I’m hugely in favour of principles first as I think it builds a more healthy community. However, my concern is that if you try too hard to be cause neutral, you end up artificially constrained. For example, Global Heath and Wellbeing is often a good introduction point to the concept of effectiveness. Then once people are focused on maximisation, it’s easier to introduce Animal Welfare and X-Risk.
I agree that GHW is an excellent introduction to effectiveness and we should watch out for the practical limitations of going too meta, but I want to flag that seeing GHW as a pipeline to animal welfare and longtermism is problematic, both from a common-sense /​ moral uncertainty view (it feels deceitful and that’s something to avoid for its own sake) and a long-run strategic consequentialist view (I think the EA community would last longer and look better if it focused on being transparent, honest, and upfront about what most members care about, and it’s really important for the long term future of society that the core EA principles don’t die).
I agree with the overall point, though I am not I’ve seen much empirical evidence for the GHD as a good starting point claim (or at least I think it’s often overstated). I got into EA stuff though GHD, but, this may have just been because there were a lot more GHD/​EA intro materials at the time. I think that the eco-system is now a lot more developed and I wouldn’t be surprised if GHD didn’t have much of an edge over cause first outreach (for AW or x-risk).
Maybe our analysis should be focussed on EA principles, but the interventions themselves can be branded however they like? E.g. We’re happy to fund GHD giving games because we believe that they contribute to promoting caring about impartiality and cost-effectiveness in doing good—but they don’t get much of a boost or penalty from being GHD giving games (as opposed to some other suitable cause area).
I’m hugely in favour of principles first as I think it builds a more healthy community. However, my concern is that if you try too hard to be cause neutral, you end up artificially constrained. For example, Global Heath and Wellbeing is often a good introduction point to the concept of effectiveness. Then once people are focused on maximisation, it’s easier to introduce Animal Welfare and X-Risk.
I agree that GHW is an excellent introduction to effectiveness and we should watch out for the practical limitations of going too meta, but I want to flag that seeing GHW as a pipeline to animal welfare and longtermism is problematic, both from a common-sense /​ moral uncertainty view (it feels deceitful and that’s something to avoid for its own sake) and a long-run strategic consequentialist view (I think the EA community would last longer and look better if it focused on being transparent, honest, and upfront about what most members care about, and it’s really important for the long term future of society that the core EA principles don’t die).
I agree with the overall point, though I am not I’ve seen much empirical evidence for the GHD as a good starting point claim (or at least I think it’s often overstated). I got into EA stuff though GHD, but, this may have just been because there were a lot more GHD/​EA intro materials at the time. I think that the eco-system is now a lot more developed and I wouldn’t be surprised if GHD didn’t have much of an edge over cause first outreach (for AW or x-risk).
Maybe our analysis should be focussed on EA principles, but the interventions themselves can be branded however they like? E.g. We’re happy to fund GHD giving games because we believe that they contribute to promoting caring about impartiality and cost-effectiveness in doing good—but they don’t get much of a boost or penalty from being GHD giving games (as opposed to some other suitable cause area).