I expect most EAs would be self-critical enough to see these both as frequently occurring flaws in the movement, but I’d dispute the claim that they’re foundational. For the first criticism, some people track personal impact, and 80k talks a lot about your individual career impact, but people working for EA orgs are surely thinking of their collective impact as an org rather than anything individual. In the same way, ‘core EAs’ have the privilege of actually identifying with the movement enough that they can internalise the impact of the EA community as a whole.
As for measurability, I agree that it is a bias in the movement, albeit probably a necessary one. The ecosystem example is an interesting one- I’d argue that it’s not that difficult to approach ecosystem conservation from an EA perspective. We generally understand how ecosystems work and how they provide measurable valuable services to humans. A cost-effectiveness calculation would provide the human value of ecosystem services (which environmental economists usually do)and, if you want to give inherent value to species diversity, add the number of species within a given area, the number of individuals of these species and rarity/​ external value of species etc. Then add weights according to various criteria to give something like an ‘ecosystem value per square metre’, and you’d get to a value that you could compare to other ecosystems. Calculate the price that it costs to conserve various ecosystems around the world, and voila, you have a cost-effectiveness analysis that feels at home on an EA platform. The reason this process doesn’t feel 100% EA is not that it’s difficult to measure, but because it can include value judgements that aren’t related to the welfare of conscious beings.
I expect most EAs would be self-critical enough to see these both as frequently occurring flaws in the movement, but I’d dispute the claim that they’re foundational. For the first criticism, some people track personal impact, and 80k talks a lot about your individual career impact, but people working for EA orgs are surely thinking of their collective impact as an org rather than anything individual. In the same way, ‘core EAs’ have the privilege of actually identifying with the movement enough that they can internalise the impact of the EA community as a whole.
As for measurability, I agree that it is a bias in the movement, albeit probably a necessary one. The ecosystem example is an interesting one- I’d argue that it’s not that difficult to approach ecosystem conservation from an EA perspective. We generally understand how ecosystems work and how they provide measurable valuable services to humans. A cost-effectiveness calculation would provide the human value of ecosystem services (which environmental economists usually do)and, if you want to give inherent value to species diversity, add the number of species within a given area, the number of individuals of these species and rarity/​ external value of species etc. Then add weights according to various criteria to give something like an ‘ecosystem value per square metre’, and you’d get to a value that you could compare to other ecosystems. Calculate the price that it costs to conserve various ecosystems around the world, and voila, you have a cost-effectiveness analysis that feels at home on an EA platform. The reason this process doesn’t feel 100% EA is not that it’s difficult to measure, but because it can include value judgements that aren’t related to the welfare of conscious beings.