I donât see any mention here or in the comments about neglectedness, which seems like the most obvious reason for why EA isnât a good fit here. There are enormous, well-funded, long-established ecosystems dedicated to exactly this sort of thingâcivil liberties organisations, legal defence funds, democratic governance NGOs, journalism, academic institutions, unions, anti-fascist networks etc.
I think thereâs some argument that the EA mindset could be applied to finding tractable interventions here but ultimately I just think there are more pressing problems that need our attention.
Low neglectedness can be outweighed by high importance or tractability. The hard part is being confident about tractability and room for more funding. I think one can make space for importance-focused efforts despite this uncertainty, especially with the consideration that rival actors are incentivized to increase it.
EA insights could be a valuable complement to existing ecosystems. Precisely because large political organizations have established roles to maintain, they may have operational or epistemic limitations. Itâs easy to draw analogies with large health charities that have received EA critique for marginal impact.
I really like this list of critiques of the ITN framework and its focus on the misuse of the neglectedness heuristic. Curious to hear what you think about it. In this case, I donât think it should carry much weight. Just as I suspect most EA-aligned people would still consider voting useful (and even with low turnout rates, we wouldnât call voting âneglectedâ), discussing red lines for authoritarian drift also seems usefulâeven if itâs already being discussed outside EA.
Sometimes it feels like we interpret the âNâ in the ITN framework as âwe shouldnât bother talking about things that people outside EA are already discussing.â But if that were the right interpretation, we wouldnât be talking about many of the issues we currently do, would we?
I donât see any mention here or in the comments about neglectedness, which seems like the most obvious reason for why EA isnât a good fit here. There are enormous, well-funded, long-established ecosystems dedicated to exactly this sort of thingâcivil liberties organisations, legal defence funds, democratic governance NGOs, journalism, academic institutions, unions, anti-fascist networks etc.
I think thereâs some argument that the EA mindset could be applied to finding tractable interventions here but ultimately I just think there are more pressing problems that need our attention.
Low neglectedness can be outweighed by high importance or tractability. The hard part is being confident about tractability and room for more funding. I think one can make space for importance-focused efforts despite this uncertainty, especially with the consideration that rival actors are incentivized to increase it.
EA insights could be a valuable complement to existing ecosystems. Precisely because large political organizations have established roles to maintain, they may have operational or epistemic limitations. Itâs easy to draw analogies with large health charities that have received EA critique for marginal impact.
I really like this list of critiques of the ITN framework and its focus on the misuse of the neglectedness heuristic. Curious to hear what you think about it. In this case, I donât think it should carry much weight. Just as I suspect most EA-aligned people would still consider voting useful (and even with low turnout rates, we wouldnât call voting âneglectedâ), discussing red lines for authoritarian drift also seems usefulâeven if itâs already being discussed outside EA.
Sometimes it feels like we interpret the âNâ in the ITN framework as âwe shouldnât bother talking about things that people outside EA are already discussing.â But if that were the right interpretation, we wouldnât be talking about many of the issues we currently do, would we?