I can’t say I’ve read previous handbooks, so I wouldn’t know if this has been done previously, but I’d like to see several open questions in the EA community addressed, with the main arguments included.
Of course, there are open questions around how much animals and future people matter, but I’d also like to see other questions:
-Should EA be ‘small and weird’ or should it seek to grow and become ‘mainstream’?
-In a related question, should EA focus on those who have the potential to influence major amounts of power or money (people who are disproportionately white, male, from a privileged background, and educated at a competitive university in a Western country)? Or should EA be inclusive and diverse, seeking to elevate the voices of people who could do the most good but would traditionally be ignored by society?
-To what extent should/does EA support systemic change?
-To what extent should we be concerned about value drift? Some argue we shouldn’t delay donating even a couple years, while others argue that our future values will likely be even better than our current ones.
I don’t think addressing these questions in a handbook that’s meant to introduce EA would be that useful as most of them require much more in depth reading than a few paragraphs would allow.
It may make more sense to have an FAQ for these typical questions or to say that lots of areas within EA are still being discussed, and then list the questions.
A more cause specific one—for animal welfare, addressing the issue of people who are vegetarian/vegan for environmental reasons versus animal suffering-related reasons
I can’t say I’ve read previous handbooks, so I wouldn’t know if this has been done previously, but I’d like to see several open questions in the EA community addressed, with the main arguments included.
Of course, there are open questions around how much animals and future people matter, but I’d also like to see other questions:
-Should EA be ‘small and weird’ or should it seek to grow and become ‘mainstream’?
-In a related question, should EA focus on those who have the potential to influence major amounts of power or money (people who are disproportionately white, male, from a privileged background, and educated at a competitive university in a Western country)? Or should EA be inclusive and diverse, seeking to elevate the voices of people who could do the most good but would traditionally be ignored by society?
-To what extent should/does EA support systemic change?
-To what extent should we be concerned about value drift? Some argue we shouldn’t delay donating even a couple years, while others argue that our future values will likely be even better than our current ones.
I don’t think addressing these questions in a handbook that’s meant to introduce EA would be that useful as most of them require much more in depth reading than a few paragraphs would allow.
It may make more sense to have an FAQ for these typical questions or to say that lots of areas within EA are still being discussed, and then list the questions.
I think you’re right—these questions aren’t right for an introductory handbook.
A more cause specific one—for animal welfare, addressing the issue of people who are vegetarian/vegan for environmental reasons versus animal suffering-related reasons