I see a world that still desperately needs Wave 1, and I see a lot of work still to be done in that area.
I look at the effectivealtriusm.org homepage, and a lot of what is mentioned there is still what you’re referring to as wave 1.
I would even venture that in most of the world (perhaps outside the hubs), people are drawn to EA first by Wave 1 concepts. We get frustrated at the poverty and disease and war and poor governance and refugee crises and famines and … and we wonder why can’t we do more to fix these with the significant resources we do devote to them. We see a group like EA looking at how to use limited resources to help people in the most effective way possible and it seems like a critical answer to a long-neglected question.
Is it possible that what you’re describing here is the cutting-edge aspects of EA—the areas where EA is breaking new ground philosophically and analytically, the areas which create lively, passionate debates on this forum, for example? And so, naturally, the ideas for the future come from areas like AI and longtermism. But a lot of vital EA work doesn’t have to be cutting-edge research.
But IMHO there is still a massive opportunity to help most of the world’s population in very concrete, tangible ways, and effective altruists can make vital contributions. You write the the goal of wave 1 was “donations to effective charities”—but this is a quite limited reading of what EA can do. How about influencing how governments spend their aid budgets, which is often very differently from how they would be most effective? There are a few groups doing this kind of work (e.g. Gates Foundation), but there is still so much aid and donations being inefficiently spent. Ideas as simple as how to convince governments to just give people in developing countries cash rather than spending 10X that much trying to solve their problems for them.
I know that part of the vision is to focus on areas which are neglected, but I see a big difference between working in an area that is neglected (which is not true of global poverty and disease, for example) and working in a way that is neglected (quantitative, analytical, data-driven) even in areas which receive a lot of attention and even (badly-spent) money.
Apologies if this feels ill-informed. I’m writing as someone who isn’t in any of the hubs and so just seeing EA from the “outside.”
I see a world that still desperately needs Wave 1, and I see a lot of work still to be done in that area.
I look at the effectivealtriusm.org homepage, and a lot of what is mentioned there is still what you’re referring to as wave 1.
I would even venture that in most of the world (perhaps outside the hubs), people are drawn to EA first by Wave 1 concepts. We get frustrated at the poverty and disease and war and poor governance and refugee crises and famines and … and we wonder why can’t we do more to fix these with the significant resources we do devote to them. We see a group like EA looking at how to use limited resources to help people in the most effective way possible and it seems like a critical answer to a long-neglected question.
Is it possible that what you’re describing here is the cutting-edge aspects of EA—the areas where EA is breaking new ground philosophically and analytically, the areas which create lively, passionate debates on this forum, for example? And so, naturally, the ideas for the future come from areas like AI and longtermism. But a lot of vital EA work doesn’t have to be cutting-edge research.
But IMHO there is still a massive opportunity to help most of the world’s population in very concrete, tangible ways, and effective altruists can make vital contributions. You write the the goal of wave 1 was “donations to effective charities”—but this is a quite limited reading of what EA can do. How about influencing how governments spend their aid budgets, which is often very differently from how they would be most effective? There are a few groups doing this kind of work (e.g. Gates Foundation), but there is still so much aid and donations being inefficiently spent. Ideas as simple as how to convince governments to just give people in developing countries cash rather than spending 10X that much trying to solve their problems for them.
I know that part of the vision is to focus on areas which are neglected, but I see a big difference between working in an area that is neglected (which is not true of global poverty and disease, for example) and working in a way that is neglected (quantitative, analytical, data-driven) even in areas which receive a lot of attention and even (badly-spent) money.
Apologies if this feels ill-informed. I’m writing as someone who isn’t in any of the hubs and so just seeing EA from the “outside.”
Yeah interesting, this seems right to me and useful, thanks for the pushback.