Iāll read any reply to this and make sure CEA sees it, but I donāt plan to respond further myself, as Iām no longer working on this project.
Thanks for the response. I agree with some of your points and disagree with others.
To preface this, I wouldnāt make a claim like āthe 3rd edition was representative for X definition of the wordā or āI was satisfied with the Handbook when we published itā (I left CEA with 19 pages of notes on changes I was considering). Thereās plenty of good criticism that one could make of it, from almost any perspective.
Itās pretty clear that the curriculum places way more weight on the content it frames as āessentialā than a content linked to at the bottom of the āfurther readingā section.
I agree.
But much, maybe most, of the āessentialā reading in the first three sections isnāt really about neartermist (or longtermist) causes. For instance, āWe are in triage every second of every dayā is aboutā¦ triage. Iād also put āOn Fringe Ideasā, āMoral Progress and Cause Xā, āCan one person make a difference?ā, āRadical Empathyā, and āProspecting for Goldā in this bucket.
Many of these have ideas that can be applied to either perspective. But the actual things they discuss are mostly near-term causes.
āOn Fringe Ideasā focuses on wild animal welfare.
āWe are in triageā ends with a discussion of global development (an area where the triage metaphor makes far more intuitive sense than it does for longtermist areas).
āRadical Empathyā is almost entirely focused on specific neartermist causes.
āCan one person make a differenceā features three people who made a big difference ā two doctors and Petrov. Long-term impact gets a brief shout-out at the end, but the impact of each person is measured by how many lives they saved in their own time (or through to the present day).
This is different from e.g. detailed pieces describing causes like malaria prevention or vitamin supplementation. I think thatās a real gap in the Handbook, and worth addressing.
But it seems to me like anyone who starts the Handbook will get a very strong impression in those first three sections that EA cares a lot about near-term causes, helping people today, helping animals, and tackling measurable problems. That impression matters more to me than cause-specific knowledge (though again, some of that would still be nice!).
However, I may be biased here by my teaching experience. In the two introductory fellowships Iāve facilitated, participants who read these essays spent their first three weeks discussing almost exclusively near-term causes and examples.
By contrast, the essential reading in the āLongtermismā, āExistential Riskā, and āEmerging technologiesā section is all highly focused on longtermist causes/āworldview; itās all stuff like āReducing global catastrophic biological risksā, āThe case for reducing existential riskā, and āThe case for strong longtermismā.
I agree that the reading in these sections is more focused. Nonetheless, I still feel like thereās a decent balance, for reasons that arenāt obvious from the content alone:
Most people have a better intuitive sense for neartermist causes and ideas. I found that longtermism (and AI specifically) required more explanation and discussion before people understood them, relative to the causes and ideas mentioned in the first three weeks. Population ethics alone took up most of a week.
āLongtermistā causes sometimes arenāt. I still donāt quite understand how we decided to add pandemic prevention to the ālongtermistā bucket. When that issue came up, people were intensely interested and found the subject relative to their own lives/āthe lives of people they knew.
I wouldnāt be surprised if many people in EA (including people in my intro fellowships) saw many of Toby Ordās āpolicy and research ideasā as competitive with AMF just for saving people alive today.
I assume there are also people who would see AMF as competitive with many longtermist orgs in terms of improving the future, but Iād guess they arenāt nearly as common.
āPascalās muggingā is relevant to, but not specific to, longtermism
I donāt think Iāve seen Pascalās Mugging discussed in any non-longtermist context, unless you count actual religion. Do you have an example on hand for where people have applied the idea to a neartermist cause?
āThe case of the missing cause prioritization researchā doesnāt criticize longtermist ideas per se, it more argues that the shift toward prioritizing longtermism hasnāt been informed by significant amounts of relevant research.
I agree. I wouldnāt think of that piece as critical of longtermism.
As far as I can tell, no content in this whole section addresses the most frequent and intuitive criticism of longtermism Iāve heard (that itās really really hard to influence the far future so we should be skeptical of our ability to do so).
I havenāt gone back to check all the material, but I assume youāre correct. I think it would be useful to add more content on this point.
This is another case where my experience as a facilitator warps my perspective; I think both of my groups discussed this, so it didnāt occur to me that it wasnāt an āofficialā topic.
Process-wise, I donāt think the use of test readers was an effective way of making sure the handbook was representative. Each test reader only saw a fraction of the content, so theyād be in no position to comment on the handbook as a whole.
I agree. That wasnāt the purpose of selecting test readers; I mentioned them only because some of them happened to make useful suggestions on this front.
While Iām glad you approached members of the animal and global development communities for feedback, I think the fact that they didnāt respond is itself a form of (negative) feedback (which I would guess reflects the skepticism Michael expressed that his feedback would be incorporated).
I wrote to four people, two of whom (including Michael) sent useful feedback . The other two also responded; one said they were busy, the other seemed excited/āinterested but never wound up sending anything.
A 50% useful-response rate isnāt bad, and makes me wish Iād sent more of those emails. My excuse is the dumb-but-true āI was busy, and this was one project among manyā.
(As an aside, if someone wanted to draft a near-term-focused version of the Handbook, I think theyād have a very good shot at getting a grant.)
Iād feel better about the process if, for example, youād posted in poverty and animal focused Facebook groups and offered to pay people (like the test readers were paid) to weigh in on whether the handbook represented their cause appropriately.
Iād probably have asked āwhat else should we include?ā rather than āis this current stuff good?ā, but I agree with this in spirit.
(As another aside, if you specifically have ideas for material youād like to see included, Iād be happy to pass them along to CEA ā or you could contact someone like Max or Lizka.)
But it seems to me like anyone who starts the Handbook will get a very strong impression in those first three sections that EA cares a lot about near-term causes, helping people today, helping animals, and tackling measurable problems. That impression matters more to me than cause-specific knowledge (though again, some of that would still be nice!).
However, I may be biased here by my teaching experience. In the two introductory fellowships Iāve facilitated, participants who read these essays spent their first three weeks discussing almost exclusively near-term causes and examples.
Thatās helpful anecdata about your teaching experience. Iād love to see a more rigorous and thorough study of how participants respond to the fellowships to see how representative your experience is.
I donāt think Iāve seen Pascalās Mugging discussed in any non-longtermist context, unless you count actual religion. Do you have an example on hand for where people have applied the idea to a neartermist cause?
Iām pretty sure Iāve heard it used in the context of a scenario questioning whether torture is justified to stop the threat dirty bomb thatās about to go off in a city.
I wrote to four people, two of whom (including Michael) sent useful feedback . The other two also responded; one said they were busy, the other seemed excited/āinterested but never wound up sending anything.
A 50% useful-response rate isnāt bad, and makes me wish Iād sent more of those emails. My excuse is the dumb-but-true āI was busy, and this was one project among manyā.
Thatās a good excuse :) I misinterpreted Michaelās previous comment as saying his feedback didnāt get incorporated at all. This process seems better than Iād realized (though still short of what Iād have liked to see after the negative reaction to the 2nd edition).
if you specifically have ideas for material youād like to see included, Iād be happy to pass them along to CEA ā or you could contact someone like Max or Lizka.
GiveWellās Giving 101 would be a great fit for global poverty. For animal welfare content, Iād suggest making the first chapter of Animal Liberation part of the essential content (or at least further reading), rather than part of the āmore to exploreā content. But my meta-suggestion would be to ask people who specialize in doing poverty/āanimal outreach for suggestions.
Iāll read any reply to this and make sure CEA sees it, but I donāt plan to respond further myself, as Iām no longer working on this project.
Thanks for the response. I agree with some of your points and disagree with others.
To preface this, I wouldnāt make a claim like āthe 3rd edition was representative for X definition of the wordā or āI was satisfied with the Handbook when we published itā (I left CEA with 19 pages of notes on changes I was considering). Thereās plenty of good criticism that one could make of it, from almost any perspective.
I agree.
Many of these have ideas that can be applied to either perspective. But the actual things they discuss are mostly near-term causes.
āOn Fringe Ideasā focuses on wild animal welfare.
āWe are in triageā ends with a discussion of global development (an area where the triage metaphor makes far more intuitive sense than it does for longtermist areas).
āRadical Empathyā is almost entirely focused on specific neartermist causes.
āCan one person make a differenceā features three people who made a big difference ā two doctors and Petrov. Long-term impact gets a brief shout-out at the end, but the impact of each person is measured by how many lives they saved in their own time (or through to the present day).
This is different from e.g. detailed pieces describing causes like malaria prevention or vitamin supplementation. I think thatās a real gap in the Handbook, and worth addressing.
But it seems to me like anyone who starts the Handbook will get a very strong impression in those first three sections that EA cares a lot about near-term causes, helping people today, helping animals, and tackling measurable problems. That impression matters more to me than cause-specific knowledge (though again, some of that would still be nice!).
However, I may be biased here by my teaching experience. In the two introductory fellowships Iāve facilitated, participants who read these essays spent their first three weeks discussing almost exclusively near-term causes and examples.
I agree that the reading in these sections is more focused. Nonetheless, I still feel like thereās a decent balance, for reasons that arenāt obvious from the content alone:
Most people have a better intuitive sense for neartermist causes and ideas. I found that longtermism (and AI specifically) required more explanation and discussion before people understood them, relative to the causes and ideas mentioned in the first three weeks. Population ethics alone took up most of a week.
āLongtermistā causes sometimes arenāt. I still donāt quite understand how we decided to add pandemic prevention to the ālongtermistā bucket. When that issue came up, people were intensely interested and found the subject relative to their own lives/āthe lives of people they knew.
I wouldnāt be surprised if many people in EA (including people in my intro fellowships) saw many of Toby Ordās āpolicy and research ideasā as competitive with AMF just for saving people alive today.
I assume there are also people who would see AMF as competitive with many longtermist orgs in terms of improving the future, but Iād guess they arenāt nearly as common.
I donāt think Iāve seen Pascalās Mugging discussed in any non-longtermist context, unless you count actual religion. Do you have an example on hand for where people have applied the idea to a neartermist cause?
I agree. I wouldnāt think of that piece as critical of longtermism.
I havenāt gone back to check all the material, but I assume youāre correct. I think it would be useful to add more content on this point.
This is another case where my experience as a facilitator warps my perspective; I think both of my groups discussed this, so it didnāt occur to me that it wasnāt an āofficialā topic.
I agree. That wasnāt the purpose of selecting test readers; I mentioned them only because some of them happened to make useful suggestions on this front.
I wrote to four people, two of whom (including Michael) sent useful feedback . The other two also responded; one said they were busy, the other seemed excited/āinterested but never wound up sending anything.
A 50% useful-response rate isnāt bad, and makes me wish Iād sent more of those emails. My excuse is the dumb-but-true āI was busy, and this was one project among manyā.
(As an aside, if someone wanted to draft a near-term-focused version of the Handbook, I think theyād have a very good shot at getting a grant.)
Iād probably have asked āwhat else should we include?ā rather than āis this current stuff good?ā, but I agree with this in spirit.
(As another aside, if you specifically have ideas for material youād like to see included, Iād be happy to pass them along to CEA ā or you could contact someone like Max or Lizka.)
Thatās helpful anecdata about your teaching experience. Iād love to see a more rigorous and thorough study of how participants respond to the fellowships to see how representative your experience is.
Iām pretty sure Iāve heard it used in the context of a scenario questioning whether torture is justified to stop the threat dirty bomb thatās about to go off in a city.
Thatās a good excuse :) I misinterpreted Michaelās previous comment as saying his feedback didnāt get incorporated at all. This process seems better than Iād realized (though still short of what Iād have liked to see after the negative reaction to the 2nd edition).
GiveWellās Giving 101 would be a great fit for global poverty. For animal welfare content, Iād suggest making the first chapter of Animal Liberation part of the essential content (or at least further reading), rather than part of the āmore to exploreā content. But my meta-suggestion would be to ask people who specialize in doing poverty/āanimal outreach for suggestions.