Yeah I did mean “longtermist EA”, meaning “stuff that people arrived at thinking was especially high priority after taking a long hard look at how most of the expected impact of our actions is probably far into the future and how we need to wrestle with massive uncertainty about what’s good to do as a result of that”.
I was here imagining that the motivation for working on Wave wasn’t that it seemed like a top Phase 2 priority from that perspective. If actually you start with that perspective and think that ~Wave is one of the best ways to address it, then I would want to count Wave as Phase 2 for longtermist EA (I’d also be super interested to get into more discussion about why you think that, because I’d have the impression that there was a gap in the public discourse).
Thanks. I definitely can’t count Wave in that category because longtermism wasn’t a thing on my radar when Wave was founded. Anyway, I missed that in your original post and I think it somewhat invalidates my point; but only somewhat.
I don’t think predating longtermism rules out Wave. I would count Open Phil’s grants to the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which was established before EA (let alone longtermism), because Open Phil chose to donate to them for longtermist reasons. Similarly, if you wanted to argue that advancing Wave was one of our current best options for improving the long term future, that would be an argument for grouping Wave in with longtermist work.
(I’m really happy that you and Wave are doing what you’re doing, but not because of direct impact on the long-term future.)
I was thinking that Wave (and GiveWell donations, etc) weren’t being counted because Owen is talking specifically about “longtermist EA”?
Yeah I did mean “longtermist EA”, meaning “stuff that people arrived at thinking was especially high priority after taking a long hard look at how most of the expected impact of our actions is probably far into the future and how we need to wrestle with massive uncertainty about what’s good to do as a result of that”.
I was here imagining that the motivation for working on Wave wasn’t that it seemed like a top Phase 2 priority from that perspective. If actually you start with that perspective and think that ~Wave is one of the best ways to address it, then I would want to count Wave as Phase 2 for longtermist EA (I’d also be super interested to get into more discussion about why you think that, because I’d have the impression that there was a gap in the public discourse).
Thanks. I definitely can’t count Wave in that category because longtermism wasn’t a thing on my radar when Wave was founded. Anyway, I missed that in your original post and I think it somewhat invalidates my point; but only somewhat.
I don’t think predating longtermism rules out Wave. I would count Open Phil’s grants to the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which was established before EA (let alone longtermism), because Open Phil chose to donate to them for longtermist reasons. Similarly, if you wanted to argue that advancing Wave was one of our current best options for improving the long term future, that would be an argument for grouping Wave in with longtermist work.
(I’m really happy that you and Wave are doing what you’re doing, but not because of direct impact on the long-term future.)