Hi Neel thanks for these thoughts. I’ve responded to the broader issue in a new top-level comment.
Just on the point that we should be explicit that this is longtermism focused, while longtermism isn’t in the title I tried to make it pretty explicit in the series’ ‘Episode 0’:
One final note before we start. We wanted to keep this introduction to just ten episodes, which meant we had to make some tough decisions about what made the cut. This selection skews towards focusing on longtermism and efforts to preserve a long and positive future for humanity, because at 80,000 Hours we think that’s a particularly promising way for many of our readers to make a difference.
But as I was saying just a moment ago, people in the community have a wide range of views on the question of what is most valuable to work on, and unfortunately there’s no room for them all to get a dedicated episode in this series.
The good news is there are episodes about many more problems on the main 80,000 Hours Podcast feed to satisfy your curiosity. For instance, if you’d like to hear more about global health and development I can recommend #49 – Dr Rachel Glennerster on a year’s worth of education for under $1 and other development best buys.
If you’d prefer to hear more about climate change, I can suggest #85 – Mark Lynas on climate change, societal collapse & nuclear energy
And if you want to hear more about efforts to improve the wellbeing of animals, especially those raised in farms, I can recommend going and listening to #8 – Lewis Bollard on how to end factory farming in our lifetimes.
There’s also this earlier on:
A 2019 survey of people involved in effective altruism found that 22% thought global poverty should be a top priority, 16% thought the same of climate change, and 11% said so of risks from advanced artificial intelligence. So a wide range of views on which causes are most pressing are represented in the group.
Thanks for the clarification. I’m glad that’s in there, and I’ll feel better about this once the ‘Top 10 problem areas’ feed exists, but I still feel somewhat dissatisfied. I think that ‘some EAs prioritise longtermism, some prioritise neartermism or are neutral. 80K personally prioritises longtermism, and does so in this podcast feed, but doesn’t claim to speak on behalf of the movement and will point you elsewhere if you’re specifically interested in global health or animal welfare’ is a complex and nuanced point. I generally think it’s bad to try making complex and nuanced points in introductory material like this, and expect that most listeners who are actually new to EA wouldn’t pick up on that nuance.
I would feel better about this if the outro episode covered the same point, I think it’s easier to convey at the end of all this when they have some EA context, rather than at the start.
A concrete scenario to sketch out my concern:
Alice is interested in EA, and somewhat involved. Her friend Bob is interested in learning more, and Alice looks for intro materials. Because 80K is so prominent, Alice comes across ‘Effective Altruism: An Introduction’ first, and recommends this to Bob. Bob listens to the feed, and learns a lot, but because there’s so much content and Bob isn’t always paying close attention, Bob doesn’t remember all of it. Bob only has a vague memory of Episode 0 by the end, and leaves with a vague sense that EA is an interesting movement, but only cares about weird, abstract things rather than suffering happening today, and concludes that the movement has got a bit too caught up in clever arguments. And as a result, Bob decides not to engage further.
Hey Khorton, thanks for checking that. Initially I was puzzled by why I’d made this error but then I saw that “People could rate more than one area as the “top priority”. As a result the figures sum to more than 100%.
That survey design makes things a bit confusing, but the end result is that each of these votes can only be read as a vote for one of the top few priorities. — Rob
Hi,
I wrote the cause area EA Survey 2019 post for Rethink Priorities so thought I should just weigh in here on this minor point.
Fwiw, I think it’s more accurate to say 22% of respondents thought Global Poverty should be at least one of the top priorities, if not the only top priority, but when forced to only pick only one of five traditional cause areas to be the top priority, 32% chose Global Poverty.
The data shows 476 of the 2164 respondents (22%) who gave any top priority cause rating in that question selected Global Poverty and “this should be the top priority”. However, 356 of those 476 also selected another cause area as “this should be the top priority”, and 120 only selected Global Poverty for “this should be the top priority”. So 5.5% thought Global Poverty should be the ONLY top priority, and 16.5% thought Global Poverty should be one, among others, of the top priorities.
Also note that the subsequent question forced respondents to only chose one of five traditional cause areas as a top priority and there 32% (of 2023) chose Global Poverty.
Hi Neel thanks for these thoughts. I’ve responded to the broader issue in a new top-level comment.
Just on the point that we should be explicit that this is longtermism focused, while longtermism isn’t in the title I tried to make it pretty explicit in the series’ ‘Episode 0’:
There’s also this earlier on:
Thanks for the clarification. I’m glad that’s in there, and I’ll feel better about this once the ‘Top 10 problem areas’ feed exists, but I still feel somewhat dissatisfied. I think that ‘some EAs prioritise longtermism, some prioritise neartermism or are neutral. 80K personally prioritises longtermism, and does so in this podcast feed, but doesn’t claim to speak on behalf of the movement and will point you elsewhere if you’re specifically interested in global health or animal welfare’ is a complex and nuanced point. I generally think it’s bad to try making complex and nuanced points in introductory material like this, and expect that most listeners who are actually new to EA wouldn’t pick up on that nuance.
I would feel better about this if the outro episode covered the same point, I think it’s easier to convey at the end of all this when they have some EA context, rather than at the start.
A concrete scenario to sketch out my concern:
Alice is interested in EA, and somewhat involved. Her friend Bob is interested in learning more, and Alice looks for intro materials. Because 80K is so prominent, Alice comes across ‘Effective Altruism: An Introduction’ first, and recommends this to Bob. Bob listens to the feed, and learns a lot, but because there’s so much content and Bob isn’t always paying close attention, Bob doesn’t remember all of it. Bob only has a vague memory of Episode 0 by the end, and leaves with a vague sense that EA is an interesting movement, but only cares about weird, abstract things rather than suffering happening today, and concludes that the movement has got a bit too caught up in clever arguments. And as a result, Bob decides not to engage further.
In 2019, 22% of community members thought global poverty should be THE top priority; closer to 62% of people thought it should be one of several near-top priorities. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8hExrLibTEgyzaDxW/ea-survey-2019-series-cause-prioritization
Hey Khorton, thanks for checking that. Initially I was puzzled by why I’d made this error but then I saw that “People could rate more than one area as the “top priority”. As a result the figures sum to more than 100%.
That survey design makes things a bit confusing, but the end result is that each of these votes can only be read as a vote for one of the top few priorities. — Rob
Hi, I wrote the cause area EA Survey 2019 post for Rethink Priorities so thought I should just weigh in here on this minor point.
Fwiw, I think it’s more accurate to say 22% of respondents thought Global Poverty should be at least one of the top priorities, if not the only top priority, but when forced to only pick only one of five traditional cause areas to be the top priority, 32% chose Global Poverty.
The data shows 476 of the 2164 respondents (22%) who gave any top priority cause rating in that question selected Global Poverty and “this should be the top priority”. However, 356 of those 476 also selected another cause area as “this should be the top priority”, and 120 only selected Global Poverty for “this should be the top priority”. So 5.5% thought Global Poverty should be the ONLY top priority, and 16.5% thought Global Poverty should be one, among others, of the top priorities. Also note that the subsequent question forced respondents to only chose one of five traditional cause areas as a top priority and there 32% (of 2023) chose Global Poverty.