4 out of 5 of the team members worked publically (googlably) to a greater or lesser extent on animal welfare issues even before joining RP
I think this risks being misleading, because the team have also worked on many non-animal related topics. And it’s not surprising that they have, because AW is one of the key cause areas of EA, just as it’s not surprising they’ve worked on other core EA areas. So pointing out that the team have worked on animal-related topics seems like cherry-picking, when you could equally well point to work in other areas as evidence of bias in those directions.
For example, Derek has worked on animal topics, but also digital consciousness, with philosophy of mind being a unifying theme.
I can give a more detailed response regarding my own work specifically, since I track all my projects directly. In the last 3 years, 112⁄124 (90.3%)[1] of the projects I’ve worked on personally have been EA Meta / Longtermist related, with <10% animal related. But I think it would be a mistake to conclude from this that I’m longtermist-biased, even though that constitutes a larger proportion of my work.
Edit: I realise an alternative way to cash out your concern might not be in terms of bias towards animals relative to other cause areas, but rather than we should have people on both sides of all the key cause areas or key debates (e.g. we should have people on both extreme of being pro- and anti- animal, pro- and anti-AI, pro- and anti- GHD, and also presumably on other key questions like suffering focus etc).
If so, then I agree this would be desirable as an ideal, but (as you suggest) impractical (and perhaps undesirable) to achieve in a small team.
I think this risks being misleading, because the team have also worked on many non-animal related topics. And it’s not surprising that they have, because AW is one of the key cause areas of EA, just as it’s not surprising they’ve worked on other core EA areas. So pointing out that the team have worked on animal-related topics seems like cherry-picking, when you could equally well point to work in other areas as evidence of bias in those directions.
For example, Derek has worked on animal topics, but also digital consciousness, with philosophy of mind being a unifying theme.
I can give a more detailed response regarding my own work specifically, since I track all my projects directly. In the last 3 years, 112⁄124 (90.3%)[1] of the projects I’ve worked on personally have been EA Meta / Longtermist related, with <10% animal related. But I think it would be a mistake to conclude from this that I’m longtermist-biased, even though that constitutes a larger proportion of my work.
Edit: I realise an alternative way to cash out your concern might not be in terms of bias towards animals relative to other cause areas, but rather than we should have people on both sides of all the key cause areas or key debates (e.g. we should have people on both extreme of being pro- and anti- animal, pro- and anti-AI, pro- and anti- GHD, and also presumably on other key questions like suffering focus etc).
If so, then I agree this would be desirable as an ideal, but (as you suggest) impractical (and perhaps undesirable) to achieve in a small team.
This is within RP projects, if we included non-RP academic projects, the proportion of animal projects would be even lower.