I think I had a similar confusion to bwildi, or more specifically I wondered while reading this what wouldnāt count as meta EA. Your comment helps clarity that, but I think thereās still an issue, which is essentially that (almost?) all impacts will only occur indirectly. Some examples:
āimplementing vaccine programsā is unusually close to being direct, but arguably still indirect, as what we have in mind is probably something more organisational rather than literally being the person giving out the injections
ālobbying for animal rightsā is of course only impactful if the lobbying changes policies, and then the policies change behaviours
likewise for āresearch on x-riskā
likewise for other policymaking or policy advising work (which came to mind as one of the candidates for ānot meta EAā when reading this)
I still think like thereās a useful category in this vicinity, which includes the examples you give but doesnāt include things like researching specific AI safety ideas or doing policy advising. But I donāt think that the definition you give by itself makes it clear whatās in and whatās out of scope.
I think maybe Iād see it as cleaner to have a concept for ābuilding effective altruismā, and a concept for āglobal priorities researchā, and then everything else (e.g. technical AI safety research, policy advising). Rather than trying to merge building effective altruism and global priorities research under the meta EA banner and then explain why those things fit together but everything else doesnāt fit as part of them.
(All that said, I found this post interesting, and I think this sort of mapping seems hard so Iām not saying Iād have done a better job.)
I think I had a similar confusion to bwildi, or more specifically I wondered while reading this what wouldnāt count as meta EA. Your comment helps clarity that, but I think thereās still an issue, which is essentially that (almost?) all impacts will only occur indirectly. Some examples:
āimplementing vaccine programsā is unusually close to being direct, but arguably still indirect, as what we have in mind is probably something more organisational rather than literally being the person giving out the injections
ālobbying for animal rightsā is of course only impactful if the lobbying changes policies, and then the policies change behaviours
likewise for āresearch on x-riskā
likewise for other policymaking or policy advising work (which came to mind as one of the candidates for ānot meta EAā when reading this)
I still think like thereās a useful category in this vicinity, which includes the examples you give but doesnāt include things like researching specific AI safety ideas or doing policy advising. But I donāt think that the definition you give by itself makes it clear whatās in and whatās out of scope.
I think maybe Iād see it as cleaner to have a concept for ābuilding effective altruismā, and a concept for āglobal priorities researchā, and then everything else (e.g. technical AI safety research, policy advising). Rather than trying to merge building effective altruism and global priorities research under the meta EA banner and then explain why those things fit together but everything else doesnāt fit as part of them.
(All that said, I found this post interesting, and I think this sort of mapping seems hard so Iām not saying Iād have done a better job.)
Vaguely relevant:
My attempt to distinguish āfundamental researchā from āintervention researchā
A framework distinguishing between values research, strategy research, intervention research, and implementation
(I think neither of those things attempts to explain where movement building fits in.)