What we need is a balance between building the movement and actually working on causes. I don’t have an answer for this split, but I have been concerned lately that the EA movement currently seems to be focussing mostly on movement building and cause prioritisation, rather than actual cause work. I like to think about ‘quick wins’ that the EA movement can achieve, and tackle these in the short term. Achieving quick wins may also attract more people to the movement as they see the immediate effectiveness of what we do. In addition to movement building and earning to give I am involved in researching and writing an article calling for a government funded public health campaign to advertise against meat consumption.
The rationale is that this would improve the health of individuals, reduce the public burden on health care freeing up government dollars to do something else (hopefully a good something) and to reduce animal suffering. It’s a slightly risky prospect as it may not result in action, but I’m confident that it will educate people about the health side of meat consumption in the worst case scenario. I think that as a movement we need to team up to focus on these quick wins a little more.
I don’t think that’s true. Of the most active EAs, you’ll find they’re enthused about movement building, but there’s a strong selection effect there (the people who think movement building is good are the people you find talking about it!). The large majority of resources, however, are being donated to GiveWell recommended charities, or contained within Open Phil.
What we need is a balance between building the movement and actually working on causes. I don’t have an answer for this split, but I have been concerned lately that the EA movement currently seems to be focussing mostly on movement building and cause prioritisation, rather than actual cause work. I like to think about ‘quick wins’ that the EA movement can achieve, and tackle these in the short term. Achieving quick wins may also attract more people to the movement as they see the immediate effectiveness of what we do. In addition to movement building and earning to give I am involved in researching and writing an article calling for a government funded public health campaign to advertise against meat consumption.
The rationale is that this would improve the health of individuals, reduce the public burden on health care freeing up government dollars to do something else (hopefully a good something) and to reduce animal suffering. It’s a slightly risky prospect as it may not result in action, but I’m confident that it will educate people about the health side of meat consumption in the worst case scenario. I think that as a movement we need to team up to focus on these quick wins a little more.
I don’t think that’s true. Of the most active EAs, you’ll find they’re enthused about movement building, but there’s a strong selection effect there (the people who think movement building is good are the people you find talking about it!). The large majority of resources, however, are being donated to GiveWell recommended charities, or contained within Open Phil.