I can imagine that feedback loop (good in the world → movement building) being important at the beginning. Arguably one of the reasons why the global health & development → longtermism change of minds is so common is because longtermism has good arguments in principle but no big tangible wins to its name, so it’s better able to convince those who pay attention to it because they’re drawn to EA because of global health & development’s big wins, rather than convince people directly.
But even in that case, if one wants longtermism to get a few big wins to increase its movement building appeal, it would surprise me if the way to do this was through more earning to give, rather than by spending down longtermism’s big pot of money and using some of its labor for direct work.
if one wants longtermism to get a few big wins to increase its movement building appeal, it would surprise me if the way to do this was through more earning to give, rather than by spending down longtermism’s big pot of money and using some of its labor for direct work
I agree – I think the practical implication is more “this consideration updates us towards funding/allocating labor towards direct work over explicit movement building” and less “this consideration updates us towards E2G over direct work/movement building”.
More off-the-cuff thought:
I can imagine that feedback loop (good in the world → movement building) being important at the beginning. Arguably one of the reasons why the global health & development → longtermism change of minds is so common is because longtermism has good arguments in principle but no big tangible wins to its name, so it’s better able to convince those who pay attention to it because they’re drawn to EA because of global health & development’s big wins, rather than convince people directly.
But even in that case, if one wants longtermism to get a few big wins to increase its movement building appeal, it would surprise me if the way to do this was through more earning to give, rather than by spending down longtermism’s big pot of money and using some of its labor for direct work.
I agree – I think the practical implication is more “this consideration updates us towards funding/allocating labor towards direct work over explicit movement building” and less “this consideration updates us towards E2G over direct work/movement building”.