Thank you for this thoughtful and comprehensive piece.
After reading it, I was grateful for the authors’ presentation of the prioritization landscape. It got me thinking:
What if some of the challenges they describe aren’t just analytical, but reflect more profound questions of governance and institutional design?
As someone new to Effective Altruism but with a background in operations and systems governance, I found the framework of “types of prioritization” helpful and surprisingly familiar in a different context.
What stood out most was the idea that prioritization functions not only as analysis but also as a form of governance. In organizational settings I’ve worked in, prioritization often acts less like a single decision point and more like an ongoing structure, shaping whose voices are heard, what counts as valid evidence, and how (or whether) feedback loops are built in. In that sense, prioritization becomes embedded in institutional infrastructure: it influences how systems adapt, not just what they focus on.
So I wondered: How much of the prioritization in EA is a design question about institutional learning, decision rights, and oversight?
From that angle, the current emphasis on within-cause work doesn’t just feel like a strategic imbalance; it may also reflect what’s easier to operationalize within existing organizational structures. This raises the question of how cross-cause or cause-level prioritization could be scaffolded intellectually and institutionally through clearer decision ownership, more deliberate feedback systems, or periodic governance reviews.
I don’t have a strong view here; I’m just curious from a governance perspective: If prioritization were treated as infrastructure, not just analysis, how might that reshape how EA allocates resources and decision-making power?
Grateful for the clarity of this post, and looking forward to learning more.
Note: I’m still relatively new to EA, and I’m sharing these reflections from a systems and governance lens. They’re offered with curiosity and I welcome clarifications from those thinking deeply about these dynamics.
What stood out most was the idea that prioritization functions not only as analysis but also as a form of governance
I agree with this. And I think this framing makes clear why how we allocate the community’s prioritisation is such an important question.
How much of the prioritization in EA is a design question about institutional learning, decision rights, and oversight?
From that angle, the current emphasis on within-cause work doesn’t just feel like a strategic imbalance; it may also reflect what’s easier to operationalize within existing organizational structures.
I also agree with this. As we allude to in the piece, institutional infrastructure for (and generally doing) within-cause prioritisation is generally easier: you can build on, or more easily develop, networks of domain-specialists and specialist institutions. And I think various factors push the community towards more siloed within-cause structures (e.g. network effects etc.).
So I think it’s both the case that within-cause infrastructure is easier to set up and that, as you say, our current (heavily cause-specific) infrastructure makes within-cause prioritisation easier and cross-cause prioritisation harder (e.g. there are few institutions that are well-placed or have the remit to do cross-cause work).
I agree that we would need more structured systems (or more support for the existing systems) in order to do more cross-cause prioritisation. I don’t want to communicate fatalism about this though: I think existing organizations and individuals could start doing significantly more cross-cause prioritisation if they decided it were valuable and that this would itself make it easier to build the relevant infrastructure.[1]
Thank you for this thoughtful and comprehensive piece.
After reading it, I was grateful for the authors’ presentation of the prioritization landscape. It got me thinking:
What if some of the challenges they describe aren’t just analytical, but reflect more profound questions of governance and institutional design?
As someone new to Effective Altruism but with a background in operations and systems governance, I found the framework of “types of prioritization” helpful and surprisingly familiar in a different context.
What stood out most was the idea that prioritization functions not only as analysis but also as a form of governance. In organizational settings I’ve worked in, prioritization often acts less like a single decision point and more like an ongoing structure, shaping whose voices are heard, what counts as valid evidence, and how (or whether) feedback loops are built in. In that sense, prioritization becomes embedded in institutional infrastructure: it influences how systems adapt, not just what they focus on.
So I wondered: How much of the prioritization in EA is a design question about institutional learning, decision rights, and oversight?
From that angle, the current emphasis on within-cause work doesn’t just feel like a strategic imbalance; it may also reflect what’s easier to operationalize within existing organizational structures. This raises the question of how cross-cause or cause-level prioritization could be scaffolded intellectually and institutionally through clearer decision ownership, more deliberate feedback systems, or periodic governance reviews.
I don’t have a strong view here; I’m just curious from a governance perspective: If prioritization were treated as infrastructure, not just analysis, how might that reshape how EA allocates resources and decision-making power?
Grateful for the clarity of this post, and looking forward to learning more.
Note: I’m still relatively new to EA, and I’m sharing these reflections from a systems and governance lens. They’re offered with curiosity and I welcome clarifications from those thinking deeply about these dynamics.
Thanks Ivan!
I agree with this. And I think this framing makes clear why how we allocate the community’s prioritisation is such an important question.
I also agree with this. As we allude to in the piece, institutional infrastructure for (and generally doing) within-cause prioritisation is generally easier: you can build on, or more easily develop, networks of domain-specialists and specialist institutions. And I think various factors push the community towards more siloed within-cause structures (e.g. network effects etc.).
So I think it’s both the case that within-cause infrastructure is easier to set up and that, as you say, our current (heavily cause-specific) infrastructure makes within-cause prioritisation easier and cross-cause prioritisation harder (e.g. there are few institutions that are well-placed or have the remit to do cross-cause work).
I agree that we would need more structured systems (or more support for the existing systems) in order to do more cross-cause prioritisation. I don’t want to communicate fatalism about this though: I think existing organizations and individuals could start doing significantly more cross-cause prioritisation if they decided it were valuable and that this would itself make it easier to build the relevant infrastructure.[1]
Though, of course, it would take further work for EA’s actual allocations of resources to be influenced by this prioritisation work.