This feels fairly strawman-y, and even if it weren’t it is far too sweeping of a judgement to be actionable or useful. In some cases, root causes are very complex and hard to determine, agree on, or act upon, and pouring most or all resources into more palliative solutions can make sense, but that isn’t always true. Titotal’s cholera example is a great counterpoint.You can also think of something like toxic waste in the ground and water causing ilnesses. Would it be better to keep treating the people who are getting sick, constantly pouring resources into each new generation who is affected by the hazard, or to clean up the hazard and prevent further illness? A much more simple analogy can be drawn to a leaky boat. Is it better to hire a crew member to constantly dump buckets of water overboard to keep the boat from flooding or just plug the hole? Sometimes you can’t plug the hole, so the bucket person is necessary; but if you reasonably think you can get it done not plugging the hole is counterproductive and extremely inefficient. Holding a blanket stance against addressing root causes can also be similarly inefficient and counteproductive, depending on the case.
I think a point that is frequently overlooked in this discussion is that this isn’t necessairly an either-or situation. I think a lot of the reaction to some EA suggestions is partly heigthened because of the way EAs present their suggestions: the cost-benefit analysis that goes into these suggestions and the language used often explicitly or implicitly argues that a certain intervention is the best thing you can be putting your money or other resources behind, and I think having someone point out the need to address root causes in reaction to that is both necessary ans useful, if only as a kind of red teaming exercise to push us to think about how it may be possible to find permanent solutions that don’t require constant upkeep or additional resources. Some of this kind of criticism will be useless or be made in bad faith, but so is some of the reaction to it (parts of this post included). For example,
“Please help me,” he cries out. “Well,” you reply, “if we want to get serious about the gun violence crisis in this country, we’ll have to take on the fact that guns are very common. Thoughts, prayers, and calling ambulances are not enough. Thus, I will not help you—that would just be a partial solution that doesn’t address that root of the problem.”
I understand the use of this as a rhetorical device, but you can easily write an equivalently absurd version of this from the opposite position, particularly when you choose a convenient example: “No, we can’t remove the toxic waste from your water supply, because we don’t need to address root causes to solve a problem! We’ll just keep giving you chemo for your cancer and hope that works. And besides, when you really think about it, the real root cause of cancer is biological evolution, so we couldn’t address the root cause even if we wanted to!” Both are obviously not tenable positions to take, because most often you need a mix of both structural and palliative interventions to solve a problem. Treating HIV/AIDS is a hugely important and valuable intervention that needs to continue, but there should also be steps taken to, as much as possible, prevent the fırther spread of HIV/AIDS so that, hopefully, some day we won’t need something like PEPFAR—which, incidentally, is a perfect example for why these woot cause approaches are valuable: when dealing with a problem is primarily accomplished through these palliative measures that require more or less constant maintenance, the moment you lose access to that because of a lack of funds, or political change, or any reason, the problem is no longer solved.
This feels fairly strawman-y, and even if it weren’t it is far too sweeping of a judgement to be actionable or useful. In some cases, root causes are very complex and hard to determine, agree on, or act upon, and pouring most or all resources into more palliative solutions can make sense, but that isn’t always true. Titotal’s cholera example is a great counterpoint.You can also think of something like toxic waste in the ground and water causing ilnesses. Would it be better to keep treating the people who are getting sick, constantly pouring resources into each new generation who is affected by the hazard, or to clean up the hazard and prevent further illness? A much more simple analogy can be drawn to a leaky boat. Is it better to hire a crew member to constantly dump buckets of water overboard to keep the boat from flooding or just plug the hole? Sometimes you can’t plug the hole, so the bucket person is necessary; but if you reasonably think you can get it done not plugging the hole is counterproductive and extremely inefficient. Holding a blanket stance against addressing root causes can also be similarly inefficient and counteproductive, depending on the case.
I think a point that is frequently overlooked in this discussion is that this isn’t necessairly an either-or situation. I think a lot of the reaction to some EA suggestions is partly heigthened because of the way EAs present their suggestions: the cost-benefit analysis that goes into these suggestions and the language used often explicitly or implicitly argues that a certain intervention is the best thing you can be putting your money or other resources behind, and I think having someone point out the need to address root causes in reaction to that is both necessary ans useful, if only as a kind of red teaming exercise to push us to think about how it may be possible to find permanent solutions that don’t require constant upkeep or additional resources. Some of this kind of criticism will be useless or be made in bad faith, but so is some of the reaction to it (parts of this post included). For example,
I understand the use of this as a rhetorical device, but you can easily write an equivalently absurd version of this from the opposite position, particularly when you choose a convenient example: “No, we can’t remove the toxic waste from your water supply, because we don’t need to address root causes to solve a problem! We’ll just keep giving you chemo for your cancer and hope that works. And besides, when you really think about it, the real root cause of cancer is biological evolution, so we couldn’t address the root cause even if we wanted to!” Both are obviously not tenable positions to take, because most often you need a mix of both structural and palliative interventions to solve a problem. Treating HIV/AIDS is a hugely important and valuable intervention that needs to continue, but there should also be steps taken to, as much as possible, prevent the fırther spread of HIV/AIDS so that, hopefully, some day we won’t need something like PEPFAR—which, incidentally, is a perfect example for why these woot cause approaches are valuable: when dealing with a problem is primarily accomplished through these palliative measures that require more or less constant maintenance, the moment you lose access to that because of a lack of funds, or political change, or any reason, the problem is no longer solved.