I think I’m struggling to follow your point. No EA knows anyone with malaria, and indeed the whole ethos of EA is to try and prevent personal connections from getting in the way of doing a lot of good. I couldn’t understand from what you wrote why “diseases we’ve learned about abstractly” would be more likely to be focused on than smoking (which presumably we’ve learned about more practically via harm reduction education).
I think I it might be possible to make an interesting point about how, because smoking is seen as lower-class in most EA contexts, it’s treated with more disdain than malaria, which has no class connotation. Is this what you meant?
Surely smokers are on average richer than malaria victims? No-one in the west is getting Malaria, but many do smoke, and smokers need at least enough money to buy cigarettes. And smokers chose to smoke; people aren’t choosing to get malaria.
unlike many problems the EA community grapples with, we already know how to help them
It’s strange you make this post about comparing to malaria. Surely we actually have a better sense of how to fight malaria (e.g. bednets, medicine) than we do smoking (where even with good support quitting can be difficult)?
I’m admittedly puzzled by your argument for neglect, since there’s e.g. Concentric Policies, a CE/AIM-incubated charity that advocates for (quoting them) “evidence-based policies—outlined by the WHO’s MPOWER framework—that countries can adopt to reduce tobacco use”. (Their focus is broader than that though, including alcohol, sodium, and sugar as well.) They focus on “countries underserved by large NGOs and the international community”, which jives with your
… consider this: somewhere in the world, someone just lit their first cigarette. They’re probably young, probably in a developing country, and probably lacking access to the harm reduction tools we take for granted in wealthy nations...
Executive summary: The effective altruism (EA) community undervalues tobacco harm reduction due to socioeconomic blindspots, despite smoking being a massive, tractable problem affecting over a billion people worldwide.
Key points:
Smoking meets EA criteria (scale, tractability, neglectedness) but receives little attention in EA discussions compared to other global health issues.
EA community members rarely encounter smoking due to their high-education, high-income demographics where smoking rates are very low (~7% vs 20%+ in lower-education groups).
Nearly 80% of smokers live in low/middle-income countries, making the problem less visible to EA community members in wealthy nations.
This blindspot matters because personal experience influences cause prioritization, even in communities focused on rational analysis.
Actionable conclusion: EA community should recognize this bias and give more attention to tobacco harm reduction, as effective solutions already exist but need support.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, andcontact us if you have feedback.
I think I’m struggling to follow your point. No EA knows anyone with malaria, and indeed the whole ethos of EA is to try and prevent personal connections from getting in the way of doing a lot of good. I couldn’t understand from what you wrote why “diseases we’ve learned about abstractly” would be more likely to be focused on than smoking (which presumably we’ve learned about more practically via harm reduction education).
I think I it might be possible to make an interesting point about how, because smoking is seen as lower-class in most EA contexts, it’s treated with more disdain than malaria, which has no class connotation. Is this what you meant?
Surely smokers are on average richer than malaria victims? No-one in the west is getting Malaria, but many do smoke, and smokers need at least enough money to buy cigarettes. And smokers chose to smoke; people aren’t choosing to get malaria.
It’s strange you make this post about comparing to malaria. Surely we actually have a better sense of how to fight malaria (e.g. bednets, medicine) than we do smoking (where even with good support quitting can be difficult)?
I’m admittedly puzzled by your argument for neglect, since there’s e.g. Concentric Policies, a CE/AIM-incubated charity that advocates for (quoting them) “evidence-based policies—outlined by the WHO’s MPOWER framework—that countries can adopt to reduce tobacco use”. (Their focus is broader than that though, including alcohol, sodium, and sugar as well.) They focus on “countries underserved by large NGOs and the international community”, which jives with your
Maybe you meant something else?
Executive summary: The effective altruism (EA) community undervalues tobacco harm reduction due to socioeconomic blindspots, despite smoking being a massive, tractable problem affecting over a billion people worldwide.
Key points:
Smoking meets EA criteria (scale, tractability, neglectedness) but receives little attention in EA discussions compared to other global health issues.
EA community members rarely encounter smoking due to their high-education, high-income demographics where smoking rates are very low (~7% vs 20%+ in lower-education groups).
Nearly 80% of smokers live in low/middle-income countries, making the problem less visible to EA community members in wealthy nations.
This blindspot matters because personal experience influences cause prioritization, even in communities focused on rational analysis.
Actionable conclusion: EA community should recognize this bias and give more attention to tobacco harm reduction, as effective solutions already exist but need support.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.