I do continue to worry a bit about self-fulfilling prophecies. If EA organizations make it disproportionately easy for people prioritizing certain causes to engage (e.g. by providing events for those specific causes, or by heavily funding employment opportunities for those causes) then I think it becomes murkier how to account for weighted cause prioritization because cause prioritization is both an input and an output.
I share this concern about weighting community views by engagement. That said, it seems plausible to me that the engagement-weighted views of the community at the least selected for [the set of views predominant among EA leadership] out of the options presented. True, CEA (and their donors, respected people who have thought about cause prioritisation a lot) can influence the views of highly engaged EAs in various ways. But I would expect CEA staff, donors, and select experts to be more strongly selected for a narrower set of views.
Thanks for clarifying!
I share this concern about weighting community views by engagement. That said, it seems plausible to me that the engagement-weighted views of the community at the least selected for [the set of views predominant among EA leadership] out of the options presented. True, CEA (and their donors, respected people who have thought about cause prioritisation a lot) can influence the views of highly engaged EAs in various ways. But I would expect CEA staff, donors, and select experts to be more strongly selected for a narrower set of views.