It seems like 80K wants to feature some neartermist content in their next collection, but I didnât object to the current collection for the same reason I donât object to e.g. pages on Giving What We Canâs website that focus heavily on global development (example): itâs good for EA-branded content to be fairly balanced on the whole, but that doesnât mean that every individual project has to be balanced.
Some examples of what I mean:
If EA Global had a theme like âeconomic growthâ for one conference and 1â3 of the talks were about that, I think that could be pretty interesting, even if it wasnât representative of community membersâ priorities as a whole.
Sometimes, I send out an edition of the EA Newsletter that is mostly development-focused, or AI-focused, because there happened to be a lot of good links about that topic that month. I think the newsletter would be worse if I felt compelled to have at least one article about every major cause area every month.
It may have been better for 80K to refer to their collection as an âintroduction to global prioritiesâ or an âintroduction to longtermismâ or something like that, but I also think itâs perfectly legitimate to use the term âEA: An Introductionâ. Giving What We Can talks about âEAâ but mostly presents it through examples from global development. 80K does the same but mostly talks about longtermism. EA Global is more balanced than either of those. No single one of these projects is going to dominate the worldâs perception of what âEAâ is, and I think itâs fine for them to be a bit different.
(Iâm more concerned about balance in cases where something could dominate the worldâs perception of what EA is â Iâd have been concerned if Doing Good Better had never mentioned animal welfare. I donât think that a collection of old podcast episodes, even from a pretty popular podcast, has the same kind of clout.)
I generally agree with the following statements you said:
âItâs good for EA-branded content to be fairly balanced on the whole, but that doesnât mean that every individual project has to be balanced.â
âIf EA Global had a theme like âeconomic growthâ for one conference and 1â3 of the talks were about that, I think that could be pretty interesting, even if it wasnât representative of community membersâ priorities as a whole.
âSometimes, I send out an edition of the EA Newsletter that is mostly development-focused, or AI-focused, because there happened to be a lot of good links about that topic that month. I think the newsletter would be worse if I felt compelled to have at least one article about every major cause area every month.â
Moreover, I know that a collection of old podcast episodes from 80K isnât likely to dominate the worldâs perception of what EA is. But I think it would benefit 80K and EA more broadly if they just included 1 or 2 episodes about near-termism. I think I and others would be more interested to share their collection to people as an intro to EA if there were 1 or 2 episodes about GH&D and animal welfare. Not having any makes me know that Iâll only share this to people interested in longtermism.
Anyway, I guess 80Kâs decision to add one episode on near-termism is evidence that they think that neartermist interventions do merit some discussion within an âintro to EAâ collection. And maybe they sense that more people would be more supportive of 80K and this collection if they did this.
It seems like 80K wants to feature some neartermist content in their next collection, but I didnât object to the current collection for the same reason I donât object to e.g. pages on Giving What We Canâs website that focus heavily on global development (example): itâs good for EA-branded content to be fairly balanced on the whole, but that doesnât mean that every individual project has to be balanced.
Some examples of what I mean:
If EA Global had a theme like âeconomic growthâ for one conference and 1â3 of the talks were about that, I think that could be pretty interesting, even if it wasnât representative of community membersâ priorities as a whole.
Sometimes, I send out an edition of the EA Newsletter that is mostly development-focused, or AI-focused, because there happened to be a lot of good links about that topic that month. I think the newsletter would be worse if I felt compelled to have at least one article about every major cause area every month.
It may have been better for 80K to refer to their collection as an âintroduction to global prioritiesâ or an âintroduction to longtermismâ or something like that, but I also think itâs perfectly legitimate to use the term âEA: An Introductionâ. Giving What We Can talks about âEAâ but mostly presents it through examples from global development. 80K does the same but mostly talks about longtermism. EA Global is more balanced than either of those. No single one of these projects is going to dominate the worldâs perception of what âEAâ is, and I think itâs fine for them to be a bit different.
(Iâm more concerned about balance in cases where something could dominate the worldâs perception of what EA is â Iâd have been concerned if Doing Good Better had never mentioned animal welfare. I donât think that a collection of old podcast episodes, even from a pretty popular podcast, has the same kind of clout.)
Thanks for sharing your thinking!
I generally agree with the following statements you said:
âItâs good for EA-branded content to be fairly balanced on the whole, but that doesnât mean that every individual project has to be balanced.â
âIf EA Global had a theme like âeconomic growthâ for one conference and 1â3 of the talks were about that, I think that could be pretty interesting, even if it wasnât representative of community membersâ priorities as a whole.
âSometimes, I send out an edition of the EA Newsletter that is mostly development-focused, or AI-focused, because there happened to be a lot of good links about that topic that month. I think the newsletter would be worse if I felt compelled to have at least one article about every major cause area every month.â
Moreover, I know that a collection of old podcast episodes from 80K isnât likely to dominate the worldâs perception of what EA is. But I think it would benefit 80K and EA more broadly if they just included 1 or 2 episodes about near-termism. I think I and others would be more interested to share their collection to people as an intro to EA if there were 1 or 2 episodes about GH&D and animal welfare. Not having any makes me know that Iâll only share this to people interested in longtermism.
Anyway, I guess 80Kâs decision to add one episode on near-termism is evidence that they think that neartermist interventions do merit some discussion within an âintro to EAâ collection. And maybe they sense that more people would be more supportive of 80K and this collection if they did this.