I agree that “systemic change” (broadly speaking) seems highly intractable for EA and that it does not seem to be that neglected outside of EA.
However, one possible advantage to this lack of neglectedness is that there are probably plenty of people already working on, or interested in, some forms of systemic change who are already sympathetic to EA ideas but don’t know how to translate that into action. A lot of those people may also be mid-career, like me.
EA might be able to play a useful coordination role between such practitioners and publicise ideas that could improve their effectiveness with relatively little resources. There are plenty of common “best practices” like red-teaming, Delphi method, or reference class forecasting that can help decision-making but are still not widely used in much of government (at least in my experience, though I’m sure it will depend on the country involved). Of course, there is already a lot of material out there already on “how to be more effective” but much of it is either (1) low-quality; (2) focused on business and personal success; and/or (3) rather expensive (for courses aimed at business leaders).
Even something like mildly improving the epistemics (and perhaps morals) of people who are already in positions to shape important policies could be quite impactful, though very hard to quantify. I personally know many people in policy who genuinely want to do good but would not be willing to switch to one of EA’s cause areas. It seems like EA’s message to such people is basically just “earn to give”, which feels like a waste. That’s not to denigrate earning to give at all—it just feels like there is more potential there that EA is not tapping into.
My comments are more about EA turning to focus on system-level interventions in general, rather than to address the problems arising in this particular time of flux. But, you know, even if the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, it could still be worth planting today.
I agree that “systemic change” (broadly speaking) seems highly intractable for EA and that it does not seem to be that neglected outside of EA.
However, one possible advantage to this lack of neglectedness is that there are probably plenty of people already working on, or interested in, some forms of systemic change who are already sympathetic to EA ideas but don’t know how to translate that into action. A lot of those people may also be mid-career, like me.
EA might be able to play a useful coordination role between such practitioners and publicise ideas that could improve their effectiveness with relatively little resources. There are plenty of common “best practices” like red-teaming, Delphi method, or reference class forecasting that can help decision-making but are still not widely used in much of government (at least in my experience, though I’m sure it will depend on the country involved). Of course, there is already a lot of material out there already on “how to be more effective” but much of it is either (1) low-quality; (2) focused on business and personal success; and/or (3) rather expensive (for courses aimed at business leaders).
Even something like mildly improving the epistemics (and perhaps morals) of people who are already in positions to shape important policies could be quite impactful, though very hard to quantify. I personally know many people in policy who genuinely want to do good but would not be willing to switch to one of EA’s cause areas. It seems like EA’s message to such people is basically just “earn to give”, which feels like a waste. That’s not to denigrate earning to give at all—it just feels like there is more potential there that EA is not tapping into.
My comments are more about EA turning to focus on system-level interventions in general, rather than to address the problems arising in this particular time of flux. But, you know, even if the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, it could still be worth planting today.