I have been thinking about this a lot recently, and it seems like a pretty perennial topic on the forum. This post raises good points—I’m especially interested in the idea that EA might be somewhere like a local maximum in terms of cause prioritization, such that if you “reran” EA you’d likely end up somewhere else—I but there are many ways to come at this issue. The general sentiment, as I understand it, is that the EA cause prioritization paradigm seems insufficient given how core it is.
For anyone who’s landed here, here’s a few very relevant posts, in reverse chronological order:
The apparent lack of a well-organized, public “cause ontology,” or a world model which tries to integrate, systematically and extensibly, the main EA theories of change, seems like a research gap, and I’ve been unable to find any writing which satisfactorily resolves this line of inquiry for me.
Note that it’s not just “cause prioritization” per se that this is relevant to, but really any sort of cause ontologies or frameworks for integrating/comparing theories of change. It has to do with the bigger question of how EA ought to structure its epistemic systems, and is also thus relevant to e.g. metascience and collective behavior “studies,” to name a few preparadigmatic proto-disciplines.
I have been thinking about this a lot recently, and it seems like a pretty perennial topic on the forum. This post raises good points—I’m especially interested in the idea that EA might be somewhere like a local maximum in terms of cause prioritization, such that if you “reran” EA you’d likely end up somewhere else—I but there are many ways to come at this issue. The general sentiment, as I understand it, is that the EA cause prioritization paradigm seems insufficient given how core it is.
For anyone who’s landed here, here’s a few very relevant posts, in reverse chronological order:
The “Meta Cause”—Aug ’22
The Case Against “Cause Areas”—July ‘21
Why “cause area” as the unit of analysis? - Jan ‘21
The Case of the Missing Cause Prioritization Research—Aug ‘20
The ITN framework, cost-effectiveness, and cause prioritisation—Oct ‘19
On “causes”—June ‘14
Paul Christiano on Cause Prioritization research—March ’14
The case for cause prioritization as the best cause
The apparent lack of a well-organized, public “cause ontology,” or a world model which tries to integrate, systematically and extensibly, the main EA theories of change, seems like a research gap, and I’ve been unable to find any writing which satisfactorily resolves this line of inquiry for me.
Note that it’s not just “cause prioritization” per se that this is relevant to, but really any sort of cause ontologies or frameworks for integrating/comparing theories of change. It has to do with the bigger question of how EA ought to structure its epistemic systems, and is also thus relevant to e.g. metascience and collective behavior “studies,” to name a few preparadigmatic proto-disciplines.
Would also recommend this post discussing the part of Michael Plant’s thesis discussing some philosophical issues in cause prioritisation: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bZBzvJfgShwF9LuLH/doing-good-badly-michael-plant-s-thesis-chapters-5-6-on
And my post titled “EA cause areas are just areas where great interventions should be easier to find”, inspired by the ideas from Michael Plant’s thesis: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Gch5fAqY3L66eAbDP/ea-cause-areas-are-just-areas-where-great-interventions