One thing I would add is the very individualistic view of impact. We act as individuals to maximize (expected) individual impact.
Personally I wouldn’t agree with that. Effective altruists have been at pains to emphasise that we “do good together”—that was even the theme of a past EA Global, if I don’t misremember.
Also, it seems we are obsessed with the measurable.
I take a different view on that, too. For instance, Katja Grace wrote a post already in 2014 arguing that we shouldn’t refrain from interventions that are high-impact but hard to measure. That article was included in the first version of the EA Handbook (2015).
In fact, many of the causes currently popular with effective altruists, like AI safety and biosecurity, seem hard to measure.
Thanks for the very useful links, Stefan! I think the usefulness of coordination is widely agreed upon, but we’re still not working together as well as possible. The 80000hours article you linked even states:
Instead, especially in effective altruism, people engage in “single-player” thinking. They work out what would be the best course of action if others weren’t responding to what they do.
Personally I wouldn’t agree with that. Effective altruists have been at pains to emphasise that we “do good together”—that was even the theme of a past EA Global, if I don’t misremember.
80,000 hours had a long article on this theme already in 2018: Doing good together: how to coordinate effectively, and avoid single-player thinking. There was also a 2016 piece called The value of coordination on similar themes.
I take a different view on that, too. For instance, Katja Grace wrote a post already in 2014 arguing that we shouldn’t refrain from interventions that are high-impact but hard to measure. That article was included in the first version of the EA Handbook (2015).
In fact, many of the causes currently popular with effective altruists, like AI safety and biosecurity, seem hard to measure.
Thanks for the very useful links, Stefan!
I think the usefulness of coordination is widely agreed upon, but we’re still not working together as well as possible. The 80000hours article you linked even states:
I’ll go and spend some time with these topics