: one can’t carefully look at everything, and one has to make some judgments on what cause areas look most promising to investigate on current margins.
This is why EA rarely falls into what can accurately be described as a “streetlight effect”. We aren’t looking for one set of keys, we’re looking for a bunch of keys (threats to human welfare) and theres a bunch of us drunkards, all with differing abilities and expertise. So I’d argue if its dark somewhere, those with the expertise need to start building streetlights, but if the lights getting brighter in certain areas (RCTs in health) then we need people there too.
To attempt to complement what Peter already said,
This is why EA rarely falls into what can accurately be described as a “streetlight effect”. We aren’t looking for one set of keys, we’re looking for a bunch of keys (threats to human welfare) and theres a bunch of us drunkards, all with differing abilities and expertise. So I’d argue if its dark somewhere, those with the expertise need to start building streetlights, but if the lights getting brighter in certain areas (RCTs in health) then we need people there too.