A common criticism of EA/rationalist discussion is that we reinvent the wheel—specifically, that concepts which become part of the community have close analogies that have been better studied in academic literature. Or in some cases, that we fixate on some particular academically sourced notion to the exclusion of many similar or competing theories.
I think we can simultaneously test and address this purported problem by crowd sourcing an open database mapping EA concepts to related academic concepts, and in particular citing papers that investigate the latter. In this thread I propose the following format:
‘Answers’ name an EA or rat concept either that you suspect might or know has mappings to a broader set of academic literature.
Replies to answers cite at least one academic work (or a good Wikipedia article) describing a related phenomenon or concept. In some cases, an EA/rat concept might be an amalgam of multiple other concepts, so please give as many replies to answers as seem appropriate.
Feel free but not obliged to add context to replies (as long as they link a good source)
Feel free to reply to your own answer
I’ll add any responses this thread gets to a commentable Google sheet (which I can keep updating), and share that sheet afterwards. Hopefully this will be a valuable resource both for fans of effective altruism to learn more about their areas of interest, and for critics to asserting the reinventing-of-wheelness of EA/rat to prove instances of their case (where an answer gets convincing replies) or refute them (where an answer gets no or only loosely related replies).
I’ll seed the discussion with a handful of answers of my own, most of which I have at best tenative mappings.
[Question] What wheels do EAs and rationalists reinvent?
A common criticism of EA/rationalist discussion is that we reinvent the wheel—specifically, that concepts which become part of the community have close analogies that have been better studied in academic literature. Or in some cases, that we fixate on some particular academically sourced notion to the exclusion of many similar or competing theories.
I think we can simultaneously test and address this purported problem by crowd sourcing an open database mapping EA concepts to related academic concepts, and in particular citing papers that investigate the latter. In this thread I propose the following format:
‘Answers’ name an EA or rat concept either that you suspect might or know has mappings to a broader set of academic literature.
Replies to answers cite at least one academic work (or a good Wikipedia article) describing a related phenomenon or concept. In some cases, an EA/rat concept might be an amalgam of multiple other concepts, so please give as many replies to answers as seem appropriate.
Feel free but not obliged to add context to replies (as long as they link a good source)
Feel free to reply to your own answer
I’ll add any responses this thread gets to a commentable Google sheet (which I can keep updating), and share that sheet afterwards. Hopefully this will be a valuable resource both for fans of effective altruism to learn more about their areas of interest, and for critics to asserting the reinventing-of-wheelness of EA/rat to prove instances of their case (where an answer gets convincing replies) or refute them (where an answer gets no or only loosely related replies).
I’ll seed the discussion with a handful of answers of my own, most of which I have at best tenative mappings.