It’s probably unnecessary but I tried to think of a metaphor that would help to visualize this as that helps me to understand things. Here is the best one I have. You want to maximize the number of people partying in your house. You observe that the number of people in the landing room is constant and conclude that the number of people partying is not growing. (Landing room in this metaphor is EA). But that is only because people are entering the landing room, and then going to party in different rooms (different rooms are different cause areas). So the fact that the number of people in the landing room is constant might mean that the party is growing at a constant rate. Or perhaps even the growth rate is increasing, but we also learnt how to get people out of the landing room into other rooms quicker which is good.
That’s one way to see it, but I thought that ideally you’re supposed to keep considering all the possible “interventions” you can personally do to help moral patients. That is, if the most effective cause that matches your skills (and is neglected, etc etc) changes, you’re supposed to switch.
In practice that does not happen much, because skills and experience in one area are most useful in the same area, and because re-thinking your career constantly is tiring and even depressing; but it could be that way.
If it was that way, people who have decided on their cause area (for the next say, 5 years) should still call themselves EAs.
It’s probably unnecessary but I tried to think of a metaphor that would help to visualize this as that helps me to understand things. Here is the best one I have. You want to maximize the number of people partying in your house. You observe that the number of people in the landing room is constant and conclude that the number of people partying is not growing. (Landing room in this metaphor is EA). But that is only because people are entering the landing room, and then going to party in different rooms (different rooms are different cause areas). So the fact that the number of people in the landing room is constant might mean that the party is growing at a constant rate. Or perhaps even the growth rate is increasing, but we also learnt how to get people out of the landing room into other rooms quicker which is good.
That’s one way to see it, but I thought that ideally you’re supposed to keep considering all the possible “interventions” you can personally do to help moral patients. That is, if the most effective cause that matches your skills (and is neglected, etc etc) changes, you’re supposed to switch.
In practice that does not happen much, because skills and experience in one area are most useful in the same area, and because re-thinking your career constantly is tiring and even depressing; but it could be that way.
If it was that way, people who have decided on their cause area (for the next say, 5 years) should still call themselves EAs.