There seem to be a lot of leads that could help us figure out the high-value interventions, though: i) knowledge about what causes it and what has contributed to changes of it over time ii) research directions that could help further improve our understanding of what causes it / what doesn’t cause it iii) various interventions which already seem like they work in a small-scale setting, though it’s still unclear how they might be scaled up (e.g. something like Crucial Conversations is basically about increasing trust and safety in one-to-one and small-group conversations) iv) and of course psychology in general is full of interesting ideas for improving mental health and well-being that haven’t been rigorously tested, which also suggests that v) any meta-work that would improve psychology’s research practices would also be even more valuable than we previously thought.
As for the “pointing out a problem people have been aware of for millenia”, well, people have been aware of global poverty for millenia too. Then we got science and randomized controlled trials and all the stuff that EAs like, and got better at fixing the problem. Time to start looking at how we could apply our improved understanding of this old problem, to fixing it.
First, I consider our knowledge of psychology today to be roughly equivalent to that of alchemists when alchemy was popular. Like with alchemy, our main advantage over previous generations is that we’re doing lots of experiments and starting to notice vague patterns, but we still don’t have any systematic or reliable knowledge of what is actually going on. It is premature to seriously expect to change human nature.
Improving our knowledge of psychology to the point where we can actually figure things out could have a major positive effect on society. The same could be said for other branches of science. I think basic science is a potentially high-value cause, but I don’t see why psychology should be singled out.
Second, this cause is not neglected. It is one of the major issues intellectuals have been grappling with for centuries or more. Framing the issue in terms of “tribalism” may be a novelty, but I don’t see it as an improvement.
Finally, I’m not saying that there’s nothing the effective altruism community can do about tribalism. I’m saying I don’t see how this post is helping.
edit: As an aside, I’m now wondering if I might be expressing the point too rudely, especially the last paragraph. I hope we manage to communicate effectively in spite of any mistakes on my part.
There seem to be a lot of leads that could help us figure out the high-value interventions, though: i) knowledge about what causes it and what has contributed to changes of it over time ii) research directions that could help further improve our understanding of what causes it / what doesn’t cause it iii) various interventions which already seem like they work in a small-scale setting, though it’s still unclear how they might be scaled up (e.g. something like Crucial Conversations is basically about increasing trust and safety in one-to-one and small-group conversations) iv) and of course psychology in general is full of interesting ideas for improving mental health and well-being that haven’t been rigorously tested, which also suggests that v) any meta-work that would improve psychology’s research practices would also be even more valuable than we previously thought.
As for the “pointing out a problem people have been aware of for millenia”, well, people have been aware of global poverty for millenia too. Then we got science and randomized controlled trials and all the stuff that EAs like, and got better at fixing the problem. Time to start looking at how we could apply our improved understanding of this old problem, to fixing it.
First, I consider our knowledge of psychology today to be roughly equivalent to that of alchemists when alchemy was popular. Like with alchemy, our main advantage over previous generations is that we’re doing lots of experiments and starting to notice vague patterns, but we still don’t have any systematic or reliable knowledge of what is actually going on. It is premature to seriously expect to change human nature.
Improving our knowledge of psychology to the point where we can actually figure things out could have a major positive effect on society. The same could be said for other branches of science. I think basic science is a potentially high-value cause, but I don’t see why psychology should be singled out.
Second, this cause is not neglected. It is one of the major issues intellectuals have been grappling with for centuries or more. Framing the issue in terms of “tribalism” may be a novelty, but I don’t see it as an improvement.
Finally, I’m not saying that there’s nothing the effective altruism community can do about tribalism. I’m saying I don’t see how this post is helping.
edit: As an aside, I’m now wondering if I might be expressing the point too rudely, especially the last paragraph. I hope we manage to communicate effectively in spite of any mistakes on my part.