Oh, I should definitely clarify: I find effective altruism the philosophy, as well as most effective altruists and their actions, to be very good and admirable. My gripe is with what I view as the “EA community”—primarily places like this forum, organizations such as the CEA, and participants in EA global. The more central to EA-the-community, the worse I like the the ideas.
In my view, what happens is that there are a lot of EA-ish people donating to GiveWell charities, and that’s amazing. And then the EA movement comes and goes “but actually, you should really give the money to [something ineffective that’s also sometimes in the personal interest of the person speaking]” and some people get duped. So forums like this one serve to take money that would go to malaria nets, and try as hard as they can to redirect it to less effective charities.
So, to your questions: how many people are working towards bee welfare? Not many. But on this forum, it’s a common topic of discussion (often with things like nematodes instead of bees). I haven’t been to EA global, but I know where I’d place my bets for what receives attention there. Though honestly, both HLI and the animal welfare stuff is probably small potatoes compared to AI risk and meta-EA, two areas in which these dynamics play an even bigger role (and in which there are even more broken thermometers and conflicts of interest).
Oh, I should definitely clarify: I find effective altruism the philosophy, as well as most effective altruists and their actions, to be very good and admirable. My gripe is with what I view as the “EA community”—primarily places like this forum, organizations such as the CEA, and participants in EA global. The more central to EA-the-community, the worse I like the the ideas.
In my view, what happens is that there are a lot of EA-ish people donating to GiveWell charities, and that’s amazing. And then the EA movement comes and goes “but actually, you should really give the money to [something ineffective that’s also sometimes in the personal interest of the person speaking]” and some people get duped. So forums like this one serve to take money that would go to malaria nets, and try as hard as they can to redirect it to less effective charities.
So, to your questions: how many people are working towards bee welfare? Not many. But on this forum, it’s a common topic of discussion (often with things like nematodes instead of bees). I haven’t been to EA global, but I know where I’d place my bets for what receives attention there. Though honestly, both HLI and the animal welfare stuff is probably small potatoes compared to AI risk and meta-EA, two areas in which these dynamics play an even bigger role (and in which there are even more broken thermometers and conflicts of interest).