Wouldn’t have guessed from the username that you’re a socialist :)
This contrasts with the internationalist view in EA, with distant actors solving local problems using distant resources.
You wrote this in a short way, but I think it’s worth expanding upon. Progressives often equate that very idea with neo-colonialism, and they’re not wrong in principle. In EA we need to take attention to both make sure it does involve locals in a meaningful enough way, and to present the ways it is very different in practice from neo-colonialism. Or, in other words, to show where that criticism is wrong, but to learn from the part that’s right.
Concretely, I’m pretty uncomfortable with GiveWell’s moral weights being set for a large part using a donor survey. Why should Western donors get to decide what’s important for people in developing countries?
Worth pointing out that some socialists will also find this neo-colonialist.
To be fair, I’m not sure I’ve presented EA fairly there—EA initiatives do involve locals and benefit from local information and tacit knowledge (but maybe not sufficiently). Might be more appropriate to say “EAs use distant resources to solve local problems via collaboration between distant actors and local actors, but usually with the distant resource-holders setting priorities based on what they believe will benefit locals the most using evidence and reasoning.” Will edit to make this correction.
Didn’t know this about GiveWell—will read about it but at face value seems pretty awful to me!
Look here (Google doc) for more info about the GiveWell moral weights. I don’t like their approach to this, but as always I can praise them highly for the transparency :)
Thanks for writing this!
Wouldn’t have guessed from the username that you’re a socialist :)
You wrote this in a short way, but I think it’s worth expanding upon. Progressives often equate that very idea with neo-colonialism, and they’re not wrong in principle. In EA we need to take attention to both make sure it does involve locals in a meaningful enough way, and to present the ways it is very different in practice from neo-colonialism. Or, in other words, to show where that criticism is wrong, but to learn from the part that’s right.
Concretely, I’m pretty uncomfortable with GiveWell’s moral weights being set for a large part using a donor survey. Why should Western donors get to decide what’s important for people in developing countries?
Worth pointing out that some socialists will also find this neo-colonialist.
To be fair, I’m not sure I’ve presented EA fairly there—EA initiatives do involve locals and benefit from local information and tacit knowledge (but maybe not sufficiently). Might be more appropriate to say “EAs use distant resources to solve local problems via collaboration between distant actors and local actors, but usually with the distant resource-holders setting priorities based on what they believe will benefit locals the most using evidence and reasoning.” Will edit to make this correction.
Didn’t know this about GiveWell—will read about it but at face value seems pretty awful to me!
Look here (Google doc) for more info about the GiveWell moral weights. I don’t like their approach to this, but as always I can praise them highly for the transparency :)