“Imagine that every time there was a big crisis in the news, some EAs produced well-researched, sensible lists of the most plausibly-effective ways for people to help with that crisis. The lists would be produced voluntarily by EAs who were passionate about or informed about the cause, and shared widely by other EAs. ”
I agree that working on LICAs can be a good idea for individuals EAs and I think your examples were well-chosen. I disagree that it is a good idea for the EA community or institutions to work on LICAs.
I completely agree that addressing important, but “less important” issues can be a good use of time. If an individual EA could meaningfully improve US food bank management that seems really good, even if rich country food banks aren’t an EA cause overall.
For EA institutions to work on these issues is a bad idea, IMO. If Open Phil staked out a position of abortion, for instance, it would alienate a lot of people. The only reason for EA orgs to work on divisive issues is because they are so important that the importance offsets the costs of division.
Yeah, that is a good point. It makes a lot of sense for EA orgs to avoid divisive issues, particularly if they are not among the most pressing anyway.
A friend pointed out elsewhere that if producing LICAs was the norm for institutions, you might end up with institutions producing recommendations on both sides of a contentious social issue—e.g., how to effectively improve abortion access, and how to effectively reduce it. This could be bad both for PR reasons (*everyone* would hate us!) and because different sets of EAs are essentially doing work that cancels each other out.
“Imagine that every time there was a big crisis in the news, some EAs produced well-researched, sensible lists of the most plausibly-effective ways for people to help with that crisis. The lists would be produced voluntarily by EAs who were passionate about or informed about the cause, and shared widely by other EAs. ”
I agree that working on LICAs can be a good idea for individuals EAs and I think your examples were well-chosen. I disagree that it is a good idea for the EA community or institutions to work on LICAs.
I completely agree that addressing important, but “less important” issues can be a good use of time. If an individual EA could meaningfully improve US food bank management that seems really good, even if rich country food banks aren’t an EA cause overall.
For EA institutions to work on these issues is a bad idea, IMO. If Open Phil staked out a position of abortion, for instance, it would alienate a lot of people. The only reason for EA orgs to work on divisive issues is because they are so important that the importance offsets the costs of division.
Yeah, that is a good point. It makes a lot of sense for EA orgs to avoid divisive issues, particularly if they are not among the most pressing anyway.
A friend pointed out elsewhere that if producing LICAs was the norm for institutions, you might end up with institutions producing recommendations on both sides of a contentious social issue—e.g., how to effectively improve abortion access, and how to effectively reduce it. This could be bad both for PR reasons (*everyone* would hate us!) and because different sets of EAs are essentially doing work that cancels each other out.