One thing it might be nice to see more of is people writing about and defending different causes than the ones they usually do.
Interesting idea. How much detail would you expect such articles to go into? It seems they run the risk of a knee-jerk, this is not what EA is about, downvote.
My reading of Michelle’s point was not that we should be writing about and defending causes that we wouldn’t normally think of as EA (although this could also be beneficial!) - I think she meant, within the space of the causes EAs generally talk about, it would be good if people wrote about and defended causes different to the ones they normally do. So, for example, if a person is known for talking about and defending animal causes, they could spend some time also writing about and defending xrisk or poverty. This would then lessen the impression that many people are “fixed” to one cause, but wouldn’t have the problem you mention. I might be reading this wrong though.
I meant Jess’ reading, sorry I wasn’t clear. I was thinking people would write about / defend causes they thought were very effective, though they weren’t the ones they usually focused on (and perhaps weren’t the one they thought very most effective). I think the knee-jerk would mostly be a problem if people wrote about causes they didn’t actually think were particularly effective, which does seem like it would be problematic.
Interesting idea. How much detail would you expect such articles to go into? It seems they run the risk of a knee-jerk, this is not what EA is about, downvote.
My reading of Michelle’s point was not that we should be writing about and defending causes that we wouldn’t normally think of as EA (although this could also be beneficial!) - I think she meant, within the space of the causes EAs generally talk about, it would be good if people wrote about and defended causes different to the ones they normally do. So, for example, if a person is known for talking about and defending animal causes, they could spend some time also writing about and defending xrisk or poverty. This would then lessen the impression that many people are “fixed” to one cause, but wouldn’t have the problem you mention. I might be reading this wrong though.
I meant Jess’ reading, sorry I wasn’t clear. I was thinking people would write about / defend causes they thought were very effective, though they weren’t the ones they usually focused on (and perhaps weren’t the one they thought very most effective). I think the knee-jerk would mostly be a problem if people wrote about causes they didn’t actually think were particularly effective, which does seem like it would be problematic.