What is approximately the current distribution of resources? Was it displayed/known to respondents?
Even though someone is working within one cause, there are many practical reasons to use a “portfolio” approach (say; risk aversion, moral trade, diminishing marginal returns, making the EA brand more inclusive to people and ideas). It seems that each different approach will lend itself to a different portfolio. I’m not sure how to think about the data here, and what does the average mean.
We didn’t attempt to estimate the current distribution of resources before sending out the survey.
I talk about the limitations of the prioritization data in my reply to another comment here. In short: I don’t think the averages are too meaningful, but we wanted to share the data we had collected; the data is also a useful “sanity check” on some commonplace beliefs about EA (e.g. testing whether leaders really care about longtermism to the exclusion of all else).
I’m a bit confused about the “Known Causes” part.
What is approximately the current distribution of resources? Was it displayed/known to respondents?
Even though someone is working within one cause, there are many practical reasons to use a “portfolio” approach (say; risk aversion, moral trade, diminishing marginal returns, making the EA brand more inclusive to people and ideas). It seems that each different approach will lend itself to a different portfolio. I’m not sure how to think about the data here, and what does the average mean.
We didn’t attempt to estimate the current distribution of resources before sending out the survey.
I talk about the limitations of the prioritization data in my reply to another comment here. In short: I don’t think the averages are too meaningful, but we wanted to share the data we had collected; the data is also a useful “sanity check” on some commonplace beliefs about EA (e.g. testing whether leaders really care about longtermism to the exclusion of all else).