Thank you for writing this, it is useful to see how some EA-ers might view me! I don’t go around criticising EA for not addressing root causes, but I feel it is important we address them and I have queried the apparent lack recognition of them in EA. Alongside that I’d don’t deny the need for immediate interventions right now. It’s not either/or.
I feel like the framing of an either/or choice in the post is reductive. The EA movement should be broad enough to have a more nuanced approach to look at root causes—it is possible these could have huge ripple effects—while acknowledging the need for continued direct interventions. We can, to continue your narrative, help the person who has been shot while also working on policy reform around gun control. Noting, you can follow a chain of root causes all the way to arguing the root cause is violent behaviour in a society which accepts such casual violence. Surely the key to doing the most good is finding the sweet spot of a tractable root cause?
If we ignore root causes and only focus on the immediate inventions there are a number of risks:
1. The underlying issues worsen and expand faster that we can address their symptoms. For example, if we only provide malaria nets without addressing climate change, rising temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns could expand malaria zones into new regions, overwhelming our capacity to help.
2. We might exhaust limited resources treating symptoms while the source of the problem continues to generate new case. Like trying to bail out a boat without fixing the leak – you’ll eventually get tired.
3. We miss a chance to prevent suffering entirely. Rather than treating waterborne illnesses let’s invest in the sanitation infrastructure to ensure no one becomes ill to start with!
4. Root causes interact and amplify each other, making problems more difficult to solve without addressing the underlying systems. For example, factory farming relies on antibiotics to keep animals healthy in crowded situations. The drive to maximise output and profits has led to concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Overuse of antibiotics (enabled by poor regulation of antibiotics) leads to drug-resistant bacteria which spread to humans through food, water and the environment. As antibiotic resistance grows treating infections becomes harder, threatening public health and increasing health care costs. Simply reducing antibiotic use without changing factory farm conditions would still leave animals vulnerable to disease, for example
This doesn’t mean EA should stop direct interventions – help is required now. But we need a balanced approach that includes immediate interventions and long-term systemic change.
I was gonna write something similar, but I think this comment nailed it (kudos KarenS). So I’ll highlight two key arguments I endorse:
Framing mitigating the worst immediate effects and addressing upstream drivers as mutually exclusive is unhelpfully reductionist and, as other have pointed out, distracts from good arguments to invest in reacting to immediate effects over root causes.
Addressing upstream causes/systems change can have higher ROI than just addressing immediate effects in the long term and especially with issues that continue on in perpetuity without intervening on the root level. Case and point, Titotal’s example of slavery abolition. (Abolition of slavery has come up before as an interesting thought experiment to EA’s relation with root causes/systems change.
Thank you for writing this, it is useful to see how some EA-ers might view me! I don’t go around criticising EA for not addressing root causes, but I feel it is important we address them and I have queried the apparent lack recognition of them in EA. Alongside that I’d don’t deny the need for immediate interventions right now. It’s not either/or.
I feel like the framing of an either/or choice in the post is reductive. The EA movement should be broad enough to have a more nuanced approach to look at root causes—it is possible these could have huge ripple effects—while acknowledging the need for continued direct interventions. We can, to continue your narrative, help the person who has been shot while also working on policy reform around gun control. Noting, you can follow a chain of root causes all the way to arguing the root cause is violent behaviour in a society which accepts such casual violence. Surely the key to doing the most good is finding the sweet spot of a tractable root cause?
If we ignore root causes and only focus on the immediate inventions there are a number of risks:
1. The underlying issues worsen and expand faster that we can address their symptoms. For example, if we only provide malaria nets without addressing climate change, rising temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns could expand malaria zones into new regions, overwhelming our capacity to help.
2. We might exhaust limited resources treating symptoms while the source of the problem continues to generate new case. Like trying to bail out a boat without fixing the leak – you’ll eventually get tired.
3. We miss a chance to prevent suffering entirely. Rather than treating waterborne illnesses let’s invest in the sanitation infrastructure to ensure no one becomes ill to start with!
4. Root causes interact and amplify each other, making problems more difficult to solve without addressing the underlying systems. For example, factory farming relies on antibiotics to keep animals healthy in crowded situations. The drive to maximise output and profits has led to concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Overuse of antibiotics (enabled by poor regulation of antibiotics) leads to drug-resistant bacteria which spread to humans through food, water and the environment. As antibiotic resistance grows treating infections becomes harder, threatening public health and increasing health care costs. Simply reducing antibiotic use without changing factory farm conditions would still leave animals vulnerable to disease, for example
This doesn’t mean EA should stop direct interventions – help is required now. But we need a balanced approach that includes immediate interventions and long-term systemic change.
I was gonna write something similar, but I think this comment nailed it (kudos KarenS). So I’ll highlight two key arguments I endorse:
Framing mitigating the worst immediate effects and addressing upstream drivers as mutually exclusive is unhelpfully reductionist and, as other have pointed out, distracts from good arguments to invest in reacting to immediate effects over root causes.
Addressing upstream causes/systems change can have higher ROI than just addressing immediate effects in the long term and especially with issues that continue on in perpetuity without intervening on the root level. Case and point, Titotal’s example of slavery abolition. (Abolition of slavery has come up before as an interesting thought experiment to EA’s relation with root causes/systems change.