Suppose someone were to convince you that the interventions GiveWell pursues are not the best way to improve “global capacity”, and that a better way would be to pursue more controversial/speculative causes like population growth or long-run economic growth or whatever. I just don’t see EA reorienting GHW-worldview spending toward controversial causes like this, ever. The controversial stuff will always have to compete with animal welfare and AI x-risk. If your worldview categorization does not always make the GHW worldview center on non-controversial stuff, it is practically meaningless. This is why I was so drawn to this post—I think you correctly point out that “improving the lives of current humans” is not really what GHW is about!
The non-controversial stuff doesn’t have to be anti-malaria efforts or anything that GiveWell currently pursues; I agree with you there that we shouldn’t dogmatically accept these current causes. But you should really be defining your GHW worldview such that it always centers on non-controversial stuff. Is this kind of arbitrary? You bet! As you state in this post, there are at least some reasons to stay away from weird causes, so it might not be totally arbitrary. But honestly it doesn’t matter whether it’s arbitrary or not; some donors are just really uncomfortable about pursuing philosophical weirdness, and GHW should be for them.
Suppose someone were to convince you that the interventions GiveWell pursues are not the best way to improve “global capacity”, and that a better way would be to pursue more controversial/speculative causes like population growth or long-run economic growth or whatever. I just don’t see EA reorienting GHW-worldview spending toward controversial causes like this, ever. The controversial stuff will always have to compete with animal welfare and AI x-risk. If your worldview categorization does not always make the GHW worldview center on non-controversial stuff, it is practically meaningless. This is why I was so drawn to this post—I think you correctly point out that “improving the lives of current humans” is not really what GHW is about!
The non-controversial stuff doesn’t have to be anti-malaria efforts or anything that GiveWell currently pursues; I agree with you there that we shouldn’t dogmatically accept these current causes. But you should really be defining your GHW worldview such that it always centers on non-controversial stuff. Is this kind of arbitrary? You bet! As you state in this post, there are at least some reasons to stay away from weird causes, so it might not be totally arbitrary. But honestly it doesn’t matter whether it’s arbitrary or not; some donors are just really uncomfortable about pursuing philosophical weirdness, and GHW should be for them.