hey, interesting post. i dont think EAers should beat themselves up about how much they donate or not donate. anybody who gives 10% for EA has done more than 99.99% of humanity, that is worth a good nights sleep with a clear conscience.
However the EA community should ask, if they are missing a cause priority. Why EA won’t talk about race, gender, intersectionality etc.. EA will be more effective if those lenses are used. Likewise diversity in EA is poor, the papers and experts referred to are western, with little representation of voices from people around the world. The just concluded EA Global is a good example of this, even “Global Health and Development” track featured two people from the USA.
“Global Health and Development” itself is problematic framing, the UN via UNDP has published the Human Development Index, EA should be at a minimum focused on Human Development Indicators and not arbitrarily decide according to their biases.
(To people who want to downvote please explain why)
Thanks trammell. I notice that only you told me why, I assume I got 5 downvotes at a minimum.
While not directly on topic, giving more is about bigger impact, if D&I is poor EA impact is worse. That’s why I responded. My thinking is that money is not the constraint an understanding or lack of it is the constraint in improving the world. For which EA needs open hearts and minds, not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_favoritism
Maybe others downvoted for the same reason (off-topic), saw that trammel already commented and then just upvoted Trammell’s comment (5 upvoted) instead of writing the same thing themselves?
To respond to the on-topic part of your post (I also downvoted because it’s mostly off-topic), I don’t see how you can shrug off the benefits of donating >10% as if 10% is good enough, while also saying that we must interview and read whole swathes of additional papers and people in the hope that some of it might be useful for achieving better cause prioritization. If you really want Effective Altruists to capture the benefits from reading non-Western scientific literature, then clearly you don’t think that we can shrug our shoulders and say that we’re good enough, and should recognize that donating more money is another way we can similarly do better. The two are actually fungible, as you can donate money to movement growth with advertisements targeted to foreign countries, or you can donate to cause prioritization efforts with researchers hired to survey, review and summarize the fields of literature that you think are valuable.
After spending more than half a billion dollars, and potentially directing more than 100 millon dollars every year. EA community has no understanding of why HDI was created, and has no answer for why Education was dropped.
“Global health and development” = HDI—Education
It is not a question of money, it is a question of Diversity and Inclusion.
My hypothesis is that if humanity really understands how the world works then the problems can be solved easily, otherwise we will keep putting effort into less effective ways, sure EA is more effective but it still has far to go, the deficit in EA is not money it is understanding.
hey, interesting post. i dont think EAers should beat themselves up about how much they donate or not donate. anybody who gives 10% for EA has done more than 99.99% of humanity, that is worth a good nights sleep with a clear conscience.
However the EA community should ask, if they are missing a cause priority. Why EA won’t talk about race, gender, intersectionality etc.. EA will be more effective if those lenses are used. Likewise diversity in EA is poor, the papers and experts referred to are western, with little representation of voices from people around the world. The just concluded EA Global is a good example of this, even “Global Health and Development” track featured two people from the USA.
“Global Health and Development” itself is problematic framing, the UN via UNDP has published the Human Development Index, EA should be at a minimum focused on Human Development Indicators and not arbitrarily decide according to their biases.
(To people who want to downvote please explain why)
I downvoted the comment because it’s off-topic.
Thanks trammell. I notice that only you told me why, I assume I got 5 downvotes at a minimum.
While not directly on topic, giving more is about bigger impact, if D&I is poor EA impact is worse. That’s why I responded. My thinking is that money is not the constraint an understanding or lack of it is the constraint in improving the world. For which EA needs open hearts and minds, not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_favoritism
Maybe others downvoted for the same reason (off-topic), saw that trammel already commented and then just upvoted Trammell’s comment (5 upvoted) instead of writing the same thing themselves?
You could discuss this on a new top level post or this Facebook group: https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1863633717221799&ref=content_filter
To respond to the on-topic part of your post (I also downvoted because it’s mostly off-topic), I don’t see how you can shrug off the benefits of donating >10% as if 10% is good enough, while also saying that we must interview and read whole swathes of additional papers and people in the hope that some of it might be useful for achieving better cause prioritization. If you really want Effective Altruists to capture the benefits from reading non-Western scientific literature, then clearly you don’t think that we can shrug our shoulders and say that we’re good enough, and should recognize that donating more money is another way we can similarly do better. The two are actually fungible, as you can donate money to movement growth with advertisements targeted to foreign countries, or you can donate to cause prioritization efforts with researchers hired to survey, review and summarize the fields of literature that you think are valuable.
After spending more than half a billion dollars, and potentially directing more than 100 millon dollars every year. EA community has no understanding of why HDI was created, and has no answer for why Education was dropped.
“Global health and development” = HDI—Education
It is not a question of money, it is a question of Diversity and Inclusion.
My hypothesis is that if humanity really understands how the world works then the problems can be solved easily, otherwise we will keep putting effort into less effective ways, sure EA is more effective but it still has far to go, the deficit in EA is not money it is understanding.
You can receive answers to these claims by making a dedicated thread rather than hijacking the current one.