Thanks for your comment Richard, I think the discussion is better for it. I agree with your clarification that there are key differences that distinguish EA from more traditional attitudes and that defending cause incommensurability and personal taste are two relevant dimensions.
Like you, it does seem to us that in the early days of EA, many people doing prioritisation of GHD interventions went beyond traditional intervention clusters (e.g. education) and did some cross-cause prioritisation (identifying the best interventions simpliciter).
That said, the times feel different now and we think that, increasingly, people are doing within-cause prioritisation by only trying to identify the best interventions within a given area without it being clearly ‘done in service of the ultimate goal of “cross-cause prioritization”’ (e.g. because they are working for an institution or project with funds dedicated exclusively to be allocated within a certain cause).
Thanks for your comment Richard, I think the discussion is better for it. I agree with your clarification that there are key differences that distinguish EA from more traditional attitudes and that defending cause incommensurability and personal taste are two relevant dimensions.
Like you, it does seem to us that in the early days of EA, many people doing prioritisation of GHD interventions went beyond traditional intervention clusters (e.g. education) and did some cross-cause prioritisation (identifying the best interventions simpliciter).
That said, the times feel different now and we think that, increasingly, people are doing within-cause prioritisation by only trying to identify the best interventions within a given area without it being clearly ‘done in service of the ultimate goal of “cross-cause prioritization”’ (e.g. because they are working for an institution or project with funds dedicated exclusively to be allocated within a certain cause).