can be than my post, which I think was thoughtful and well-researched for an outsider!).
However, EA continues dedicate substantial resources to near-term causes – hundreds of millions of dollars of donations each year! – and this number is only increasing, as GiveWell hopes to direct 1 billion dollars of donations per year. EA continues to highlight its contributions to near-term causes. As a movement, EA is doing fine in this regard.
I totally think the movement does not get the commensurate societal goodwill in return for its investment in helping people right now. As I wrote: “I know [shotermism work] happens in the movement, and my point isn’t to take away from those gains made to help people in the present.” My concern was that, given that relative disconnect, longtermism projects will only exacerbate the issue.
Longtermist projects may be cool, and their utility may be more theoretical than near-term projects, but I’m extremely confused what you mean when they don’t involve getting your hands dirty (in a way such that near-termist work, such as GiveWell’s charity effectiveness research, involves more hands-on work). Effective donations have historically been the main neartermist EA thing to do, and donating is quite hands-off.
As I said in my post, if I am wrong about this premise, then the point fails. Am I wrong though? You should all discuss. I gave my two cents. Other people seemed to agree/upvote. As a non-member, I can’t say. But if there is disagreement, then I think I raised a good point!
This seems likely, and thanks for raising this critique (especially if it hasn’t been highlighted before), but what should we do about it? The red-teaming contest is looking for constructive and action-relevant critiques, and I think it wouldn’t be that hard to take some time to propose suggestions. The action implied by the post is that we should consider shifting more resources to near-termism, but I don’t think that would necessarily be the right move, compared to, e.g., being more thoughtful about social dynamics and making an effort to welcome neartermist perspectives.
Now we are getting into a meta debate about the red teaming contest. I don’t care, tbh, because I’m not a part of this community. I contributed this, as I said, because I thought it might be helpful and I support you all. Let’s follow the logic:
An outsider offers insights that only an outsider can offer
The outsider cannot offer concrete solutions to those insights because he, by definition, is an outsider and doesn’t know enough about insider dynamics to offer solutions
An insider criticizes the outsider for not offering solutions
Hmm. My value-add was #1 above in the hopes that it could spark a discussion. I can’t give you answers. But I think giving worthwhile discussion topics is pretty good!
I think the skills would transfer fairly well over to something more near-termist, such as community organizing for animal welfare, or running organizations in general. In contrast, if you’re doing charity effectiveness research, whether near-termist or longtermist, it can be hard to tell if your work is any good. Over time, I think that now that we have more EAs getting their hands dirty with projects instead of just earning to give, as a community, we have more experience to be able to execute projects, whether longtermist or near-termist.
This all seems fair to me. If the skills are transferrable then the concern isn’t great.
I think longtermists are already accounting for the fact that we should discount future people by their likelihood to exist.
I’m really sorry that my comment was harsher than I intended. I think you’ve written a witty and incisive critique which raises some important points, but I had raised my standards since this was submitted to the Red Teaming Contest.
For future submissions to the Red Teaming Contest, I’d like to see posts that are much more rigorously argued than this. I’m not concerned about whether the arguments are especially novel.
My understanding of the key claim of the post is, EA should consider reallocating some more resources from longtermist to neartermist causes. This seems plausible – perhaps some types of marginal longtermist donations are predictably ineffective, or it’s bad if community members feel that longtermism unfairly has easier access to funding – but I didn’t find the four reasons/arguments given in this post particularly compelling.
The section Political Capital Concern appears to claim: If EA as a movement doesn’t do anything to help regular near-term causes, people will think that it’s not doing anything to help people, and it could die as a movement. I agree that this is possible (though I also think a “longtermism movement” could still be reasonably successful, though unlikely to have much membership compared to EA.) However, EA continues dedicate substantial resources to near-term causes – hundreds of millions of dollars of donations each year! – and this number is only increasing, as GiveWell hopes to direct 1 billion dollars of donations per year. EA continues to highlight its contributions to near-term causes. As a movement, EA is doing fine in this regard.
So then, if the EA movement as a whole is good in this regard, who should change their actions based on the political capital concern? I think it’s more interesting to examine whether local EA groups, individuals, and organizations should have a direct positive impact on near-term causes for signalling reasons. The post only gives the following recommendation (which I find fairly vague): “Instead, the thought is: when running your utility models, factor this in however you can. Consider that utility translated from EA resources to present life, when done effectively and messaged well, [4] redounds as well on the gains to future life.” However, rededicating resources from longtermism to neartermism has costs to the longtermist projects you’re not supporting. How do we navigate these tradeoffs? It would have been great to see examples for this.
The “Social Capital Concern” section writes:
This might be true for some people, but I think for most EAs, concrete or near-term ways of helping people has a stronger emotional appeal, all else equal. I would find the inverse of the sentence a lot more convincing, to be honest: “focusing on near-term problems is probably way more fun than ones in the distant future. Near-term projects seem inherently more appealing and helpful, grounded in present-day realities.”
Longtermist projects may be cool, and their utility may be more theoretical than near-term projects, but I’m extremely confused what you mean when they don’t involve getting your hands dirty (in a way such that near-termist work, such as GiveWell’s charity effectiveness research, involves more hands-on work). Effective donations have historically been the main neartermist EA thing to do, and donating is quite hands-off.
This seems likely, and thanks for raising this critique (especially if it hasn’t been highlighted before), but what should we do about it? The red-teaming contest is looking for constructive and action-relevant critiques, and I think it wouldn’t be that hard to take some time to propose suggestions. The action implied by the post is that we should consider shifting more resources to near-termism, but I don’t think that would necessarily be the right move, compared to, e.g., being more thoughtful about social dynamics and making an effort to welcome neartermist perspectives.
The section on Muscle Memory Concern writes:
I don’t know, even the most meta of longtermist projects, such as longtermist community building (or to go even another meta level, support for longtermist community building), is quite grounded in metrics and have short feedback loops, such that you can tell if your activities are having an impact – if not impact on the utility across all time, then at least something tangible, such as high-impact career transitions. I think the skills would transfer fairly well over to something more near-termist, such as community organizing for animal welfare, or running organizations in general. In contrast, if you’re doing charity effectiveness research, whether near-termist or longtermist, it can be hard to tell if your work is any good. Over time, I think that now that we have more EAs getting their hands dirty with projects instead of just earning to give, as a community, we have more experience to be able to execute projects, whether longtermist or near-termist.
As for the final section, the discount factor concern:
I think longtermists are already accounting for the fact that we should discount future people by their likelihood to exist. That said, longtermist expected utility calculations are often more naive than they should be. For example, we often wrongly interpret reducing x-risk reduction from one cause by 1% as reducing x-risk as a whole by 1%, or conflate a 1% x-risk reduction this century with a 1% x-risk reduction across all time.
(I hope you found this comment informative, but I don’t know if I’ll respond to this comment, as I already spent an hour writing this and don’t know if it was a good use of my time.)
Thanks for the reply . Let me just address the things I think are worth responding to.
Ouch. My humble suggestion: maybe be more friendly to outsiders, especially ones supportive and warm, when your movement has a reputation for being robotic/insular? Or just say “I don’t want anyone who is not part of the movement to comment.” Because that is the very obvious implication of your statement (I have no idea how much more rigorous an outsider can be than my post, which I think was thoughtful and well-researched for an outsider!).
I totally think the movement does not get the commensurate societal goodwill in return for its investment in helping people right now. As I wrote: “I know [shotermism work] happens in the movement, and my point isn’t to take away from those gains made to help people in the present.” My concern was that, given that relative disconnect, longtermism projects will only exacerbate the issue.
As I said in my post, if I am wrong about this premise, then the point fails. Am I wrong though? You should all discuss. I gave my two cents. Other people seemed to agree/upvote. As a non-member, I can’t say. But if there is disagreement, then I think I raised a good point!
Now we are getting into a meta debate about the red teaming contest. I don’t care, tbh, because I’m not a part of this community. I contributed this, as I said, because I thought it might be helpful and I support you all. Let’s follow the logic:
An outsider offers insights that only an outsider can offer
The outsider cannot offer concrete solutions to those insights because he, by definition, is an outsider and doesn’t know enough about insider dynamics to offer solutions
An insider criticizes the outsider for not offering solutions
Hmm. My value-add was #1 above in the hopes that it could spark a discussion. I can’t give you answers. But I think giving worthwhile discussion topics is pretty good!
This all seems fair to me. If the skills are transferrable then the concern isn’t great.
That’s good.
I’m really sorry that my comment was harsher than I intended. I think you’ve written a witty and incisive critique which raises some important points, but I had raised my standards since this was submitted to the Red Teaming Contest.