Generally speaking, I would guess that humans have a bias against meta-level work, and in favour of object-level work—not the least since the latter usually have more visible and easily understandable effects.
I definitely think this is true of humans generally, but I don’t think this is true of EAs at all. EAs I see are generally way more excited about meta work than GiveWell top charities.
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Whereas people before mostly had object-level jobs (e.g. food production), nowaydays most people work on meta-level work (e.g. improvement of food production, improvement of the cognitive skills of those working on food production, etc).
That’s an interesting argument from history that I hadn’t considered. Thanks.
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meta-work has always been derided by populists who have claimed that meta-level work isn’t “real work”. To my mind, that is the real trap, which it’s very important not to fall into.
I agree that it’s a risk of people generally, but I very much doubt it would happen in EA. Right now I think the balance is clearly toward there being too much meta work than too little. But I guess I could be wrong about that.
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The question is how to prioritize between movement growth and object-level work right now. And here I think that the haste consideration should be heavily weighted.
Right. But I don’t think much of the haste consideration, for the reasons I mention in this post.
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Also I’m not clear over how wide your definition of “meta-level work” is. Sometimes it seems like your mostly talking about work on movement growth, but organizations like CFAR who don’t work on movement growth are also counted as meta-organizations.
I would include CFAR in my list of meta-orgs and I do think CFAR risks falling into a meta trap. I’ve been critical of CFAR’s argument for impact in the past.
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Finally, let me add that we should remember that it’s not always clear how to distinguish between meta-level and object-level work.
What do you mean? I agree it is unclear in some respects. For example, as Eric Herboso pointed out, cause prioritization is meta-level work but should probably be treated as object-level and doesn’t face as many meta traps. Likewise, AMF is technically a meta-org in so far as they partner with actual on-the-ground orgs, but they should be considered object-level for this analysis.
I can’t think of any orgs people think of as object-level that are more accurately characterized as meta-level.
I definitely think this is true of humans generally, but I don’t think this is true of EAs at all. EAs I see are generally way more excited about meta work than GiveWell top charities.
I think it’s true of EAs as well, although to a somewhat smaller extent. But I think we should try to get more data on this issue in order to solve it (see my other comment ).
What do you mean? I agree it is unclear in some respects. For example, as Eric Herboso pointed out, cause prioritization is meta-level work but should probably be treated as object-level and doesn’t face as many meta traps. Likewise, AMF is technically a meta-org in so far as they partner with actual on-the-ground orgs, but they should be considered object-level for this analysis.
Good. These are the kind of things I mean. I just mean that we should keep in mind that the distinction isn’t sharp.
I definitely think this is true of humans generally, but I don’t think this is true of EAs at all. EAs I see are generally way more excited about meta work than GiveWell top charities.
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That’s an interesting argument from history that I hadn’t considered. Thanks.
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I agree that it’s a risk of people generally, but I very much doubt it would happen in EA. Right now I think the balance is clearly toward there being too much meta work than too little. But I guess I could be wrong about that.
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Right. But I don’t think much of the haste consideration, for the reasons I mention in this post.
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I would include CFAR in my list of meta-orgs and I do think CFAR risks falling into a meta trap. I’ve been critical of CFAR’s argument for impact in the past.
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What do you mean? I agree it is unclear in some respects. For example, as Eric Herboso pointed out, cause prioritization is meta-level work but should probably be treated as object-level and doesn’t face as many meta traps. Likewise, AMF is technically a meta-org in so far as they partner with actual on-the-ground orgs, but they should be considered object-level for this analysis.
I can’t think of any orgs people think of as object-level that are more accurately characterized as meta-level.
I think it’s true of EAs as well, although to a somewhat smaller extent. But I think we should try to get more data on this issue in order to solve it (see my other comment ).
Good. These are the kind of things I mean. I just mean that we should keep in mind that the distinction isn’t sharp.