I feel like there’s a bit of Motte-and-Bailey in this post.
The Motte is: “Things can be good without addressing root causes”. I agree with the Motte, and I agree that sometimes shifting conversations towards root causes acts as “a fig-leaf for inaction”.
The Bailey is: “EA is justified in neglecting root causes, to the extent that it does”. This claim is much less obvious, because EA is about doing the most good one can, and there are opportunity costs to any given approach to doing good. I don’t think you directly support the Bailey in your piece.
A personal example: when I was a young EA, I could have asked myself questions about how malaria vaccine manufacturing and distribution worked, and thought about how I might persuade people to effectively lobby for vaccine speedups. I didn’t. But I think it’s plausible that I’d have asked those questions if I’d taken the “root cause” framing a bit more seriously, and in the end have done more good than proselytising for and donating small amounts to AMF.
That said, I still upvoted the post; I think it’s useful to have honest, unshackled expressions of (relatable) sentiments like: “for fuck’s sake, please just focus on dying kids rather than exempting yourself from moral guilt via smug, self-serving anti-capitalist disquisitions”. Someone needs to do that, because I think it’s a common sentiment which deserves response. But I disagree-voted, because ultimately I think we can and should do better than that initial response.
I feel like there’s a bit of Motte-and-Bailey in this post.
The Motte is: “Things can be good without addressing root causes”. I agree with the Motte, and I agree that sometimes shifting conversations towards root causes acts as “a fig-leaf for inaction”.
The Bailey is: “EA is justified in neglecting root causes, to the extent that it does”. This claim is much less obvious, because EA is about doing the most good one can, and there are opportunity costs to any given approach to doing good. I don’t think you directly support the Bailey in your piece.
A personal example: when I was a young EA, I could have asked myself questions about how malaria vaccine manufacturing and distribution worked, and thought about how I might persuade people to effectively lobby for vaccine speedups. I didn’t. But I think it’s plausible that I’d have asked those questions if I’d taken the “root cause” framing a bit more seriously, and in the end have done more good than proselytising for and donating small amounts to AMF.
That said, I still upvoted the post; I think it’s useful to have honest, unshackled expressions of (relatable) sentiments like: “for fuck’s sake, please just focus on dying kids rather than exempting yourself from moral guilt via smug, self-serving anti-capitalist disquisitions”. Someone needs to do that, because I think it’s a common sentiment which deserves response. But I disagree-voted, because ultimately I think we can and should do better than that initial response.