A lot depends on what constitutes a cause area and what counts as analysis. My own rough and tentative view is that at some level of generality (which could plausibly be called “cause area”), we can use heuristics to compare broad categories of interventions. But in terms of actual rigorous analysis, cause area is certainly not the right unit, and, furthermore, as a matter of empirical fact, there aren’t really any research organizations (including Rethink Priorities, where I work) that take cause area to be the appropriate unit of analysis.
Very curious to hear the thoughts of others, as I think this is a super important question!
I agree with your first two sentences. I feel unsure precisely what you mean by the sentence after that.
E.g., are you saying that no research organisations are spending resources trying to help people prioritise between different broad cause areas (e.g., longtermism vs animal welfare vs global health & development)? Or just that there’s no research org solely/primarily focused on that?
My impression is that:
There were multiple orgs that were primarily focused on between-cause prioritisation research in the past
But most/all have now decided on one or more cause areas as their current main focus(es) for now, and so now spend more of their effort on within-cause-area work
But many still do substantial amounts of work that’s focused on or very relevant to between-cause prioritisation, and may do more of that again later. E.g.:
80,000 Hours continue to put some hours (e.g.) into non-longtermist issues even if primarily longtermist issues are definitely their main focus
GPI are currently focused mostly on global priorities research that’s relevant to longtermism. But much of that is directly about how much to prioritise longtermism in the first place (partly to make a better case for longtermism, but I think also partly just because they’re genuinely unsure on that). And I imagine much of their work is also relevant to prioritising between other cause areas, and that they may diversify their focuses more in future.
Though I don’t actually know a huge amount about GPI’s work
And there is also a bunch of non-research effort aimed at helping individualsthink about which broad causes they want to/should focus on
A lot depends on what constitutes a cause area and what counts as analysis. My own rough and tentative view is that at some level of generality (which could plausibly be called “cause area”), we can use heuristics to compare broad categories of interventions. But in terms of actual rigorous analysis, cause area is certainly not the right unit, and, furthermore, as a matter of empirical fact, there aren’t really any research organizations (including Rethink Priorities, where I work) that take cause area to be the appropriate unit of analysis.
Very curious to hear the thoughts of others, as I think this is a super important question!
I agree with your first two sentences. I feel unsure precisely what you mean by the sentence after that.
E.g., are you saying that no research organisations are spending resources trying to help people prioritise between different broad cause areas (e.g., longtermism vs animal welfare vs global health & development)? Or just that there’s no research org solely/primarily focused on that?
My impression is that:
There were multiple orgs that were primarily focused on between-cause prioritisation research in the past
But most/all have now decided on one or more cause areas as their current main focus(es) for now, and so now spend more of their effort on within-cause-area work
But many still do substantial amounts of work that’s focused on or very relevant to between-cause prioritisation, and may do more of that again later. E.g.:
Open Phil do worldview investigations
80,000 Hours continue to put some hours (e.g.) into non-longtermist issues even if primarily longtermist issues are definitely their main focus
GPI are currently focused mostly on global priorities research that’s relevant to longtermism. But much of that is directly about how much to prioritise longtermism in the first place (partly to make a better case for longtermism, but I think also partly just because they’re genuinely unsure on that). And I imagine much of their work is also relevant to prioritising between other cause areas, and that they may diversify their focuses more in future.
Though I don’t actually know a huge amount about GPI’s work
And there is also a bunch of non-research effort aimed at helping individuals think about which broad causes they want to/should focus on
E.g., the EA Virtual Programs partly do this