Going to take a stab at this (from my own biased perspective). I think Peter did a very good job, but Sarah was right that I donāt think this quite answered your question. I think itās difficult to think of what counts as āgenerating ideasā vs rediscovering new ones, many new philosophies/āmovements can generate ideas but they can often be bad ones. And again, EA is a decentral-ish movement and itās hard to get centralised/āconsensus statements on it.
With enough caveats out of the way, and very much from my biased PoV:
āLongtermismā is deadāIām not sure if someone has gone āon recordā for this, but I think longtermism, especially strong longtermism, as a driving idea for effective altruism is dead. Indeed, to the extent that AI x-risk and Longtermism went hand-in-hand is gone because AI x-risk proponents increasingly view it as a risk that will be played out in years and decades, not centuries and millenia. I donāt expect future EA work to be justified under longtermist framing, and I think this reasonably counts as the movement āacknowledging it was wrongā in some collective-intelligence sort of way.
The case for Animal Welfare is growingāIn the last 2 years, I think the intellectual case for Animal Welfare as a leading, and perhaps the EA cause has actually strengthened quite a bit. Rethink published their Moral Weight Sequence which has influenced much subsequent work, see Arielās excellent pitch for Animal Welfare to dominate nearttermist spending.[1] On radical new ideas to implement, Matthiasā pitch for screwworm eradication sounded great to me, letās get it happening! Overall, Animal Welfare is good and EA continues to be directionally ahead on it, and the source of both interesting ideas and funding in this space, in my non-expert opinion.
Thorstadās Criticism of Astronomical ValueāIām specifically referring to Davidās sequence of āExistential Risk Pessimismā, which I think is broadly part of the EA-idea ecosystem, even if from a critical perspective. The first few pieces, which argues that actually longtermists should have low x-risk probabilities, and vice versa, was really novel and interesting to me (and I wish more people had responded to it). I think that being able to openly criticise x-risk arguments and defer less is hopefully becoming more open, though it may still be a minority view amongst leadership.
Effective Giving is BackāMy sense is that, over the last years, and probably spurred by the FTX collapse and fallout, that Effective Giving is back on the menu. Iām not particularly sure why it left, or what extent it did,[2] but there are a number of posts (e.g. see here, here, and here) that indicate itās becoming a lot more of a thing. This is sort of a corrolary of ālongtermism is deadā, people realised that perhaps earning-to-give, or even just giving, is something which is still valuable that a can be a unifying thing in the EA movement.
There are other things that I could mention but I ran out of time to do so fully. I think there is a sense that there are not as many new, radical ideas as there were in the opening days of EAābut in some sense thatās an inevitable part of how social movements and ideas grow and change.
Iām not sure if effective giving being deprioritised actually happened, or if it was whether that was deliberate strategy or just incentives playing out. So this is just my vibe-take
āLongtermism is deadā: I feel quite confused about what the idea is here.
Is it that
(1) people no longer find the key claims underlying longtermism compelling?
(2) it seems irrelevant to influencing decisions?
(3) it seems less likely to be the best messaging strategy for motivating people to take specific actions?
(4) something else?
Iām also guessing that this is just a general summary of vibe and attitudes from people youāve spoken to, but if thereās some evidence you could point to that demonstrates this overall point or any of the subpoints Iād be pretty interested in that.
(Responding to you, but Peter made a similar point.)
On the platonic/āphilosophical side Iām not sure, I think many EAs werenāt really bought into it to begin with and the shift to longtermism was in various ways the effect of deference and/āor cohort effects. In my case I feel that the epistemic/ācluelessness challenge to longtermism/āfar future effects is pretty dispositive, but Iām just one person.
On the vibes side, I think the evidence is pretty damning:
The launch of WWOTF was almost perfectly at the worst time possible and the idea seems indelibly linked with SBFās risky/ānaĆÆve ethics and immoral actions.
Do a Google News or Twitter search for ālongtermismā in its EA context and itās ~broadly to universally negative. The Google trends data also points toward the term fading away.
No big EA org or āEA leaderā however defined is going to bat for longtermism any more in the public sphere. The only people talking about it are the critics. When you get that kind of dynamic, itās difficult to see how an idea can survive.
Even on the Forum, very little discussion on the Forum seems to be based on ālongtermismā these days. People either seem to have left the Forum/āEA, or longtermist concerns have been subsumed into AI/ābio risk. Longtermism just seems superfluous to these discussions.
Thatās just my personal read on things though. But yeah, seems very much like that SBF-Community Drama-OpenAI board triple whammy from Nov22-Nov23 marked the death knell for longtermism at least as the public facing justification of EA.
Going to take a stab at this (from my own biased perspective). I think Peter did a very good job, but Sarah was right that I donāt think this quite answered your question. I think itās difficult to think of what counts as āgenerating ideasā vs rediscovering new ones, many new philosophies/āmovements can generate ideas but they can often be bad ones. And again, EA is a decentral-ish movement and itās hard to get centralised/āconsensus statements on it.
With enough caveats out of the way, and very much from my biased PoV:
āLongtermismā is deadāIām not sure if someone has gone āon recordā for this, but I think longtermism, especially strong longtermism, as a driving idea for effective altruism is dead. Indeed, to the extent that AI x-risk and Longtermism went hand-in-hand is gone because AI x-risk proponents increasingly view it as a risk that will be played out in years and decades, not centuries and millenia. I donāt expect future EA work to be justified under longtermist framing, and I think this reasonably counts as the movement āacknowledging it was wrongā in some collective-intelligence sort of way.
The case for Animal Welfare is growingāIn the last 2 years, I think the intellectual case for Animal Welfare as a leading, and perhaps the EA cause has actually strengthened quite a bit. Rethink published their Moral Weight Sequence which has influenced much subsequent work, see Arielās excellent pitch for Animal Welfare to dominate nearttermist spending.[1] On radical new ideas to implement, Matthiasā pitch for screwworm eradication sounded great to me, letās get it happening! Overall, Animal Welfare is good and EA continues to be directionally ahead on it, and the source of both interesting ideas and funding in this space, in my non-expert opinion.
Thorstadās Criticism of Astronomical ValueāIām specifically referring to Davidās sequence of āExistential Risk Pessimismā, which I think is broadly part of the EA-idea ecosystem, even if from a critical perspective. The first few pieces, which argues that actually longtermists should have low x-risk probabilities, and vice versa, was really novel and interesting to me (and I wish more people had responded to it). I think that being able to openly criticise x-risk arguments and defer less is hopefully becoming more open, though it may still be a minority view amongst leadership.
Effective Giving is BackāMy sense is that, over the last years, and probably spurred by the FTX collapse and fallout, that Effective Giving is back on the menu. Iām not particularly sure why it left, or what extent it did,[2] but there are a number of posts (e.g. see here, here, and here) that indicate itās becoming a lot more of a thing. This is sort of a corrolary of ālongtermism is deadā, people realised that perhaps earning-to-give, or even just giving, is something which is still valuable that a can be a unifying thing in the EA movement.
There are other things that I could mention but I ran out of time to do so fully. I think there is a sense that there are not as many new, radical ideas as there were in the opening days of EAābut in some sense thatās an inevitable part of how social movements and ideas grow and change.
I donāt think longtermist spending can avoid the force of his arguments too!
Iām not sure if effective giving being deprioritised actually happened, or if it was whether that was deliberate strategy or just incentives playing out. So this is just my vibe-take
āLongtermism is deadā: I feel quite confused about what the idea is here.
Is it that (1) people no longer find the key claims underlying longtermism compelling? (2) it seems irrelevant to influencing decisions? (3) it seems less likely to be the best messaging strategy for motivating people to take specific actions? (4) something else?
Iām also guessing that this is just a general summary of vibe and attitudes from people youāve spoken to, but if thereās some evidence you could point to that demonstrates this overall point or any of the subpoints Iād be pretty interested in that.
(Responding to you, but Peter made a similar point.)
Thanks!
On the platonic/āphilosophical side Iām not sure, I think many EAs werenāt really bought into it to begin with and the shift to longtermism was in various ways the effect of deference and/āor cohort effects. In my case I feel that the epistemic/ācluelessness challenge to longtermism/āfar future effects is pretty dispositive, but Iām just one person.
On the vibes side, I think the evidence is pretty damning:
The launch of WWOTF was almost perfectly at the worst time possible and the idea seems indelibly linked with SBFās risky/ānaĆÆve ethics and immoral actions.
Do a Google News or Twitter search for ālongtermismā in its EA context and itās ~broadly to universally negative. The Google trends data also points toward the term fading away.
No big EA org or āEA leaderā however defined is going to bat for longtermism any more in the public sphere. The only people talking about it are the critics. When you get that kind of dynamic, itās difficult to see how an idea can survive.
Even on the Forum, very little discussion on the Forum seems to be based on ālongtermismā these days. People either seem to have left the Forum/āEA, or longtermist concerns have been subsumed into AI/ābio risk. Longtermism just seems superfluous to these discussions.
Thatās just my personal read on things though. But yeah, seems very much like that SBF-Community Drama-OpenAI board triple whammy from Nov22-Nov23 marked the death knell for longtermism at least as the public facing justification of EA.
Thanks! Thatās helpful.
Seems to me that at least 80,000 Hours still ābat for longtermismā (E.g. itās very central in their resources about cause prioritisation.)
Not sure why you think that no āāEA leaderā however defined is going to bat for longtermism any more in the public sphereā.
Longtermism (or at least, x-risk /ā GCRs as proxies for long-term impact) seem pretty crucial to various prioritisation decisions within AI and bio?
And longtermism unequivocally seems pretty crucial to s-risk work and justification, although thatās a far smaller component of EA than x-risk work.
(No need to reply to these, just registering some things that seem surprising to me.)