Aaron, I agree that these global health issues are getting the serious attention they need now, and I don’t think that EA has turned its back on these issues.
Rather, it’s the narrative about EA that feels like it’s shifting. The New Yorker’s piece describes the era of “bed nets” as over, and while that’s not a true statement—when you looking at the funding—the attention placed on longtermism shifts the EA brand in a big way. One of EA’s strengths was that anyone could do it—“here’s how you can save one life today.” The practical, immediate impact of EA is appealing to a lot of young people who want to give back and help others. With longtermism, the ability to be an effective altruist is largely limited to those with advanced knowledge and technical skills to engage in these highly complex problems.
As press and attention is drawn to this work, it may come to define the EA movement, and, over time, EA may become less accessible to people who would have been drawn to its origin mission. As an outsider to EA, who serves as a PM who builds AI models, I’m not able to assess which AI alignment charities are the most effective charities, and that saps confidence that my donation will be effective.
Again, this is purely a branding/marketing problem, but it still could be an existential risk for the movement. You could imagine a world where these two initiatives could build their own brands—longtermism could become 22nd Century Philanthropy (22C!), and people who are committed to this cause could help to build this movement. At the same time, there are millions of people who want to funnel billions of dollars to empirically-validated charities that make the world immediately better, and the EA brand serves as a clearly-defined entry point into doing that work.
Over EA’s history, the movement has always had a porous quality of inviting outsiders and enabling them to rapidly become part of the community by enabling people to concretely understand and evaluate philanthropic endeavors, but in a shift to difficult to understand and abstract longermism issues, EA may lose that quality that drives its growth. In short, the EA movement could be defined as making the greatest impact on the greatest number of people today, and 22nd Century Philanthropy could exist as a movement for impacting the greatest number of people tomorrow, with both movements able to attract people passionate about these different causes.
Aaron, I agree that these global health issues are getting the serious attention they need now, and I don’t think that EA has turned its back on these issues.
Rather, it’s the narrative about EA that feels like it’s shifting. The New Yorker’s piece describes the era of “bed nets” as over, and while that’s not a true statement—when you looking at the funding—the attention placed on longtermism shifts the EA brand in a big way. One of EA’s strengths was that anyone could do it—“here’s how you can save one life today.” The practical, immediate impact of EA is appealing to a lot of young people who want to give back and help others. With longtermism, the ability to be an effective altruist is largely limited to those with advanced knowledge and technical skills to engage in these highly complex problems.
As press and attention is drawn to this work, it may come to define the EA movement, and, over time, EA may become less accessible to people who would have been drawn to its origin mission. As an outsider to EA, who serves as a PM who builds AI models, I’m not able to assess which AI alignment charities are the most effective charities, and that saps confidence that my donation will be effective.
Again, this is purely a branding/marketing problem, but it still could be an existential risk for the movement. You could imagine a world where these two initiatives could build their own brands—longtermism could become 22nd Century Philanthropy (22C!), and people who are committed to this cause could help to build this movement. At the same time, there are millions of people who want to funnel billions of dollars to empirically-validated charities that make the world immediately better, and the EA brand serves as a clearly-defined entry point into doing that work.
Over EA’s history, the movement has always had a porous quality of inviting outsiders and enabling them to rapidly become part of the community by enabling people to concretely understand and evaluate philanthropic endeavors, but in a shift to difficult to understand and abstract longermism issues, EA may lose that quality that drives its growth. In short, the EA movement could be defined as making the greatest impact on the greatest number of people today, and 22nd Century Philanthropy could exist as a movement for impacting the greatest number of people tomorrow, with both movements able to attract people passionate about these different causes.