I would prefer that the next topic move away from financial allocation between cause areas, so maybe something like:
There are 100 young, smart, flexible recent university graduates who are open to ~any kind of work. What is the optimal allocation of those graduates between object-level work, meta work, earning to give, or something else?
Two advantages of these sorts of topics, vis-a-vis a financial cause-prio debate:
A. I think these kinds of issues are generally more likely to be action-relevant for Forum users. Even I won a billion-dollar lottery prize and established a trust to give $50MM to effective animal welfare charities, the net effect on cause prio might be far less than $50MM because OP might reduce its spend by almost that amount. While there are niches in which this effect is absent or less pronounced, structuring a debate week with broad participation around them may be challenging.
B. These kinds of issues should be more accessible to those from a variety of cause perspectives. For various reasons, the last Debate Week was set up to have a predominant focus on a single cause area (AW). Cf.this discussion. That’s not a bad thing, but I don’t think all or most Weeks should be set up like that. Other questions may not have this effect—for instance, I expect that the answers to questions 1 & 2 would differ substantially due to cause prio. So there’s value in authoring discussion of these questions from a GH perspective, from an AW perspective, from a GCR perspective, and so on.[2]
More generally, it might be helpful to plan a Debate Season well in advance—a “season” of (e.g.) one week each on a topic that is either specifically within a major cause area or for which it is expected to predominate, plus one or more cause prio questions, plus one or more cross-cutting questions that are not explicitly cause prio questions.
From a voting perspective, this could be facilitated by optionally allowing the voter to color their dot if their answer was based primarily on a consideration of a specific cause area, allowing a visual representation of how cause prio is a crux on these issues.
Thanks for thinking about this Jason! Lots of good ideas here.
FWIW financial allocation was an attempt to get a more precise debate after several users reported the “more of a priority” framing of the AI Welfare debate as being a bit confusing.
I think it’s generally nice to be tracking something relatively unified along the X axis, but that could just be strength of agreement, as long as users agree on the meaning of the debate statement.
The season idea is cool, though I’d probably prefer to do a more spaced out season, with the debates at very least a few weeks apart. Some authors might want to contribute to multiple debates, and writing a post a week is a bit of a large ask. It’d be great to have the topics published in advance though, so that people can start thinking earlier.
Yeah, I definitely see the appeal to financial-allocation framings. I think some of my reaction is that I read the AI Welfare question as substantially about financial allocation as well. So I am more about moving away from a perceived trendline rather than objecting to financial allocation as part of a mix of topic types.
I also agree with a spaced-out season; week after week of Debates in a row would be exhausting! The season concept is more a recognition that—like matchup pairs in a sports league—individual Debate Weeks are very hard to balance. Zooming out to the season level helps with that—the NFL can balance out (to some extent) who gets the good matchups, the primetime TV slots, the more competent referees,[1] etc. It can also try to balance the demands on each team—for instance, if it schedules a team to play in London, it usually balances that by giving them the next week off. So picking the right order could minimize the odds that a particular person would want to write major posts for successive Weeks.
If we are committed to desktop-only voting anyway, I wonder if a 2-D response grid system (as opposed to points on a line) would allow tracking responses on two dimensions and thus a bit more complexity in posed questions. I initially conceived question 1 as ~ “more people should do EtG” and it could move back toward those roots if needed. Relatedly, I am undecided on how tightly I think the poll question has to cover the scope of the Debate Week vs. focusing on a portion of the Debate Week topic for operationalization purposes.
For the two specific topics you recommended, people’s answers could be pretty specific to the cause area. That might be fine, but worth flagging. Could be best for people to specify the cause they’re speaking for, or make the debate week cause-specific.
Some thoughts on future Debate Week topics:
I would prefer that the next topic move away from financial allocation between cause areas, so maybe something like:
There are 100 young, smart, flexible recent university graduates who are open to ~any kind of work. What is the optimal allocation of those graduates between object-level work, meta work, earning to give, or something else?
Should EA move directionally toward being a more r-selected (higher growth, less investment in each offspring) or K-selected movement, [1]or stay roughly where it is?
Two advantages of these sorts of topics, vis-a-vis a financial cause-prio debate:
A. I think these kinds of issues are generally more likely to be action-relevant for Forum users. Even I won a billion-dollar lottery prize and established a trust to give $50MM to effective animal welfare charities, the net effect on cause prio might be far less than $50MM because OP might reduce its spend by almost that amount. While there are niches in which this effect is absent or less pronounced, structuring a debate week with broad participation around them may be challenging.
B. These kinds of issues should be more accessible to those from a variety of cause perspectives. For various reasons, the last Debate Week was set up to have a predominant focus on a single cause area (AW). Cf. this discussion. That’s not a bad thing, but I don’t think all or most Weeks should be set up like that. Other questions may not have this effect—for instance, I expect that the answers to questions 1 & 2 would differ substantially due to cause prio. So there’s value in authoring discussion of these questions from a GH perspective, from an AW perspective, from a GCR perspective, and so on.[2]
More generally, it might be helpful to plan a Debate Season well in advance—a “season” of (e.g.) one week each on a topic that is either specifically within a major cause area or for which it is expected to predominate, plus one or more cause prio questions, plus one or more cross-cutting questions that are not explicitly cause prio questions.
Someone who has better background than self-taught AP Biology twenty years ago can probably come up with a better metaphor.
From a voting perspective, this could be facilitated by optionally allowing the voter to color their dot if their answer was based primarily on a consideration of a specific cause area, allowing a visual representation of how cause prio is a crux on these issues.
Thanks for thinking about this Jason! Lots of good ideas here.
FWIW financial allocation was an attempt to get a more precise debate after several users reported the “more of a priority” framing of the AI Welfare debate as being a bit confusing.
I think it’s generally nice to be tracking something relatively unified along the X axis, but that could just be strength of agreement, as long as users agree on the meaning of the debate statement.
The season idea is cool, though I’d probably prefer to do a more spaced out season, with the debates at very least a few weeks apart. Some authors might want to contribute to multiple debates, and writing a post a week is a bit of a large ask. It’d be great to have the topics published in advance though, so that people can start thinking earlier.
Yeah, I definitely see the appeal to financial-allocation framings. I think some of my reaction is that I read the AI Welfare question as substantially about financial allocation as well. So I am more about moving away from a perceived trendline rather than objecting to financial allocation as part of a mix of topic types.
I also agree with a spaced-out season; week after week of Debates in a row would be exhausting! The season concept is more a recognition that—like matchup pairs in a sports league—individual Debate Weeks are very hard to balance. Zooming out to the season level helps with that—the NFL can balance out (to some extent) who gets the good matchups, the primetime TV slots, the more competent referees,[1] etc. It can also try to balance the demands on each team—for instance, if it schedules a team to play in London, it usually balances that by giving them the next week off. So picking the right order could minimize the odds that a particular person would want to write major posts for successive Weeks.
If we are committed to desktop-only voting anyway, I wonder if a 2-D response grid system (as opposed to points on a line) would allow tracking responses on two dimensions and thus a bit more complexity in posed questions. I initially conceived question 1 as ~ “more people should do EtG” and it could move back toward those roots if needed. Relatedly, I am undecided on how tightly I think the poll question has to cover the scope of the Debate Week vs. focusing on a portion of the Debate Week topic for operationalization purposes.
This item is not meant to be taken seriously.
For the two specific topics you recommended, people’s answers could be pretty specific to the cause area. That might be fine, but worth flagging. Could be best for people to specify the cause they’re speaking for, or make the debate week cause-specific.