But I do think, in general, a mindset of “only I can do this” is innacurate and has costs. There are plenty of other people in the world, and other communities in the world, attempting to do good, and often succeeding. I think EAs have been a small fraction of the success in reducing global poverty over the last few decades, for example.
Here are a few plausible costs to me:
Knowing when and why others will do things significantly changes estimates of the marginal value of acting. For example, if you are starting a new project, it’s reasonably likely that even if you have a completely new idea, other people will be in similar epistemic situations as you, and will soon stumble upon the same idea. So to estimate your counterfactual impact you might want to be estimating how much earlier something will occur because you made it occur, rather than purely the impact of the thing occurring. More generally, neglectedness is a key part of estimating your marginal impact—and estimating neglectedness relies heavily on an understanding of what others are focusing on, and usually at least a few people are doing things in a similar space to you.
Also, knowing when and why others will do things affects strategic considerations. The fact that in many places we now try to do good there are few non-EAs working there is a result of our attempts to find neglected areas. But—especially in the case of x-risk—we can expect others to begin to do good work in these areas as time progresses (see e.g. AI discussions around warning shots). The extent to which this is the case affects what is valuable to do now.
I really like these nuances. I think one of the problems with the drowning child parable / early EA thinking more generally was (and still is, to a large extent) very focused on the actions of the individual.
It’s definitely easier and more accurate to model individual behavior, but I think we (as a community) could do more to improve our models of group behavior even though it’s more difficult and costly to do so.
This is a great story! Good motivational content.
But I do think, in general, a mindset of “only I can do this” is innacurate and has costs. There are plenty of other people in the world, and other communities in the world, attempting to do good, and often succeeding. I think EAs have been a small fraction of the success in reducing global poverty over the last few decades, for example.
Here are a few plausible costs to me:
Knowing when and why others will do things significantly changes estimates of the marginal value of acting. For example, if you are starting a new project, it’s reasonably likely that even if you have a completely new idea, other people will be in similar epistemic situations as you, and will soon stumble upon the same idea. So to estimate your counterfactual impact you might want to be estimating how much earlier something will occur because you made it occur, rather than purely the impact of the thing occurring. More generally, neglectedness is a key part of estimating your marginal impact—and estimating neglectedness relies heavily on an understanding of what others are focusing on, and usually at least a few people are doing things in a similar space to you.
Also, knowing when and why others will do things affects strategic considerations. The fact that in many places we now try to do good there are few non-EAs working there is a result of our attempts to find neglected areas. But—especially in the case of x-risk—we can expect others to begin to do good work in these areas as time progresses (see e.g. AI discussions around warning shots). The extent to which this is the case affects what is valuable to do now.
I really like these nuances. I think one of the problems with the drowning child parable / early EA thinking more generally was (and still is, to a large extent) very focused on the actions of the individual.
It’s definitely easier and more accurate to model individual behavior, but I think we (as a community) could do more to improve our models of group behavior even though it’s more difficult and costly to do so.