I believe the question we should be asking isn’t “Does the movement have a good balance of object-level and meta-level work?” but rather “What is the best thing I can do on margin?”
It makes some sense to look at how much effort we’re spending on meta work because that could indicate that we’re over- or under-saturated. But I think it’s more important to look directly at different charities you could donate to or actions you could take at the object level or meta level and try to figure out what you can do that works best. Even if you think the EA movement’s overall allocation should put more toward meta, perhaps you see some particularly valuable object-level intervention that needs more funding or attention, so you decide to support that instead of meta-level activities.
Looking at the movement’s object/meta balance is a decent heuristic but in the end doesn’t tell us much about what we should be working on with marginal resources. (This is not to say it’s useless—it certainly tells us something—but we shouldn’t over-rely on it.)
But I think it’s more important to look directly at different charities you could donate to or actions you could take at the object level or meta level and try to figure out what you can do that works best.
I think this is also true only up to a point. Of course it’s extremely important to look at the different actions you can take or charities to donate to when making a decision. But comparing between different types of thing can be very hard. Looking at the actions or charities directly should be enough to choose within an area. But to compare something in the direct domain with something in the meta domain, we need to know not only how good those are at what they do, but also have an idea of how to trade off the direct against the meta progress. And to answer that question I think looking at the balance in the movement is a helpful tool.
Yeah I’m not sure this is a substantial disagreement, although I’m not sure that “proportion of movement working on meta” is a useful heuristic for choosing between cause areas. I don’t know how we could come up with a good proportion other than arbitrarily making up a number that looks reasonable (which is what people seem to do). It’s probably not that useful to arbitrarily make up a number and then decide what cause area to work on based on how far we are from that made-up number. Perhaps we could make a more rigorous attempt to determine a good proportion, but that’s not any easier than doing expected-value estimates of different cause areas, and in the end, proportion in meta is really a proxy for expected value of marginal contributions.
I believe the question we should be asking isn’t “Does the movement have a good balance of object-level and meta-level work?” but rather “What is the best thing I can do on margin?”
It makes some sense to look at how much effort we’re spending on meta work because that could indicate that we’re over- or under-saturated. But I think it’s more important to look directly at different charities you could donate to or actions you could take at the object level or meta level and try to figure out what you can do that works best. Even if you think the EA movement’s overall allocation should put more toward meta, perhaps you see some particularly valuable object-level intervention that needs more funding or attention, so you decide to support that instead of meta-level activities.
Looking at the movement’s object/meta balance is a decent heuristic but in the end doesn’t tell us much about what we should be working on with marginal resources. (This is not to say it’s useless—it certainly tells us something—but we shouldn’t over-rely on it.)
I think this is also true only up to a point. Of course it’s extremely important to look at the different actions you can take or charities to donate to when making a decision. But comparing between different types of thing can be very hard. Looking at the actions or charities directly should be enough to choose within an area. But to compare something in the direct domain with something in the meta domain, we need to know not only how good those are at what they do, but also have an idea of how to trade off the direct against the meta progress. And to answer that question I think looking at the balance in the movement is a helpful tool.
Re-reading, I’m not sure we disagree here. :)
Yeah I’m not sure this is a substantial disagreement, although I’m not sure that “proportion of movement working on meta” is a useful heuristic for choosing between cause areas. I don’t know how we could come up with a good proportion other than arbitrarily making up a number that looks reasonable (which is what people seem to do). It’s probably not that useful to arbitrarily make up a number and then decide what cause area to work on based on how far we are from that made-up number. Perhaps we could make a more rigorous attempt to determine a good proportion, but that’s not any easier than doing expected-value estimates of different cause areas, and in the end, proportion in meta is really a proxy for expected value of marginal contributions.
Sure!