Hi! I was one of the downvoters on your earlier post about Israel/Palestine, but looking at the link again now, I see that nobody ever gave a good explanation for why the post got such a negative reception. I’m sorry that we gave such a hostile reaction without explaining. I can’t speak for all EAs, but I suspect that some of the main reasons for hesitation might be:
Israel-related issues are extremely politically charged, so taking any stance whatsoever might risk damaging the carefully non-politicized reputation that other parts of the EA movement have built up. I imagine that EAs would have similar hesitation about taking a strong stance on abortion rights (even though EAs often have strong views on population ethics), or officially endorsing a candidate in a US presidential election (even though the majority of EAs are probably Democrats).
The Israel/Palestine conflict is the opposite of neglected—tons of media coverage, hundreds of activist groups, and lots of funding on both sides. A typical EA might argue that it would be better for a newly-formed activist group to focus on something like the current situation in Chad, which attracts hundreds of times less media coverage although a much larger number of people have died. (Of course, raw death toll isn’t the final arbiter of cause importance—Israel is a nuclear power, after all, so its decisions have wide ramifications.)
For whatever reason, the Israel/Paletine conflict has gained a specific reputation as a devilishly intractable diplomatic puzzle—there’s little agreement on any obvious solutions that seem like they could resolve the biggest problems.
I’m more positive about your second idea—trying to identify the areas at greatest risk of conflict throughout the whole world and take actions to calm tensions before violence erupts. To some extent, this is the traditional work of diplomacy, international NGOs, etc, but these efforts could perhaps be better-targeted, and there are probably some unique angles here that EAs could look into. While international attention from diplomats and NGOs seems to parachute into regions right at the moment of crisis, I could imagine EAs trying to intervene earlier in the lead-up to conflicts, perhaps running low-cost radio programs trying to spread American-style values of tolerance and anti-racism.
I could also imagine taking an even longer-term view, and trying to investigate ways to head off the root causes of political tension and violence on a timespan of decades or centuries. (Here is a somewhat similar project examining what gave rise to positive social movements like slavery abolitionism.)
Hi, thanks for providing those reasons, I can totally see the rationale!
One general point I’d like to make is if a proposed intervention is “improving the efficiency of work on cause X”, a large amount of resources already being poured into cause X should actually increase the EV of the proposed intervention (but obviously, this is assuming that the work on cause X is positive in expectation, and as you say, some may not feel this way about some pro-Palestinian activism).
FWIW, this is pretty much the rationale behind the climate recs of FP, we recommend orgs we think can leverage the enormous societal resources poured into climate into the most productive uses within the space. In line with your reasoning we also think that events that increase overall allocation to climate might improve the cost-effectiveness of the climate recs (e.g. Biden’s victory leading to higher returns).
I would also think (though don’t know for certain) that OPP’s recent bid to hire in global aid advocacy would draw on a similar theory of change, improving resource allocation in a field that is, comparatively speaking, not neglected.
Hi! I was one of the downvoters on your earlier post about Israel/Palestine, but looking at the link again now, I see that nobody ever gave a good explanation for why the post got such a negative reception. I’m sorry that we gave such a hostile reaction without explaining. I can’t speak for all EAs, but I suspect that some of the main reasons for hesitation might be:
Israel-related issues are extremely politically charged, so taking any stance whatsoever might risk damaging the carefully non-politicized reputation that other parts of the EA movement have built up. I imagine that EAs would have similar hesitation about taking a strong stance on abortion rights (even though EAs often have strong views on population ethics), or officially endorsing a candidate in a US presidential election (even though the majority of EAs are probably Democrats).
The Israel/Palestine conflict is the opposite of neglected—tons of media coverage, hundreds of activist groups, and lots of funding on both sides. A typical EA might argue that it would be better for a newly-formed activist group to focus on something like the current situation in Chad, which attracts hundreds of times less media coverage although a much larger number of people have died. (Of course, raw death toll isn’t the final arbiter of cause importance—Israel is a nuclear power, after all, so its decisions have wide ramifications.)
For whatever reason, the Israel/Paletine conflict has gained a specific reputation as a devilishly intractable diplomatic puzzle—there’s little agreement on any obvious solutions that seem like they could resolve the biggest problems.
I’m more positive about your second idea—trying to identify the areas at greatest risk of conflict throughout the whole world and take actions to calm tensions before violence erupts. To some extent, this is the traditional work of diplomacy, international NGOs, etc, but these efforts could perhaps be better-targeted, and there are probably some unique angles here that EAs could look into. While international attention from diplomats and NGOs seems to parachute into regions right at the moment of crisis, I could imagine EAs trying to intervene earlier in the lead-up to conflicts, perhaps running low-cost radio programs trying to spread American-style values of tolerance and anti-racism. I could also imagine taking an even longer-term view, and trying to investigate ways to head off the root causes of political tension and violence on a timespan of decades or centuries. (Here is a somewhat similar project examining what gave rise to positive social movements like slavery abolitionism.)
Hi, thanks for providing those reasons, I can totally see the rationale!
One general point I’d like to make is if a proposed intervention is “improving the efficiency of work on cause X”, a large amount of resources already being poured into cause X should actually increase the EV of the proposed intervention (but obviously, this is assuming that the work on cause X is positive in expectation, and as you say, some may not feel this way about some pro-Palestinian activism).
FWIW, this is pretty much the rationale behind the climate recs of FP, we recommend orgs we think can leverage the enormous societal resources poured into climate into the most productive uses within the space. In line with your reasoning we also think that events that increase overall allocation to climate might improve the cost-effectiveness of the climate recs (e.g. Biden’s victory leading to higher returns).
I would also think (though don’t know for certain) that OPP’s recent bid to hire in global aid advocacy would draw on a similar theory of change, improving resource allocation in a field that is, comparatively speaking, not neglected.