A few quick comments, have skimmed through rather than a read in depth (have read a number of the articles in the past):
There’s a format error on p.167- Under 1. Learn more, there is a spacing error in the paragraph, which bizarrely cuts the paragraph in two for no reason. [Edit: this is not a lone error, I’ve found another on p.142, there may well be others, I haven’t gone through exhaustively]
I’d be interested how the relevant cause areas were agreed upon? There’s a heavy emphasis on Artificial Intelligence and the Long-Run Future (three articles on AI); and some areas of interest to EAers get very little or no mention at all (e.g. Mental Health and Happiness, re Michael Plant [EDIT: there is some mention of this, but there’s still at least a good question here about how cause areas are decided]). Perhaps there’s also a lack of concentration on cause areas versus career paths (and the Gov. article is great but extremely America heavy, which is not helpful for non-Americans). I suspect there is more to be said as to how this is decided, but it would be useful to understand this.
The recommendation of different books at the end is interesting- given the heavy emphasis on the long term-future throughout, it seems to me that the recommended books diverge from that (Doing Good Better and the Most Good You Can Do aren’t hugely about that from my memory?) Would it have been better to recommend SuperIntelligence; or the Global Catastrophic Risks volume which came out a while back; or something else, if the Long-Term Future dominates the attention elsewhere?
One worry I have is that it does a lot to suggest possibel directions for EAers, and little to deal with objections EAers might face. The original handbook seems to have slightly more on that (e.g. the Estimation article from Katja; Holden’s article on White’s in shining armour); and there are other ones which regularly arise e.g. the collectivist/coordination ideas that Hilary Greaves has been talking about (no individual can ever make a difference); or objections which focus on the overriding significance of virtue/the total cluelessness of us all. It might be that these are dealt with in some other way (I’m not clear how) or that this is simply not that important (which I question, but am uncertain), and so would be appreciative for your thoughts.
Mainly, though I liked it, so my critical points aren’t to be understood as a total rejection of the piece! It was great in so many ways, and I’m sure required a fair amount of work!
Cause areas: Unfortunately we couldn’t include everything. One of the core tenets of effective altruism is making difficult calls about cause prioritization, and these will always be contentious. We had to make those calls as we decided what to include. Our current best guess is that we should be focusing our efforts on a variety of different attempts to improve the long-term future, and this explains the calls that we made in the handbook.
Career paths: You’re right, I’ll make some changes to make clear that this is cause focused, and point people to 80,000 Hours for career focused advice.
Sorry that the article is not so helpful for non-Americans. Unfortunately this varies quite a bit between countries, and we couldn’t cover them all.
That’s a good point, I’ll consider changing/adding those books.
That’s another good point. I might include another section at the end on criticisms.
A few quick comments, have skimmed through rather than a read in depth (have read a number of the articles in the past):
There’s a format error on p.167- Under 1. Learn more, there is a spacing error in the paragraph, which bizarrely cuts the paragraph in two for no reason. [Edit: this is not a lone error, I’ve found another on p.142, there may well be others, I haven’t gone through exhaustively]
I’d be interested how the relevant cause areas were agreed upon? There’s a heavy emphasis on Artificial Intelligence and the Long-Run Future (three articles on AI); and some areas of interest to EAers get very little or no mention at all (e.g. Mental Health and Happiness, re Michael Plant [EDIT: there is some mention of this, but there’s still at least a good question here about how cause areas are decided]). Perhaps there’s also a lack of concentration on cause areas versus career paths (and the Gov. article is great but extremely America heavy, which is not helpful for non-Americans). I suspect there is more to be said as to how this is decided, but it would be useful to understand this.
The recommendation of different books at the end is interesting- given the heavy emphasis on the long term-future throughout, it seems to me that the recommended books diverge from that (Doing Good Better and the Most Good You Can Do aren’t hugely about that from my memory?) Would it have been better to recommend SuperIntelligence; or the Global Catastrophic Risks volume which came out a while back; or something else, if the Long-Term Future dominates the attention elsewhere?
One worry I have is that it does a lot to suggest possibel directions for EAers, and little to deal with objections EAers might face. The original handbook seems to have slightly more on that (e.g. the Estimation article from Katja; Holden’s article on White’s in shining armour); and there are other ones which regularly arise e.g. the collectivist/coordination ideas that Hilary Greaves has been talking about (no individual can ever make a difference); or objections which focus on the overriding significance of virtue/the total cluelessness of us all. It might be that these are dealt with in some other way (I’m not clear how) or that this is simply not that important (which I question, but am uncertain), and so would be appreciative for your thoughts.
Mainly, though I liked it, so my critical points aren’t to be understood as a total rejection of the piece! It was great in so many ways, and I’m sure required a fair amount of work!
Thanks for pointing that out, we’ll fix that.
Cause areas: Unfortunately we couldn’t include everything. One of the core tenets of effective altruism is making difficult calls about cause prioritization, and these will always be contentious. We had to make those calls as we decided what to include. Our current best guess is that we should be focusing our efforts on a variety of different attempts to improve the long-term future, and this explains the calls that we made in the handbook.
Career paths: You’re right, I’ll make some changes to make clear that this is cause focused, and point people to 80,000 Hours for career focused advice.
Sorry that the article is not so helpful for non-Americans. Unfortunately this varies quite a bit between countries, and we couldn’t cover them all.
That’s a good point, I’ll consider changing/adding those books.
That’s another good point. I might include another section at the end on criticisms.