I think you’re missing the biggest disadvantage of elitism—it makes it so the people deciding on “how to help the world the most” are the people least in need of that help, and least informed about what the world’s problems actually feel like. Thus it makes us much more prone to missing important problems or applying bad solutions (or, worse yet, bad criteria).
So what concretely and scaleably can people who don’t need help because they have lots of resources (and thus they are actually capable of helping) do to figure out what the people who need help actually need, that the EA community is not doing?
Empower and encourage underrepresented (or unrepresented) people to participate in the movement
Deprioritise recruitment from elite universities, and aim instead to recruit from the least represented communities
Factor involvement of locals into recommendations of intervention implementations
I’d guess Givewell top charities do involve locals a lot in their programs, but I haven’t checked
Be wary of putting lots of resources into projects which may only benefit well-off people. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work on X-risk reduction; but it does mean we should give higher priority than we do now to things like:
Acting through governments and democratic processes
Gaining wide public support
Having a wide debate on the threats, the mitigation options, and whether it’s valuable to proceed with them
I’m a bit confused why these examples received s these downvotes. Would someone care to explain what EA is in fact doing in these areas if that is the reason?
I think you’re missing the biggest disadvantage of elitism—it makes it so the people deciding on “how to help the world the most” are the people least in need of that help, and least informed about what the world’s problems actually feel like. Thus it makes us much more prone to missing important problems or applying bad solutions (or, worse yet, bad criteria).
Cf. Glen Weyl’s “Why I am not a technocrat”.
Edit: also it’s self-reinforcing. And my conclusion is that it should be very strongly avoided.
So what concretely and scaleably can people who don’t need help because they have lots of resources (and thus they are actually capable of helping) do to figure out what the people who need help actually need, that the EA community is not doing?
For example:
Empower and encourage underrepresented (or unrepresented) people to participate in the movement
Deprioritise recruitment from elite universities, and aim instead to recruit from the least represented communities
Factor involvement of locals into recommendations of intervention implementations
I’d guess Givewell top charities do involve locals a lot in their programs, but I haven’t checked
Be wary of putting lots of resources into projects which may only benefit well-off people. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work on X-risk reduction; but it does mean we should give higher priority than we do now to things like:
Acting through governments and democratic processes
Gaining wide public support
Having a wide debate on the threats, the mitigation options, and whether it’s valuable to proceed with them
I’m a bit confused why these examples received s these downvotes. Would someone care to explain what EA is in fact doing in these areas if that is the reason?